Herald The Emergence

Joe Guinan and Martin O'Neill writes:

This week’s local elections will be the last significant electoral test for the main political parties before the next general election. Polls indicate that the Conservatives are certain to receive a drubbing, signalling that the end of the road is near for a government that is exhausted and all out of ideas and ambition. Labour will likely be the main beneficiary, ratifying the party’s position as Britain’s government in waiting.

But beneath these great tidal shifts flows a small eddy and counter-current in the shape of Jamie Driscoll’s independent candidacy for North East Mayor. Having been denied the chance to compete for the Labour nomination despite being the incumbent in North of Tyne, Driscoll resigned from Labour and is running as an independent on a popular platform, backed by an array of left-wingers, trade unionists, and young climate campaigners. The RMT union, unaffiliated to the Labour Party and thus free to endorse who they please, has backed Driscoll with resources and General Secretary Mick Lynch has been out knocking on doors for the campaign.

The only polling data we have shows Driscoll in a statistical dead heat with Labour, suggesting that the race may come down to turnout on the day. But whether he wins or loses on 2 May, his challenge is a harbinger of things to come under a Starmer government.

The paradox of the present moment in British politics is that the opposition is benefiting from government unpopularity while hewing as closely as possible to their policy positions, aiming, in effect, to win by default. Labour’s commanding position in the polls is increasingly understood to be much softer than it appears, built largely upon a rejection of the government and reaction against what has been, for most people, a lost decade that has seen (amongst other things) an unprecedented fall in living standards.

This balancing act has been possible only because Starmer in opposition has been able to exercise a form of ‘political supply control,’ narrowing the policy differences with the Tory government whilst also silencing, for the most part successfully, significant dissent on the left.

Such a strategy is fraught with peril, and cannot hold after the next election, once the Tories are defeated. The palpable lack of enthusiasm for Labour could quickly turn into antipathy and anger if things do not begin to improve under what promises to be yet another do-nothing government unwilling or unable to respond to the present crisis.

The story of British politics since 2014 has been one of a series of recurring revolts against a political-economic model incapable of generating anything but stagnation and decline. The Scottish independence referendum, Corbynism, Brexit – each in its own way represented the boiling over of anger from sections of the public at an unsupportable, unsustainable status quo.

Driscoll’s maverick challenge in the North East gives a sense of what will likely happen to politics after disappointment with Starmerism sets in, when space will open up for independents and for new populist challenges from both left and right.

Take three emblematic issues that a Starmer government will need to address: rebalancing regional economies; addressing economic insecurity, poverty and inequality; and tackling climate change.

On the first, Labour talks about devolving power, but then acts with extreme control freakery. The very act of blocking Driscoll as a Labour candidate (without giving a clear rationale or explanation) demonstrates a taste for centralisation and a lack of respect for pluralism, democracy, and local decision-making.

On the economic struggles many are facing, Labour’s candidate Kim McGuinness says that she wants to be judged as mayor on reducing child poverty but is stuck as the candidate of a party that backs the two-child benefit limit, which has sent over 250,000 children into absolute poverty. Driscoll by comparison has straightforwardly condemned the two-child cap.

On climate change, Labour has drastically rowed back in terms of the scale of its climate commitments; by contrast, Driscoll has put a regional Green New Deal at the centre of his North East manifesto.

If Labour in office fails to take serious action on addressing climate, tackling poverty and inequality, and devolving power and control to left-behind regions, then Starmer’s political honeymoon will be over very quickly.

The political class can only radically constrain democratic choice for so long before generating a backlash. Starmer’s overbearing exercise in political supply control could soon herald the emergence of a whole new set of forces in British political life.

Under such conditions, Jamie Driscoll’s mayoral campaign, his simple message of wanting to make things better for ordinary people but not being prepared to take marching orders from distant elites in Westminster, can be seen as the shape of politics to come.

45 Weeks On

Nominations have been closed for 45 weeks, so when is the election?

If you know, you know.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 293

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 293

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Kathryn Stone, Stephen Parkinson, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 997

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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 997

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.

Since Lanchester is be moved into North Durham by the boundary changes,  I invite each and every other candidate for that parliamentary seat 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. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Wet Boots?

Keir Starmer supports the starvation of Gaza, so the IDF would be acting on his advice if it were to bomb British troops who were delivering aid. The Americans know that, which is why they will not do it. Yet they expect us to do it instead, as we are preparing to do, even though the IDF recently carried out the clinically targeted murder of three British aid workers, military veterans all, using a weapon that Britain had supplied and continues to supply.

The USS Liberty incident was 57 years ago, although its institutional memory does seem to linger, and rightly so. Our USS Liberty incident was this month, and it was carried out pursuant to the policy of our Labour Party. As in 1967, the official line is designed to humiliate those parroting it, thereby asserting Israeli dominance over them. By such are we governed, and by such are they Officially Opposed.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. But if it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. But there does need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Needle Points

On the day that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions wildly overstated the rate of Personal Independence Payment, and denied the existence of millions of people's diagnosed medical conditions, the House of Commons debated the legalisation of assisted suicide, which would give to a High Court judge in the Family Division such power over life and death as no judge in this country had enjoyed since the abolition of capital punishment.

Mel Stride's only degree is in PPE, although he plans to give what amounted to the power of life and death to people who likewise held no medical qualification, but would that power vested in the judiciary apply to cases of depression and anxiety, as it does in jurisdictions where it is already being exercised? If not, since Stride had decreed that those conditions did not exist, then every cloud, perhaps?

My paternal grandfather was born before such working-class men could vote in parliamentary elections, and my maternal ancestors included African slaves, Indian indentured labourers, and Chinese coolies. We who come off the lower orders and the lesser breeds, and perhaps especially those of us who are disabled, know perfectly well who would be euthanised, and how, and why.

