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A New Dream of Politics – go out and vote for it
The Booker prize-winning writer Ben Okri was called a genius by Jeremy Corbyn in his Labour party conference speech in 2015. Here he responds:
They say there is only one way for politics.
That it looks with hard eyes at the hard world
And shapes it with a ruler’s edge,
Measuring what is possible against
Acclaim, support, and votes.
They say there is only one way to dream
For the people, to give them not what they need
But food for their fears.
We measure the deeds of politicians
By their time in power.
But in ancient times they had another way.
They measured greatness by the gold
Of contentment, by the enduring arts,
The laughter at the hearths,
The length of silence when the bards
Told of what was done by those who
Had the courage to make their lands
Happy, away from war, spreading justice
And fostering health,
The most precious of the arts
Of governance.
But we live in times that have lost
This tough art of dreaming
The best for its people,
Or so we are told by cynics
And doomsayers who see the end
Of time in blood-red moons.
Always when least expected an unexpected
Figure rises when dreams here have
Become like ashes. But when the light
Is woken in our hearts after the long
Sleep, they wonder if it is a fable.
Can we still seek the lost angels
Of our better natures?
Can we still wish and will
For poverty’s death and a newer way
To undo war, and find peace in the labyrinth
Of the Middle East, and prosperity
In Africa as the true way
To end the feared tide of immigration?
We dream of a new politics
That will renew the world
Under their weary suspicious gaze.
There’s always a new way,
A better way that’s not been tried before.
Enough is Enough
Lots of information and links here.
None of us, none of us is tolerant of terrorism. We are sad, angry, shocked and hurt. But we aren’t stupid. Cuts to police and army because of ideological austerity is bad enough. But these awful acts are funded by people who we are selling arms to, and May wants to suppress investigations. Meanwhile, we incite violence, hatred and division by bombing people’s homelands thousands of miles away. We won’t tolerate Theresa May either. Indeed, enough is enough. We need someone who understands peace. We need to change this broken society, and give people hope not fear. We have an opportunity on Thursday. Let’s rebuild our country, our society, and #VoteLabour on Thursday. A new start.
An investigation into the foreign funding of extremist Islamist groups may never be published, the Home Office has admitted.
The inquiry commissioned by David Cameron, was launched as part of a deal with the Liberal…
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Vote Labour – Policies uphold the rights of disabled people
Letter in The Guardian today, PROUD to be a Signatory, please READ & SHARE:
For chronically ill and disabled people, recent years have been a disaster. The UN recently found “reliable evidence that the threshold of grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities has been met” (Report, 8 November 2016).
We have been forced through a work capability assessment that the government’s own expert adviser described as “inhumane”, and which in 2015 was found to be associated with an additional 599 suicides.
Many needing help are now forced through another persecutory assessment – the personal independence payment – designed to reduce the numbers qualifying for help by half a million.
Theresa May says this is “focusing disability benefit payments on those most in need”; but it means removing support from many in great need. Over 50,000 people have lost their vehicle, with some losing their…
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Where will the money come from?
Here is the funding document to the Labour manifesto, showing where the money will come from to implement the manifesto commitments. As John McDonnell says in the Foreword:
“In this pamphlet we publish the costs and funding sources, and reference the research and calculations for each policy proposal. Every spending commitment is fully costed. Every source of funding is explained.”
The warning is the same as the one I gave in my previous blog on the manifesto: read the actual document, not just the media reports.
The more it changes, the more it stays the same, as the French say
News from France. The other day it was announced that 24 parliamentarians from the previous ruling “Socialist” Party have signed up to stand as candidates to become Macron MPs (députés) in the legislative elections next month. Macron is the new President. One of these beauties turns out to be former Socialist prime minister Valls. I speculated to friends that all this might undermine Macron’s claim to be a fresh-faced anti-establishment candidate (apart, that is, from his history of being a member of the outgoing government and an ex-banker). I am backed up by today’s news: Edouard Philippe will be Macron’s PM.
Now, remember Macron is supposed to be the new broom, sweeping through the dark corridors of state, bringing change to France where it is so desperately needed, and his aim is “to reunite France”. Is Edouard Philippe the ideal choice for this role?
Edouard became a member of the Socialist Party when he was a student. He later became a follower of Michel Rocard, who was Socialist Party prime minister in the early 1990s. Edouard then moved to the right (Oh, Gawd, not that old story) and worked for Alain Juppe when Juppe was president of the right-wing UMP in 2002. He remained faithful to the UMP from then on and was one of the pillars of the Juppe primary campaign for President this year.
So the old guard (left, right and centre) is coming forward to help Macron. But, as Macron accepts the help, will it be to “reunite France”? Or simply to reunite the old establishment under his banner and reassure them that the old gravy train is still running?
Just wondering out loud.
[Juppe should have an acute accent on the “e”, but I’m on my iPad and I can’t find how to do it. Apologies!]
Why Juncker and May need each other
Whatever the spat between them this week over dinner, Jean-Claude Juncker and Theresa May are both of the pro-neoliberal centre right, and they need each other
“Praise god it’s not Russia this time!”
The Russian embassy in London neatly trolled Theresa May as she stood on the steps of Downing Street this week accusing Jean-Claude Juncker and the EU of interference in the British general election.
It was an extraordinary claim. Though it has to be said, the leaking to Germany’s leading conservative paper by officials on the Juncker side of what seems to have been an ill-tempered over-dinner meeting with May to discuss Brexit was unusual only in terms of who the target was.
Britain is not Greece. But the behaviour of the Luxembourgeois Juncker came as no surprise to anyone in the southern European country that has been ground in the maw of the European institutions over the…
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Daily Mail – Junk Mail
It is because I love this land that I despise
Your dirty rag. It is because I love this planet
And humanity in all its hues that I have never
Purchased you. And yet your reputation,
So preceding is it, that I’ve never needed to,
For what you do and say is parroted from every
Right-wing quarter every day and poured into my
Eyes and ears by all your corporate, mainstream
Peers as though your narrow, xenophobic tract
Did constitute empirically known fact.
But you are everything you claim to hate –
So rabid in your enmity of citizens and State.
You make your living sieving any information
That ingratiates you to the racists, homophobes,
Misogynists, elitists and the nationalists who’d
Have us in our places. You are bigots with a
Passion for a petty use of microscopic focus;
You are locusts to the fields of understanding,
Tolerance, compassion and…
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Consequences
Anyone tempted to listen to the anti-Corbyn propaganda should remember this: most of the measures described in the article below were contained in the Tory Welfare Bill 2015. That was passed in the Commons during the Labour leadership contest. Acting leader Harriet Harman told her MPs to abstain in the vote on the bill so that us voters would understand that Labour could be “trusted on benefits.” 184 of them did. 48 of them voted against it (including John McDonnell, who said he would “swim through vomit” to do so). Jeremy Corbyn was the only leadership candidate to vote against it: Yvette Cooper abstained, Andy Burnham abstained, Liz Kendall abstained. The bill was passed, with the predictable results below.
Now then, which one of those abstaining beauties would you prefer as Labour leader? Jeremy is criticised for having voted against the Labour whip in Parliament many times since his arrival there in 1983. But that’s because he’s got principles. If others had done the same over the Iraq war, we’d be in a better place today. And if those 184 Labour MPs had joined with the 48 and the SNP and other smaller parties that night in 2015 and voted against the whip they could have beaten George Osborne’s bill. And the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society would be in a better place as they face the months ahead.
Please read the article.
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