Friday 16 August 2019

Time For Some Red Dust

And so British Steel prepares to be bought by the Turkish Armed Forces Assistance Fund. Known as Oyak, it is really the pension fund.

From the constituency that contains Consett, look at what has become of British Steel. Isn't privatisation grand? Isn't deregulation? Isn't globalisation? Isn't the EU?

Services are all well and good. But you can't service nothing. The stuff itself has to come from somewhere.

Refusing to make our own goods, and to protect those industries, is how we have ended up in the middle of a trade war between China and the United States, which do still make things, and which do still protect their manufacturing base.

It is also what has destroyed our steel industry, without which a modern country simply cannot function, and in which we once led the world.

If our steel industry were owned by the pension fund of another country's Armed Forces, a country with an Islamist Government and with a history of military coups, then we could never be sure of keeping even what little remained of it.

Giles Fraser has an important article about the conservative critique of capitalism, and the liberal dependence on it, as well as vice versa. He is one of the people to whom this book is dedicated.

This is all lost on the Thatcherite-Blairite rump that makes up most of the House of Commons. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up.

I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

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