Even if we had made it past the industrial scale abortion that disproportionately targeted us, then we would face euthanasia as yet another lethal weapon in the deadly armoury of our mortal enemies, alongside their wars, alongside their self-indulgent refusal to enforce the drug laws, alongside Police brutality and other street violence, alongside the numerous life-shortening consequences of economic inequality, and alongside the restoration of the death penalty, which is more likely than it has been in two generations, and which would not be repealed if the Prime Minister were a former Director of Public Prosecutions who was now a war criminal.

All this, and the needle, too? This is class and race war, and we must fight to the death. That death must not be ours, but the death of the global capitalist system. Having subjected itself to that system to a unique extent, Britain is uniquely placed to overthrow it, and to replace it with an order founded on the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death. That foundation would and could be secured only by absolute fidelity to the only global institution that was irrevocably committed to that principle, including the full range of its economic, social, cultural and political implications.

Keir Starmer is the first Leader of either main party to have any record of having voted in favour of assisted suicide, and he has promised parliamentary time for such legislation if he became Prime Minister. But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. But if it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. But there does need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Anxiety

On the same day that the House of Commons debated assisted suicide, Mel Stride may believe that Personal Independence Payment ran into thousands of pounds per month, or be prepared to pretend to believe that, either of which is inexcusable. But the most that you can possibly get is £737.20, and most people are paid a third or less of that.

For over a decade, I have been baffling GPs and hospital consultants with my inability to secure first Disability Living Allowance and then PIP, and that is on physical health grounds. Arthritis shows up on X-rays, so it is impossible to fake, and I am riddled with it. PIP is hard to get. Anyone who can do so needs it. Millions of people do, and that is just the ones who can jump through the hoops. Of course depression and anxiety are not life's normal ups and downs. That is why they are diagnosable and treatable medical conditions when those are not. So what they did not used to be taken seriously? They are now.

Remember that the people who decide these things, and who have no medical training, are paid by quota to fail a certain number, while there are other people in the system who are paid by quota to take a certain number of claimants off the books, which of course neither cures them nor finds them jobs.

This level of chronic illness is what comes of low pay, bad nutrition, poor housing, the inability to see a doctor or a dentist, and the hospital waiting lists that have trebled in the 14 years that the National Health Service has paid £150 billion to private healthcare providers, which are also generous contributors to politicians. Yet Labour is advocating even more of this provenly disastrous privatisation of the National Health Service. It must be stopped.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. But if it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. But there does need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Good Faith

Having been founded by a man who once seconded Kevan Jones in a debate against me, but whom God has since led to Opus Dei, Compact provides the space for Stephen G. Adubato to write:

On April 8, after nearly 19 months of negotiations with university leaders, the Fordham Graduate Student Workers Union voted unanimously to strike if bargains were not carried out in “good faith.” The two-year-old union, affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, met with administrators on numerous occasions to demand improvements in their working conditions and compensation. Fordham’s stipend for graduate student workers, which starts at around $27,000 a year, is among the lowest in the nation, despite the fact that the university is located in New York—one of America’s priciest cities. This stands in stark contrast to the salaries of the university’s administrators and sports coaches—some of whom earn upwards of $600,000 a year.

Fordham is a Jesuit university that claims to stand for “the alleviation of poverty, the promotion of justice, the protection of human rights, and respect for the environment.” Like many such institutions, it is sometimes criticized by conservative Catholics for defying the Church’s teaching on sexuality. But Fordham is no less compromised in its fidelity to Catholic precepts on the economy. While urging others to recognize the rights of workers, the university has failed to remove the beam from its own eye.

The irony hasn’t been lost on union organizers. At a “practice strike,” one picket sign featured a drawing of a tooth next to the words “cura dentalis,” a play on the Jesuit phrase cura personalis—the care of the whole person—which the university often reminds its students it intends to foster.

Eventually, the gap between Fordham’s ideals and practices became impossible to sustain. Tania Tetlow, the university’s president, announced in late April that the administration has come to a tentative agreement with the graduate union. In the words of an announcement from the union, the agreement includes a “large increase to base stipends, increased health-care coverage, ban on [nondisclosure agreements], workload reductions, and more protections and support for international grad workers.”

As an alumnus of Fordham, I celebrate this step forward—both for the advantages it will afford the university’s graduate student workers and as a means to give credibility to its Jesuit identity. But the reality is that the current structure of the university and the ethos of its curriculum and campus culture don’t exactly lend themselves to forging just treatment of its students and workers—at least, not according to the Catholic Church’s definition of justice.

During my orientation more than 10 years ago, I was told Jesuit institutions highly value social justice, and was taught several of the major Jesuit mottos (cura personalis included), as well as about my white cisgender privilege, which I was told I needed to check at the door. I was also encouraged to get involved in the campus’ numerous clubs and activities, whose highlights included Isis, the school’s feminist club (which changed its name after Islamic State rose to power), and the Rainbow Alliance, a support group for LGBTQ students and their allies. Rainbow had been awarded the title of “the best club on campus” by the administration in 2011. Among its offerings was the annual “Queer Prom.” I was also informed that we had a Campus Ministry, which was very “open-minded,” hosting events like Ignatian Yoga in the Chapel and retreats for those who are spiritual but not religious.

Despite the vagueness of the university’s Catholic identity, I likely wouldn’t have come to find faith had I not attended Fordham. Thanks to my encounters with a small number of devout priests, professors, and classmates, I made my way across the Tiber, joining the Catholic Church in 2012.

Toward the end of my time at Fordham, I wandered into the Manhattan campus’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice, where I met a student-worker who urged me to read Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, and Pope Leo XIII’s seminal social encyclical, Rerum novarum. Seeing as my theology professors were more keen on teaching the texts of Foucault and “pope of gender” Judith Butler (and trashing the papacy of Benedict XVI), I had never heard of these texts, which, according to this renegade student, were “crucial” to understanding Catholic social doctrine.

