UK politics – Page 45

The voice of the soft Labour left

Published on June 17, 2008

Reading David Osler’s blog is always interesting, because he always manages to capture the views of the soft, making excuses for New Labour left, like Polly Toynbee with better writing skills and slightly more self knowledge. A good example is his commentary on l’affaire David Davis. For those who didn’t pay attention last week, shadow home secretary David Davis resigned his seat in parliament to force a by-election after the government won the vote on extending the time terrorism subjects could be held without charge from 28 to 42 days. According to Davis (and I would agree with him) “42 days is just one – perhaps the most salient example – of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.”

So how did Osler respond to this? By portraying it as an opportunistic stunt of course, sounding little different from Harriet Harman:

Part of me almost admires the gesture he is making. In so far as it will keep up the pressure on the government to rescind the disgraceful legislation that the Commons carried last night, I’d even go as far as to call it a good thing. But a gesture it remains, and a deeply opportunistic one at that.

Myself, I’m with Blood and Treasure:

It seems to me that the choice available over this is to outsmart yourself by trying to uncover the “real reasons” behind his resignation or take him at his word and push the issue. And whatever else Davis might have in mind, and whatever you think of his framing it as “fundamental British freedom” this is the issue.

That seems to me to be a much more productive attitude to take than jeering about how opportunistic Davis is, or how much of a rightwinger. But that’s the soft left for you. A guy like Osler always ends up making excuses for Labour, letting tribal loyalty overrule his disgust of the party’s policies by arguing that the Tories would be worse, even if it’s getting harder and harder to do so with a straight face. That’s why he has to rubbish Davis.

Excuse me?

Published on June 16, 2008

Gordon Brown, justifying the decision to send more British troops to Afghanistan:

He said: “We have resolved, first of all, as we did some years ago, that it is in the British national interest to confront the Taleban in Afghanistan or Afghanistan would come to us.”

Emphasis mine, obviously. The BBC doesn’t seem to have picked up on that, probably dismissing it as the usual New Labourite guff, but that little sentence is not just wrong, it’s despicable. This after all is the government that denied and still denies that the terrorist attacks on London in 2005 were caused by the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, even when the terrorists themselves said that’s why they attacked. It’s therefore quite flabbergasting to hear a British prime minister now say that if they withdraw the Taliban will follow the troops home.

Even if this was true –and notice how many terrorist attacks Russia had to endure from the Muhajedin after their withdrawal from Afghanistan– it takes chutzpah to insist that because the British decided to help their friends in Washington occupy Afghanistan they have created so many enemies the government now has no choice but to continue the occupation, continue getting British soldiers killed for fear of reaping at home what they sow abroad. A special kind of logic is required to swallow that sort of rot — unfortunately the media seems to have no trouble swallowing…

Ordinary people turn out to be decent, despite best Daily Mail efforts

Published on June 15, 2008

Over the decades the British tabloids and rightwing press have kept up a firestorm of hatred against asylum seekers, portraying them as everything from dole scroungers to pedophiles to swan eaters, often in language only slightly less intemperate than that found in theglory days of Der Sturmer. Asylum seekers (always called “bogus” or “failed” by these newspapers were supposed to take the jobs and homes of decent British working families, so you’d think there would be a lot of resentment in those neighbourhoods were the Home Office chose to settle asylum seekers, usually not the best of estates. But funnily enough, when “decent British working families” come into contact with asylum seekers and sees what happens to these people when their claim is rejected they see them as people, not scroungers and resist attempts to evict them:

The estate became home for hundreds of families escaping persecution and torture in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Uganda and Congo. Most had their request for asylum in the UK turned down, and when the Home Office began coming to the estate at 5am to remove them, Donnachie and the rest of the residents looked on in horror. “It was like watching the Gestapo – men with armour, going in to flats with battering rams. I’ve never seen people living in fear like it,” says Donnachie. “I saw a man jump from two storeys up when they came for him and his family. I stood there and I cried, and I said to myself, ‘I am not going to stand by and watch this happen again.'”

