Defence, People

Johnny Mercer and Bob Stewart seem to take it as read that Northern Ireland is Overseas. Not only that, but the DUP agrees with them. It is clearly preparing for what comes next, when whatever it had become would hold the balance of power forever in a 32 County Dáil. 

One million people once thought that they were living in France, in the départements of Alger, Oran and Constantine. But once indulging them stopped being in the interests of France, then that was that.

When any kind of Algérie française position has clearly never occurred to Stewart or even to Mercer, then the pieds-noirs know in advance that the game is up. They can have the double alienation of exile to Britain, or they can have a very good deal that even Sinn Féin now says must include a National Health Service for the whole of Ireland.

The Conservative Party has questions to answer about Mercer. By his own admission, he had never voted until he voted for himself, when he was 33. Not only did the party select a candidate like that, but it selected one who was a single issue fanatic, and it proceeded to give him the Ministerial portfolio that matched his obsession.

Heaven knows what, if anything, "Defence People" means. But as Minister for Defence People and Veterans, Mercer took little or no interest in the poverty, homelessness and mental illness that were rife among veterans. Instead, he galloped around on his hobbyhorse of rendering legally impossible what was already their vanishingly rare prosecution for offences that were in any way related to their military service. He believes that the Armed Forces ought to be above the law.

Mercer has now resigned from the Government, or been sacked from it, because the legislation to give effect to his mania is not going to be extended to part of the United Kingdom. He is not a conservative. He is not a Tory. He is a militaristic zealot, even if his 11 years of military service are a lot longer than most such people have ever managed.

He ought to be required to sit in Parliament, and to seek reelection to it, on that basis rather than as a representative of a party to which he was barely connected and of a political tradition to which his views were repugnant. Withdraw the whip. And then take a good, hard look at how he ever came to be in receipt of it in the first place.

In The Matter

"You've already been convicted of perverting the course of justice, so you can't be charged with perjury"? 

A Common Law jurisdiction has just convicted someone of three counts of killing the same man, because how he had done it had fallen within the respective definitions of all three offences.

Charge me with perjury, or admit that I cannot be guilty of the offences of which, having testified in my own defence, I was convicted last year. Every day that you do not do so, then you are making that admission.

From Gaza To Mars

Inspiring stuff, and an important riposte to everyone from those who say that space exploration is not part of The Struggle, to those who say that the Palestinians are scientifically and technologically backward.

Where Have You Bin?

Count Binface used to be called Lord Buckethead until he lost an intellectual property case. In the polls for Mayor of London, he is statistically tied with Laurence Fox, and he is very slightly ahead of Fox on the raw numbers. Each of them is on one per cent, the same as Reform UK is polling for the Hartlepool by-election. The electoral bloc of anti-lockdown statue fetishists does not exist.

In 2019, when he stood against Boris Johnson, then one of Count Binface's joke policies was simply Jeremy Corbyn's universal free broadband policy. Well, Johnson himself gave a commitment to that in answer to a Conservative MP this afternoon. In answer to a Labour MP, a right-wing enforcer of many decades' standing, Johnson also committed the Government to a Buy British policy straight out of the Shadow Chancellorship of Peter Shore. Or the successive General Election manifestos of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party. Or the Twitter feed of George Galloway. Who's laughing now?

Conscience Claws

In February, I had hoped that neoliberal and neoconservative opinion of Alexei "Cockroaches" Navalny might have been shifting towards reality. That was when Amnesty International revoked its Prisoner of Conscience status from him. He had had no more claim to that than "Tommy Robinson" would have had.

But no. We are expected to gush over really quite small demonstrations in favour of this thoroughly nasty man whose electoral unpopularity is mercifully well-established, and of whom most people in Russia are lucky enough never to have heard.

The only thing worth saying about those demonstrations, such as they are, is that anything like them will soon be illegal in Britain. The BBC seems to think that they are already illegal in Russia, but it would no doubt show us any baton-wielding, or mounted charges, or use of the sides of shields as weapons, or groups of policemen stripping young women naked in the street, or indeed any Police presence whatever. For that kind of thing, you already need to come here, even before the Statute Book is graced by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.

Goals To Score

It turns out that some businesses are socially and culturally so important that they do not really belong to their legal owners at all, and the people, The People, to whom they really belong may assert their rights by taking to the streets, thereby compelling local and central government to act on their behalf if necessary. Who knew?

If anyone had noticed this before, then we would still have, among other things, a manufacturing-based economy that included a thriving steel industry, itself powered by a mighty coal industry that also fuelled our electricity. Everything to restore that, and more, is still in place. On the principles of the last few days, why not? Let's do it.

The Candidates' Challenge: Day 13

Scroll down to page 37 here, and you will find the persons nominated for the Lanchester Ward of Durham County Council. One of them signed my nomination papers last time. See page 59 here for the fact that the Parish Council is an uncontested election, as in 2013. While in 2013 there were 15 candidates for 15 seats, this year there are only 14.

My challenge to each of the candidates for the Lanchester Ward of Durham County Council, and to each of the members of the incoming Lanchester Parish Council, is to state that they believed me to be guilty of the offences of which I was convicted on 12th March 2020, and of the offences for which I was due to be sentenced on 26th April, when I shall have the opportunity to vacate my pleas of guilty.

Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. A daily running total will appear here until polling day, 6th May. So far, that total is none.