I was surprised to find out that the Church offered much more than standard “SJW” discourse with Catholic buzzwords sprinkled on top. Rather, it offered a substantial and coherent social vision quite distinct from any other I was already familiar with, and that, in fact, transcended the conventional left-right binary that dominates American political discourse. From its emphasis on the dignity of life flowed its insistence on the centrality of families and a traditional sexual ethic, as well as its ardent defense of the agency of local communities and the right of workers to organize. None of my professors dared to mention to me that among the four sins “crying to heaven for vengeance” are forms of sex definitively closed to procreation and defrauding workers of their wages … go figure.

Over time, I came to understand that Fordham’s opting to push identitarian social-justice discourses over ones more firmly rooted in the Catholic and Jesuit traditions isn’t merely emblematic of the university’s crisis of faith. It is part and parcel of the same mentality that prioritizes the university’s bottom line over its mission. Teaching poststructuralist theory and hanging rainbow flags around campus are much less demanding than paying workers adequately and fostering a culture that values family and community formation. Advocating for the “autonomous” individual, it turns out, is more cost efficient.

Recovering the religious identity of Catholic universities will mean making sure they challenge the individualistic logic of neoliberalism on the curricular and cultural levels, as well as on the administrative and fiscal ones. On the latter front, this will require a concerted effort to resist the expanding corporate mentality and top-heavy bureaucratic structures that are rapidly infecting university campuses. The graduate labor union’s victory is a small but hopeful step away from this direction.

Finding The Money

Even The Guardian now editorialises:

When Labour’s Gordon Brown embraced “post neo-classical endogenous growth theory” in 1994, he was ridiculed by his opponents. This said more about his critics than Mr Brown. His speech reflected an engagement with academic debates as well as a worldview and diagnosis distinct from Tory narratives. He judged education to be key, as growth depended on human capital. By contrast, today Labour’s top team struggles to say exactly what they believe will drive growth and how they will achieve it.

Part of the reason is that mainstream economics is proving incapable of giving sensible answers to important questions. Whether it is the financial crash, the pandemic or inflation shocks, the response is that spending cuts are needed as public debt threatens to bankrupt the nation. Many economists are questioning their discipline’s worth. Last month, the Nobel laureate Angus Deaton blogged that economics was in “disarray” and had “largely stopped thinking about ethics”. Jeremy Rudd of the US Federal Reserve writes scornfully in his latest book, A Practical Guide to Macroeconomics, that economists’ role today is to justify “what elite interests want to do anyway: deregulate, pay fewer taxes, keep wages as low as possible”.

One school of thought attempting to rewrite the textbooks is called modern monetary theory, whose face is Stephanie Kelton, a former economic adviser to Bernie Sanders. She argues that there is no financial constraint on government spending; money can be created and invested so long as there is capacity in the economy to absorb the cash. If not, inflation will follow. This shouldn’t be controversial. John Maynard Keynes said as much in his 1940 book, How to Pay for the War. The theory is not just about deficits: a strong exporting nation should pursue fiscal surpluses – an insight attributed to Prof Kelton’s tutor and ex-Treasury adviser Wynne Godley.

Her work made headlines during Covid-19, when governments spent big without asking first where the money would come from. Prof Kelton’s book The Deficit Myth became a bestseller. Next month, a movie, Finding the Money, hits US screens. The film looks at why politicians hide behind economic “myths” rather than explain to voters the trade-offs required to help them. Prof Kelton’s positions are often counterintuitive, which makes them interesting. Her current argument that rising US interest rates might be inflationary finds her agreeing with her sharpest critic, Larry Summers. Such challenges should be welcome in Britain. The US debates have produced an industrial policy powered by government deficits – and the world’s fastest growing advanced economy.

Mr Brown’s successor Rachel Reeves prefers a deadening consensus, sacrificing policies to placate business while committing to Tory spending now that is “paid for” by austerity later. Both major parties say deregulation would crowd in private investment and the state could capture the ensuing productivity gains. The Tories would use the proceeds for tax cuts whereas Labour would spend them on public services. This strategy has failed since 2010. Why would it work now? One of Ms Reeves’ predecessors said that “the history of British policymaking in the last hundred years has taught us that on all the other occasions when major economic misjudgements were made, broad-based political, media, financial and popular opinion was in favour of the decision at the time, and the dissenting voices of economists were silenced or ignored”. Ed Balls’ 2011 speech is as relevant today as it was then.

The Venezuela Myth

She places far too much confidence in the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but Ellen Brown writes:

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is getting significant media attention these days, after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview that it should “be a larger part of our conversation” when it comes to funding the “Green New Deal.” According to MMT, the government can spend what it needs without worrying about deficits. MMT expert and Bernie Sanders adviser professor Stephanie Kelton says the government actually creates money when it spends. The real limit on spending is not an artificially imposed debt ceiling but a lack of labor and materials to do the work, leading to generalized price inflation. Only when that real ceiling is hit does the money need to be taxed back, but even then it’s not to fund government spending. Instead, it’s needed to shrink the money supply in an economy that has run out of resources to put the extra money to work.

Predictably, critics have been quick to rebut, calling the trend to endorse MMT “disturbing” and “a joke that’s not funny.” In a Feb. 1 post on the Daily Reckoning, Brian Maher darkly envisioned Bernie Sanders getting elected in 2020 and implementing “Quantitative Easing for the People” based on MMT theories. To debunk the notion that governments can just “print the money” to solve their economic problems, he raised the specter of Venezuela, where “money” is everywhere but bare essentials are out of reach for many, the storefronts are empty, unemployment is at 33 percent and inflation is predicted to hit 1 million percent by the end of the year.