She got together with her friend Noreen and organised the residents into daily dawn patrols, looking out for immigration vans. When the vans arrived, a phone system would swing in to action, warning asylum seekers to escape.

The whole estate pitched in, gathering in large crowds in the early-morning dark to jeer at immigration officials as they entered the tower blocks. On more than one occasion, the vans left the estate empty – the people they had come for had got out in time and were hidden by the crowd. The estate kept this up for two years until forced removals stopped.

But what happened on the Kingsway is not unique. Over the past few years there has been a growing resistance to the government’s attempts to deport failed asylum seekers. From Manchester, from Sheffield, from Belfast, from Bristol, the Home Office is being bombarded with requests from British people all over the country asking for asylum seekers to be given another chance.

One reason why deportations are being challenged is that, despite reports to the contrary, many asylum-seeking families have successfully integrated. Inefficiencies in the system have meant cases have taken years to process, giving families, in particular, the chance to put down roots. Many of their children were born in Britain, go to school here and have close friendships with local children. The government does not allow asylum seekers to work, so many put in hours of voluntary work to occupy their time. They have forged strong links with locals, who have helped them fight to stay.

The same happened here in the Netherlands, where a grassroots resistance movement against evicting asylum seekers grew as much out of local people being concerned for their neighbours as it did out of principled if theoretical opposition against the system itself. Ordinary people can be surprisingly decent if they get the chance, but if you only look at what the gutter press says “they” want, you’d think they all can’t wait to lynch every failed asylum seeker in the country.

Blimey! Boris Blunders Again

Published on June 1, 2008

The first thing Boris announced after becoming mayor was that booze would no longer be tolerated on London transport, to the general puzzlement and irration of most Londoners. In sofar as there were problems with alcohol on the Tube it was drunks, not drink that caused them, people going home from pubs or clubs, not getting tanked up on the Underground. Nevertheless from June the first booze would be verboten on the Tube, so from today the decent honest working Londoner should be spared the embarassement of sharing his train with drunken louts.

Epic fail:

The plod wasn’t happy:

Another blunder, Boris?

O Frabjous Day, When The Bailiffs Call On New Labour

Published on May 29, 2008

Labour cash crisis could bankrupt party leaders:

“The party’s constitution is like a five-a-side football club, or the local cricket club. The big difference is that the most club officials and managers could expect to have to fork out is an unpaid bill for hiring the pitch. In Labour’s case, it’s tens of millions of pounds.”

New Labour, like the country who followed its lead, has financed its dreams on the never-never and now it’s deep, deep in the hole and the executive are personally liable. Unsurprisingly it doesn’t look like the unions will stump up, not after the way they’ve been treated and no matter how many new hollow agreements Labour offer.

There’s a bloody good reason why the party’s constitution makes the executive severally and jointly liable for debts – so that executive members would consider their potential personal loss and not get into debt, because it would be on their own heads. So who did New Labour’s golden girls and boys, most of whom have yet to hold down a proper job and have, most likely, never even had to balance the household books, expect to make up the repayments when they took the debt on? I swear that New Labour’s authoritarian incompetents have been thinking their party expenditure’s been paid by the taxpaying mugs all this time, just like their own exorbitant personal expenses.

Er, no. They are personally liable for the debt they and their party have run up and that could mean the application of their own draconian laws against them.

That means that means if they don’t pay, the creditor can take pretty much all they own in satisfaction of the debt and associated charges – and do it with menaces. I hope that each member of Labour’s excutive, starting with Gordon Brown, each get a bailiff’s visit from their very own government-licensed thugs. Like this politically conveniently-timed raid on peace protestors just before the Iraq invasion:

Bailiffs evict peace protesters

Peace protestors who occupied a derelict building in the centre of Bristol for 12 hours have been evicted by bailiffs.