Blogger Arnold Kling also pointed to the Venezuelan hyperinflation. He described MMT as “the doctrine that because the government prints money, it can spend whatever it wants . . . until it can’t.” He said:

To me, the hyperinflation in Venezuela exemplifies what happens when a country reaches the “it can’t” point. The country is not at full employment. But the government can’t seem to spend its way out of difficulty. Somebody should ask these MMT rock stars about the Venezuela example.

I’m not an MMT rock star and won’t try to expound on its subtleties. (I would submit that under existing regulations, the government cannot actually create money when it spends, but that it should be able to. In fact, MMTers have acknowledged that problem; but it’s a subject for another article.) What I want to address here is the hyperinflation issue, and why Venezuelan hyperinflation and “QE for the People” are completely different animals.

What Is Different About Venezuela

Venezuela’s problems are not the result of the government issuing money and using it to hire people to build infrastructure, provide essential services and expand economic development. If it were, unemployment would not be at 33 percent and climbing. Venezuela has a problem the U.S. does not, and will never have: It owes massive debts in a currency it cannot print itself, namely, U.S. dollars. When oil (its principal resource) was booming, Venezuela was able to meet its repayment schedule. But when the price of oil plummeted, the government was reduced to printing Venezuelan bolivars and selling them for U.S. dollars on international currency exchanges. As speculators drove up the price of dollars, more and more printing was required by the government, massively deflating the national currency.

It was the same problem suffered by Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe, the two classic examples of hyperinflation typically raised to silence proponents of government expansion of the money supply before Venezuela suffered the same fate. Professor Michael Hudson, an actual economic rock star who supports MMT principles, has studied the hyperinflation question extensively. He confirms that those disasters were not due to governments issuing money to stimulate the economy. Rather, he writes, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”

Venezuela and other countries that are carrying massive debts in currencies that are not their own are not sovereign. Governments that are sovereign can and have engaged in issuing their own currencies for infrastructure and development quite successfully. I have discussed a number of contemporary and historical examples in my earlier articles, including in Japan, China, Australia and Canada.

Although Venezuela is not technically at war, it is suffering from foreign currency strains triggered by aggressive attacks by a foreign power. U.S. economic sanctions have been going on for years, causing the country at least $20 billion in losses. About $7 billion of its assets are now being held hostage by the U.S., which has waged an undeclared war against Venezuela ever since George W. Bush’s failed military coup against President Hugo Chávez in 2002. Chávez boldly announced the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a series of economic and social reforms that dramatically reduced poverty and illiteracy as well as improved health and living conditions for millions of Venezuelans. The reforms, which included nationalizing key components of the nation’s economy, made Chávez a hero to millions of people and the enemy of Venezuela’s oligarchs.

Nicolás Maduro was elected president following Chávez’s death in 2013 and vowed to continue the Bolivarian Revolution. Recently, as Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi had done before him, he defiantly announced that Venezuela would not be trading oil in U.S. dollars following sanctions imposed by President Trump.

The notorious Elliott Abrams has now been appointed as special envoy to Venezuela. Considered a war criminal by many for covering up massacres committed by U.S.-backed death squads in Central America, Abrams was among the prominent neocons closely linked to Bush’s failed Venezuelan coup in 2002. National security adviser John Bolton is another key neocon architect advocating regime change in Venezuela. At press conference on Jan. 28, he held a yellow legal pad prominently displaying the words “5,000 troops to Colombia,” a country that shares a border with Venezuela. Clearly, the neocon contingent feels it has unfinished business there.

Bolton does not even pretend that it’s all about restoring “democracy.” He blatantly said on Fox News, “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” As President Nixon said of U.S. tactics against Salvador Allende’s government in Chile, the point of sanctions and military threats is to squeeze the country economically.

Killing the Public Banking Revolution in Venezuela

It may be about more than oil, which recently hit record lows in the market. The U.S. hardly needs to invade a country to replenish its supplies. As with Libya and Iraq, another motive may be to suppress the banking revolution initiated by Venezuela’s upstart leaders.

The banking crisis of 2009–10 exposed the corruption and systemic weakness of Venezuelan banks. Some banks were engaged in questionable business practices. Others were seriously undercapitalized. Others still were apparently lending top executives large sums of money. At least one financier could not prove where he got the money to buy the banks he owned.

Rather than bailing out the culprits, as was done in the U.S., in 2009 the government nationalized seven Venezuelan banks, accounting for around 12 percent of the nation’s bank deposits. In 2010, more were taken over. Chávez’s government arrested at least 16 bankers and issued more than 40 corruption-related arrest warrants for others who had fled the country. By the end of March 2011, only 37 banks were left, down from 59 at the end of November 2009. State-owned institutions took a larger role, holding 35 percent of assets as of March 2011, while foreign institutions held just 13.2 percent of assets.

Over the howls of the media, in 2010 Chávez took the bold step of passing legislation defining the banking industry as one of “public service.” The legislation specified that 5 percent of the banks’ net profits must go toward funding community council projects, designed and implemented by communities for the benefit of communities. The Venezuelan government directed the allocation of bank credit to preferred sectors of the economy, and it increasingly became involved in private financial institutions’ operations. By law, nearly half the lending portfolios of Venezuelan banks had to be directed to particular mandated sectors of the economy, including small business and agriculture.