The bailiffs smashed their way into the building near the Council House, which had been occupied since 0700 GMT on Friday by an unknown number of people from anti-war and housing action groups.

They said the money being spent on the war could be spent instead on housing in the city.

The eviction happened on the eve of the anti-war march in London, which will be attended by protesters travelling in 66 coaches from Bristol.

Or perhaps they’d prefer a visit like this, to someone having problems paying their council tax -which has doubled since Labour came to power:

…in the first instance they turned up and tricked my husband into letting them in,he knew he shouldnt,but they made him believe letting them in was his only option,you know how they like to scare and bully people!,anyway,he let them in,they did a very vqague walking possesion,agreed payments of £30 a week(which we couldnt afford,but as i said,hubby felt intimidated),anyway,this was to be paid by cheque because they dont accept helpful payment methods such as standing order.
We kept the payments up to date,but thought instead of sending a cheque every week,we would send one for the whole month in advance,so payments were all up to date,just easier than weekly cheques.
Then a different bailiff to the first one,turns up on our doorstep asking for my hubby,so i ask whs calling,he says im mr ****** from chandlers,im here to take possesion of goods to the value of £1879,for outstanding ct.
So i explain to him that the latest cheque has just been cashed,he says yes it has,im not here to dispute that your account is up to date,as it is in perfectly good order,unfortunately,you agreed to pay in weekly instalments,and you’ve been paying monthly,so you’ve defaulted on the agreement,and if you cant pay by tomorrow at 6am,i will come back with the police!!,we tell him theres no way we can find that kind of money(if we had money like that,we’d have been able to pay the ct in the first place!!),so he says hes prepared to accept £958 tomorrow and reinstate the agreement for the rest,then my hubby made a flippant comment about him being generous,so the bailiff gets his head firmly wedged up his backside and says fine,i’ll be back tomorrow,i want the full amount,so i go after the idiot and persuade him to take the £958,he then says to call him when i have the money.

After alot of panicking(where the hell am i supposed to find nearly a grand by the morning??),i get in touch with my brother in law,who does debt management,and ask if he can help,after alot of shouting and crying to the council,who told me it was tough luck,its in the hands of the bailiffs and theres nothing they can do about it cos im not on benefits(ha,if i was on benefits,i wouldnt have to pay the bloody council tax!!),i got him to speak to them for me,he managed to get the council to agree that the bailiff should never have turned up here and we didnt have to pay him the money,and if he came back i was to tell him to bugger off!.

Anyhow,mr ****** turns up at 10 am,and i tell him to go away,the council say he has no business being here,and he replies that,yes,the council have called him off,all there is to pay today is £180,which are there charges,so my bil who is on the phone tells him to sod off we dont owe him anything,he cant charge us for a visit he shouldnt have made in the first place,so he hangs the phone up on my bil and proceeds to take a clamp out of his van to clamp my car,so i pay him the £180 cos im on my way to work,he reinstates the old agreement,but to monthly payments,and off he goes.
So,my bil has put in a complaint with chandlers and north somerset council,the bailiff is denying threatening to clamp my car(my neighbour saw him,clamp in hand!!),and when i last checked the account,chandlers had added £1300 worth of charges!,we have paid over £600 off the bill and its higher now than when it started,the council have had £109 paid to them,and chandlers are laughing all the way to the bank!!!!!.

I can’t see any more just desert than that for those who cheered on New Labour’s authoritarian incompetence and their war crimes, and who in doing so have enabled another decade of Tory rule to come.

I want to see each and every one of them, jointly or severally, humiliated and stripped of everything they own, left on the street to sink or swim according to the vagaries of their own housing policies and forced to survive on the pittance they call the Job Seekers’ Allowance, just like the millions of others they have written off as the underclass. Let their children eat turkey twizzlers alone in a B&B while Mum or Dad begs for a crisis loan at the DWP.

It would be a start.