In a 2012 article titled “Venezuela Increases Banks’ Obligatory Social Contributions, U.S. and Europe Do Not,” Rachael Boothroyd said that the Venezuelan government was requiring the banks to give back. Housing was declared a constitutional right, and Venezuelan banks were obliged to contribute 15 percent of their yearly earnings to securing it. The government’s Great Housing Mission aimed to build 2.7 million free houses for low-income families before 2019. The goal was to create a social banking system that contributed to the development of society rather than simply siphoning off its wealth. Boothroyd wrote:

… Venezuelans are in the fortunate position of having a national government which prioritizes their life quality, wellbeing and development over the health of bankers’ and lobbyists’ pay checks. If the 2009 financial crisis demonstrated anything, it was that capitalism is quite simply incapable of regulating itself, and that is precisely where progressive governments and progressive government legislation needs to step in.

That is also where, in the U.S., the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is stepping in—and why Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals evoke howls in the media of the sort seen in Venezuela.

Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress the power to create the nation’s money supply. Congress needs to exercise that power. The key to restoring our economic sovereignty is to reclaim the power to issue money from a commercial banking system that acknowledges no public responsibility beyond maximizing profits for its shareholders. Bank-created money is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, including federal deposit insurance, access to the Fed’s lending window, and government bailouts when things go wrong. If we the people are backing the currency, it should be issued by the people through their representative government.

Today’s government, however, does not adequately represent the people, which is why we first need to take our government back. Thankfully, that is exactly what Ocasio-Cortez and her congressional allies are attempting to do.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 292

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 292

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Kathryn Stone, Stephen Parkinson, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 996

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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 996

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.

Since Lanchester is be moved into North Durham by the boundary changes,  I invite each and every other candidate for that parliamentary seat 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. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Jamie Driscoll: We Can Win This Thing

If Kim McGuinness won by fewer votes than the Greens had taken, then it would never be forgiven, nor should it be. And who are these people? Other than those whose entire professional and social lives were the right-wing Labour machine, then have you ever met anyone who said that they were voting for McGuinness?

No polling for this election has been published until the last Saturday of the campaign had been and gone while most of the postal votes were already in. But Jamie Driscoll is still neck and neck. While the case for Jamie is the case for Jamie, McGuinness is a racist and, not unconnectedly, a failed and discredited Police and Crime Commissioner. She has not sought re-election, on the arrogant assumption that she had the Mayoralty in the bag. The explosion in knife crime on her watch is a matter of life and death. She is that bad.

As a disabled person, I am excited beyond words at the possibility of Jamie’s Total Transport Network, but as a mixed-race person, I am terrified beyond words at the prospect of McGuinness, since she or one of her supporters might mistake me, or anyone else who was not a pureblood Northern European, for a “Gypsy”.

It is Jamie Driscoll who deserves to be elected Mayor of the North East Mayoral Combined Authority, with a population larger than that of 13 European territories that the United Kingdom recognised as sovereign states. If any of those fell under the rule of someone like McGuinness, then there would rightly be international uproar.

Pinch Points

Remember that a vote for either main party would be a vote for that which Torsten Bell rightly decried:

There’s much talk of “fiscal pinch points” driving economic policy decisions. But there are moral pinch points, too. Not least when it comes to our children: for many in larger families, we have now come close to creating a poverty guarantee.

Since 2017, the two-child limit has prevented families from receiving child-related benefits for a third or subsequent child, worth about £3,200 per extra child. The result? Half of children in families with three or more children are now in poverty vs a third in 2011/12. And that’s before the policy’s full bite has been felt (by 2035, 750,000 families will be affected, vs 420,000 last year). These statistics risk sounding abstract, but the reality they reflect isn’t. While one in three smaller families are materially deprived, that proportion rises to three-quarters of larger families.

New work from the Nesta charity brings this home. In interviews with 35 parents affected, participants explained how it has cratered their finances, but also the impact it has had on children who go without the “toys and books” their elder siblings had. Parents report it harming their mental health, as well as their children’s.

The policy’s goal was for “families on benefits [to] face the same financial choices about having children as families supporting themselves through work”, the target being fewer births in bigger, poorer families. There’s little evidence this has happened. It’s made families poorer, not smaller. People either don’t know of the policy when making family decisions, or aren’t on benefits before sickness, unemployment or family breakdown changes their situation. The limit has to go. The costs are real (£2.5bn a year), but small compared to the damage. Abolition would lift half a million children out of poverty.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. But if it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. But there does need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

British Mandate?

If Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were to be filmed again, then the Oompa Loompas might very well be British, or at least Dick Van Dyke Cockney. Hollywood initially made them a caricature of Hispanics, probably without even thinking about it, while early illustrations of the book made it clear that Roald Dahl himself saw them as African Pygmies. But either way, they were coolies from the Empire. And Britain is now Loompaland. Our American overlords do not fancy going ashore in Gaza, so we have to do it, because that is what we are for.

We already had people delivering aid, military veterans whose faces matched their WASP names and who, as is quite normal, were also working as intelligence operatives, competently fulfilling both tasks. The Israelis murdered them, faithful to the spirit of the King David Hotel bombing, of the Sergeants’ affair, of the attempted assassinations of Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin, of Menachem Begin’s explicitly vengeful arming of Argentina during the Falklands War, and so on. The Americans understandably do not fancy the USS Liberty treatment from the land of Jonathan Pollard and from the heirs of those who sent letter bombs to the Truman White House. But even so.

Any Far Right rally in the world in the last 20 years has given full, flag-waving effect to the Haavara Agreement. Yet who in Parliament or Congress has heard of it? But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. But if it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. But there does need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

Bear Much Fruit

It has been 25 weeks since Sunday 5th November, when the Police were informed by two people in the United States and by two people in the Philippines, and I confirmed, that I had been imprisoned on what was incontrovertibly a lie.

Do the four known suicides of wronged subpostmasters prove their guilt? Here is your weekly reminder that this could not have been an executive summary of this. That would have been impossible, since they bear no resemblance to each other. It is all here, including on the ludicrous definition of "grooming" that was used to hound Canon Michael McCoy to his death, and including on the nonsense about Fr Timothy Gardner OP. Something has changed since 3rd May. What is it? And where is the original report? I have no qualms about styling Fr Gardner OP as such, since he has not been laicised, nor, unless I am very much mistaken, has he been dismissed from the Order of Preachers. I am urgently seeking to contact Fr Gardner's solicitor or barrister. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.

I do not resile from this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this or this. Rather, I reiterate every word of each and all of them. There was no cathedral sex party. The move from the old Bishop's House to the new one made a profit. There was no allegation of sexual assault against Bishop Robert Byrne CO, who should sue every media outlet that had suggested one.

Although I am often asked, I know neither where nor how Bishop Byrne is. But I am often asked. I am not doing Marko Rupnik, because that would involve siding with the people who had done nothing for Bishop Byrne. They and Rupnik can all go to Hell in the same handcart. Nor am I interested in anything that you might have to say about Bishop Joseph Strickland unless you had fought for Bishop Byrne.

I may not, but I may, accept the present report when Bishop Byrne had done so, and to the extent that he had done so. His Lordship has yet to do so to any extent. At least while that remains the case, then I reject the whole thing out of hand, and so should you. The sum total of the charge sheet against Bishop Byrne is that he did not automatically do as he was told by the hired help. But Pat Buckley does not like Bishop Stephen Wright, so Bishop Wright must be all right.

Indeed, His Lordship preached well at his Enthronement. He clearly has a deep spirituality. There was also a speech by a self-identified survivor of clerical sexual abuse, one Maggie Vickerman. Neither her case, nor those to which she referred, had anything to do with Bishop Byrne, if they really happened at all. How do we know? At most, they were long before his brief time in this Diocese. If anything, certain people with some responsibility for them were in that sanctuary. Nor did Ms Vickerman make any attempt to disguise her theological agenda. Well, nor do I make any attempt to disguise mine.

Who Will Come To Sudan’s Aid?

Mark Seddon writes:

This week, the United States Senate finally signed off on a series of supplemental foreign aid bills that contain $95.3 billion in military funding for Ukraine, Israel & the Indo Pacific. The new House legislation provides $60.8 billion for Ukraine, $26.4 billion for Israel, and $8.1 billion for Indo-Pacific security. When added to the $843.7 billion base budget enacted by Congress in March, the foreign aid would increase the total defence budget to around $939 billion in 2024. The move ended a prolonged standoff in the Senate that began when the Biden administration first released its supplemental aid package back in October. The amounts are huge and especially controversial for many Americans in the case of Israel, which continues to give every impression of wanting to ignore strictures from the Biden administration at each and every turn. The package of aid for Ukraine had been held up as prominent Donald Trump supporting Republicans sought to put US border security ahead of a war in Europe that has become a stalemate. Funding foreign wars, at the same time as public services and infrastructure are creaking back home, is always going to be controversial. But in all of the commentary and coverage it has been impossible to find anyone asking the question; how much was signed off by the Senate for global peacekeeping and increased humanitarian aid?

The answer is; ‘nothing’. Wars and major upheaval now straddle the globe, burning their way through from Haiti to eastern Europe, the Sahel, Yemen and of course Sudan. But where once upon a time a huge focus would have been directed at for instance ending the gang warfare and anarchy in Haiti or putting together a major UN led peacekeeping mission to Sudan, today all we tend to see is handwringing and inaction. The yearlong war in Sudan has also become ‘the forgotten war’. The statistics of are indeed staggering. The war has created the largest displaced population in the world and the largest population of displaced children in the World. According to the United Nations;

• More than 8.6 million people have been forced out of their homes

• 25 million are in dire need of humanitarian assistance

• 18 million are facing severe hunger, five million of them are at emergency levels

• 3.5 million children under the age of five - every seventh child in Sudan - has acute malnutrition. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about 70% of health facilities in conflict-affected states are non-functional or partially functional. As of December 2023, the WHO verified 60 attacks on health care which killed at least 34 people.

The war in Sudan is not only horrific, it carries severe ramifications for the country’s immediate neighbours and in the Maghreb, which may be seeing a substantial increase in the numbers of desperate people fleeing from the fighting. The history of conflicts in Sudan has consisted of foreign invasions and resistance, ethnic tensions, religious disputes, and disputes over resources. Prevention is always better than the cure. But neither has there been prevention, nor serious attempts at a cure. With the World’s most powerful super-power immersed in conflicts elsewhere, the question is, who will come to Sudan’s aid?

Timing and Organisation

“The Observer understands that discussions between Poulter and senior Labour figures have been going on for many months at the highest levels about the timing and organisation of his likely defection, as well as advisory roles he could play in future in developing the party’s health policies, with the benefit of his first-hand inside knowledge.” His first-hand inside knowledge of what? He is hardly the only doctor in Britain.

They mean Dan Poulter’s first-hand inside knowledge of being a Conservative Health Minister, which he stopped being nine years ago, and thereafter a backbencher who was very occasionally mildly critical in the media but who always toed the party line in Parliament. Either Poulter is being brought in to fix what he broke, or Labour has no intention of fixing it. His or anyone else’s only reason to prefer Wes Streeting’s Labour Party to the Conservatives is the desire for the full privatisation of the NHS in England.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. But if it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. But there does need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.

And Other Pollutants

George Monbiot writes:

So that’s how they do it. I’d been wondering how, when more sewage has been entering our rivers than ever before, some of the water companies have managed to improve the ratio of the sewage they treat v the sewage that pours untreated from their storm overflows into our rivers and the sea. Now we know.

It’s called “flow trimming”. Sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? What it means is that sewage is diverted into rivers and ditches upstream of the water treatment works. By reducing the amount of sewage entering the works, the companies can claim to be dealing responsibly with a higher proportion of it.

It’s a lucrative scam, revealed as a result of digging by Watershed Investigations and the Guardian. Improving “regulatory performance” is expensive. Faking it is cheap, in fact better than cheap, as diverting sewage before it reaches the treatment plant cuts costs. It’s yet another of the perverse incentives baked into privatisation.

Flow trimming is one of the reasons for the disgraceful state of our rivers, not one of which, in England or Northern Ireland, is now in “good overall status”, according to the latest census by the Rivers Trust. It also helps to explain why homes, gardens and streets are being flooded with raw sewage, recreating, in theme-park Britain, the 18th-century experience.

Cutting costs, reaping bonuses and dividends: everyone’s happy, except anyone who believes our rivers and the sea should not be used as open sewers, which is almost the entire population. We confront the central paradox of a system we bizarrely call democracy: to achieve what almost everyone wants, we have to fight almost everyone in power. The Conservatives who privatised water and the Labour governments that failed to renationalise it were not responding to the demands of the people, but to the interests of predatory capital.

The water companies’ business strategy has worked as follows: load themselves with debt to finance dividend payouts; load the future with costs as they fail to build the infrastructure – such as new reservoirs and pipes – required to meet our growing needs; and load the rivers with excrement to avoid the expense of upgrading their plants.

Since the industry was privatised in 1989, the companies have borrowed £64bn. Where has it gone? Down their only leak-free pipeline: the one that leads into shareholders’ pockets. During this period, £78bn has been paid in dividends.

Who has benefited from these schemes? A Guardian analysis in 2022 found that 72% of the water industry in England was by then in foreign ownership. The owners of this essential public service included the Chinese state, the Qatar Investment Authority, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the US company BlackRock and other private equity firms, the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, the Malaysian magnate Francis Yeoh and opaque investment vehicles based in secrecy regimes. These are among the owners we know of – other proprietors are impossible to identify. This is the reality of Margaret Thatcher’s great “shareholder democracy”: power and profit migrate offshore.

Now that the debt sewer has backed up, and Thames Water is drowning in its own financial waste products, anyone can see what needs to be done, except those in a position to do it. Both Conservatives and Labour will try every imaginable scheme for addressing this crisis bar the obvious one: bringing it, and, soon afterwards, the rest of the shitshow, permanently back into public ownership.

At prime minister’s questions on 28 November 1989, the Labour MP Bob Cryer pointed out to Thatcher that there was widespread public anger about her proposed privatisation. “Millions of people, over the years, have bought and paid for a comprehensive system of water supply and disposal through the rates. When items are sold off which people already own, it is regarded as legalised theft.” Thatcher replied that “water privatisation I believe will go very successfully indeed. And perhaps therefore we had better wait and see so that we can pontificate in the light of the facts.”

Having waited and seen, we can pontificate in the light of the facts, to the effect that Cryer was right and Thatcher was wrong. But, as with energy privatisation, Brexit and many other disasters, no one in power or with a prospect of power can bring themselves to say it. Why? Because they live in fear. Not of the electorate, which overwhelmingly wants renationalisation, but of the forces they will not name: the billionaire media, party donors and the rest of the unelected infrastructure of economic power. Some democracy, this.

Public services can never be allowed to collapse completely. To secure their own survival, governments will always bail them out. The result? Capital keeps the profits, the state keeps the risk. This relationship is especially stark in the case of Thames Water. If the government temporarily renationalises it, it is likely to acquire most of the company’s £18bn debt. Yet Thames still plans to issue more dividends to its shareholders, while raising bills for its customers by 40%.

To make matters worse, the whole system has been deregulated by stealth. No minister has announced that the rules governing water pollution have been scrapped. Instead, the agencies supposed to enforce them are now so underfunded, understaffed, de-organised and demoralised that the rules might as well not exist.

Bodies like the Environment Agency have coped by mirroring the dodgy strategies of some of the water companies, massaging the figures to make it look as if they’re doing their job. Instead of properly auditing the water firms, the agency has allowed them to “self-monitor”. Self-monitoring is to monitoring what self-esteem is to esteem. When the companies award themselves top marks, the Environment Agency records this as a real result.

Another of the agency’s magnificent oxymorons is “desk-based inspections”. These might expose the chewing gum on the underside of the desk. They do not expose illegal pollution and other crimes, which requires the physical presence of officers, which in turn requires a budget the agency does not possess. This is dysfunction by design: the regulators’ administrative meltdown works marvellously for the water companies, but not for the rest of us.

Our rivers have become disposal chutes not only for sewage, manure and other pollutants, but also for political probity and the public interest. Exactly a year after Thatcher made that statement in the Commons, she resigned as prime minister. We are still mopping up after her.

If We Want A Good Railway, Demand One

Peter Hitchens writes:

Many years ago, I made Harriet Harman laugh. We were on a BBC Question Time panel in Cambridge, discussing the piteous state of the nation's trains. And I asked: 'What is the point of the Labour Party if it cannot renationalise the railways?'

It still seems to me to be a good question. For last week's Labour document, designed to look like the return of British Rail, is in fact nothing of the sort. It is a lame acceptance that John Major's weird privatisation scheme has utterly failed. As each rail franchise collapses back into the arms of the state, it will remain under government control. But the idiotic, dogma-driven structure of the railways will remain unfixed.

As Labour's own document lamely admits, the carriages and locomotives on which passengers must travel will stay in the hands of rolling stock companies, because 'with ten current rolling stock companies owning and leasing trains and carriages worth billions, it would not be responsible for the next Labour Government to take on the cost of renationalising rolling stock'. In other words, they can't afford to do it.

So-called 'open access' will also continue. This allows extra operators to cram trains on to crowded tracks, running in between the normal services. This is presumably to make it look as if competition has returned to the railways for the first time since about 1914, as if anyone cared.

I remember an expert transport journalist, a colleague of mine back in the 1990s, coming back from the public hearings about such schemes and banging his head gently on his desk for some minutes before he began to write his reports. He was endlessly astonished at the total failure of those involved to understand how trains actually worked.

As for the rest, we shall see. The break-up of British Railways 30 years ago, like the equally dogmatic break-up of our nuclear power industry, scattered skills and knowledge accumulated over many decades to the winds, broke up and sent down the drain vast amounts of experience, and frittered away long decades of investment.

Remember the terrible Hatfield train crash of October 2000, which killed four and injured 70. There is little doubt that this was a direct consequence of privatisation and the resulting loss of experience.

Heaven knows who will address the multiple stupidities of the privatised system, devised to pretend that market forces can replace common sense and good rational working discipline.

Look at some of them: drivers training only on the tracks used by one privatised company, and so unable to work on other lines when their own is closed for major engineering works; connections not held, stranding dozens of passengers on bare platforms at windy junctions, so that the train they would have travelled on can arrive on time – but empty.

 'We had to take all the passengers off the train so that it could arrive on time' is not quite as ludicrous as the famous Vietnam war excuse: 'We had to destroy the village in order to save it.'

But it is in the same class of idiocy. Such operating rules long ago lost all touch with the main purpose of railways. I am not sure the old standards can be assembled again even by a much more heartfelt return to the past than Labour's.

I also experience, almost daily, painfully expensive new trains capable of 150mph made to sit for long minutes at stations because the timetable has been padded to ensure that they do not become late and so incur fines.

Other features of this Railway Wonderland of Privatised Madness include ceaseless rows in signalling centres between companies demanding priority for their trains and large bureaucracies set up to attribute blame for delays.

I am not sure that Labour, with its plans for yet more elaborate and rapid compensation for such delays, have quite got the point. We passengers would much rather have punctual, clean and safe trains than any number of compensation handouts. We would also quite like it if fares could be at reasonable levels.

British visitors to Northern Ireland are often astounded by the low price of rail tickets there. John Major somehow forgot to privatise them. Since the province's trains have recently undergone quite a few welcome improvements in trains and track, it must surely be possible to run a good nationalised rail system without punitive fares.

Privatisation fanatics will still tell you that the dawn of private rail was followed by a huge increase in passengers. So it was, but this was not caused by privatisation. The change happened to coincide with an accelerating rise in house prices which led many to start commuting far longer distances in the crowded South East, where the roads were already crammed. I was one of these myself, and I did so even before British Rail was killed off.

I have never met anyone who decided to travel by train instead of by car because the train was operated by a private franchise.

There are other myths about the alleged awfulness of British Rail. It had its failings but I would cheerfully have them back. BR catering, for instance, was really quite good, with real cooked breakfasts still available on many trains and rather cheerful buffet cars on many more, now mostly vanished.

The bleak trolleys on my own line, regularly immobilised by overcrowding, are a melancholy remnant of the lost joys of eating and drinking on trains. But in May 2021, announcing plans not deeply different from Labour's, the Tory Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was still going on about the supposedly ghastly BR food, saying: 'We won't be going back to the days of British Rail with terrible sandwiches and all the rest of it' (it was not Mr Shapps's only mention of the supposed sandwich crisis of the old days).

Nor, alas, will we be going back to the days when we travelled on trains rather than 'services', when we were 'passengers', not 'customers', when there were actual staff on trains, keeping the disorder in check late at night, when the seats were cushioned instead of being as hard as ironing-boards and when we were not incessantly lectured about security, about taking all our belongings with us, about taking care when we got off, and about seeing it, saying it, and sorting it.

I liked it when there was one kind of ticket, which was cheap, rather than 250, many of which are wildly expensive. Personally, and I know this is heresy, I relished the freedom to open doors and even windows myself. Also, why do the train companies ceaselessly pretend that trains are aircraft, in the worst possible way? You can't get on them any more until the gates are opened at the last minute. The seats are crammed against each other, often lined up with windowless bulkheads, and the sociable old compartments are gone.

As for the lavatories, I am of course glad at the better facilities for the disabled but not so pleased at the way these ultra-modern affairs tend to go out of order and lock themselves, and at washbasins apparently designed to spray their users with water and then pour it on to the floor. I could go on.

But the sandwich slander, and all that goes with it, is symbolic of a deeper problem revealed in a fine recent history of BR by the transport expert Christian Wolmar.

Attitudes to BR are distorted by myths and false memories. BR was created in a moment of great national poverty in 1948. It was dragged together from the devastated ruins of the wartime railways, pounded to pieces by endless war traffic and badly damaged by bombing. It was killed off in 1994 just when it was starting to succeed. In its short life, BR had taken huge steps to serve the nation, endured painful manpower and track cuts (mostly mistaken and foolish), and brought in modern and efficient management.

Its reward was to be subjected to a foredoomed, politically-driven break-up, unique in the world, which introduced chaos in the name of competition.

The John Major scheme ended up costing the British taxpayer far more each year than the old BR. Most of the private operators, who milked it in good times, cleared off as soon as the going got tough.

As for the ludicrous claims that privatisation increased traffic, a well-run railway would have expanded far more, opening new lines and stations, running longer and more frequent trains.

But the real problem of our railways does not stem from nationalisation, a system that has worked well in many countries. A Transport Department wholly in love with motorways, cars and lorries will not let the railways compete fairly with roads.

Government pressure has, for many decades, forced the railways to choke off extra business by raising fares, while billions are spent instead on expanding the highway network (which then immediately clogs up, see the M25), and officialdom pretends that this is not a subsidy to drivers and road hauliers.

If we want a good railway, we must demand one from all parties and not be bamboozled with silly talk about mythical stale BR sandwiches.