May And Loathsome

Posted on July 9, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

There is a lot of nonsense talked about life in 1950s and 1960s West Belfast. Nostalgia gives us a lot of clichés…”close knit communities”, “people who were the salt of the earth”, “give you the shirts off their backs” and “you could leave your front door open at night”.
It is all …half-true.
Occasionally there was a good old fashioned argument in the street. And I still remember the first time I heard the phrase “ya f@@@ing hoor” shouted across the narrow street. I had to ask my parents what the neighbours were talking about. Like most of the neighbours, my parents never took part in any unseemly activity. “They are only letting themselves down …in front of the Protestants…thats how they expect Catholics to act”.
Yet I remember the day that two women in their 30s …next door neighbpurs…fell out…over children.
I didnt notice the exact words used. But I recall my parents closing the front door and saying that “no woman should say that about another woman”.
It was about one woman having children and the other woman being childless. Like I say, I dont recall the exact words but it must have been pretty vicious. Certainly the women in the street turned against the woman who made the remark.
There is a taboo about the subject. Men…we dont ask questions. There are conversations we dont want to hear. At some point in his life every man will get a strange look or a kick in the shin as a gentle or forceful reminder that he has said the wrong thing.

So the fuss over what Angela Leadsom is alleged to have said (in a newspaper interview) about Tory Leadership rival, Theresa May is interesting. Seemingly Ms Leadsom suggested that as a mother of three children, she is better placed to be Prime Minister than Ms May, who has not been blessed with children.
Women are ourtaged. So are Men. Especially Men who back are Tory MPs who support Ms May.
As always, people talk about context.
As a Man, I cannot express an opinion as I have had too many kicks in the shin over the years.
A few points. Ms Leadsom says she was taken out of context. The Times (newspaper) has provided an audio recording. The journalist is a woman (yes its relevant because I dont think a male journo would go down that road or that a woman politician would have found it easy to raise the subject.
Either way, Ms Leadsom’s supporters say too much is being made of this.
And supporters of Ms May suggest that this adds to the charge sheet against Ms Leadsom.

The rise of Leadsom has been extraordinary. I had never really heard of her except in the context of her appointment as a junior Minister for Energy last year. I am not even sure I am spelling her name right.
She became one of the leaders of the LEAVE Campaign. Her emergence as the LEAVE candidate for Leader is due to good performances in the pre-Referenndum debates and the implosion of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
But there are more serious questions about Leadsom. There are allegations that she exaggerated her CV. She is a late convert to the LEAVE side. A big fan of Fox Hunting and not a fan of Gay Marriage.
In other words, a pretty average backwoods Tory MP who is already over-promoted. Prime Ministerial material? I dont think so.
Yet Theresa May has questions to answer. Even with a REMAIN victory and David Cameron holding on as Prime Minister, it was always likely that the next Tory Leader would be a showdown between Theresa May and George Osborne.
The LEAVE victory took Cameron and Osborne out of the equation.
And May became the REMAIN candidate…with a wider appeal to LEAVERS because she was largely AWOL during the campaign.

So the actual contest to be decided by 150,000 Tory members is between May (backed by 199 MPs) and Leadsom (88 MPs).Ex-Gove supporters (48 MPs) are more likely to support Leadsome.
With 60% of Tory members being LEAVERS, the temptation is to think that they will vote for Leadsome…but her lack of experience, general flakiness and no secret that Labour members fear May much more….could sway people to May.
The clumsy (at best) or vicious (at worst) comments about childlessness could be a very bad mistake.
May is a capable politician who is a REMAINER.
Leadsom is a pretty average MP who is a LEAVER.
Who is better placed to negotiate BREXIT from Europe?
Tories can be pragmatic. It looks like May.

But the fact is that the entire issue of having or not having children should be irrelevant. Thats what the REMAINERS are saying….now.
Yet two weeks ago REMAINERS were getting hysterical about people like me (one wife, two sons, two Daughters-in-Law and three (so far) grandchildren….that I was a disgrace because I voted LEAVE without thinking about the children.
Hypocrisy from REMAINERS?

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#We Are The 56

Posted on July 6, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

As I actually voted to LEAVE (EU Referendum) I cannot claim any membership of this “hashtag”. The percentage of voters in Norn Iron who voted REMAIN is 56 per cent.
I was at a SDLP organised meeting at the Wellington Park Hotel on Monday night. Unfortunately I had to leave early and so I cannot really present a report on “Brexit…what next?”

Suffice to say that SDLP did lead the REMAIN side in Norn Iron. Sinn Féin did not bother to register an interest to be part of the campaign. They have been historically opposed to “Europe” and decidedly lukewarm during the campaign itself. Clearly they could not motivate their troops.
I do not entirely go along with the narrative that nationalists have re-engaged with the political process. Nor do I entirely go along that this result is some kinda epiphany for moderate unionists in Norn Iron.
The REMAIN vote in (say) Derry would certainly be something of which SDLP can be proud….contrast that with the low turn out in SF-dominated West Belfast.
I was in eleven polling stations in West Belfast on the day of the Assembly Election. Sinn Féin “activists” were all over the constituency. In contrast I was at seven West Belfast polling stations on Referendum Day and hardly a soul around.

So credit to SDLP for leading that campaign. And credit that the campaign was won.
No doubt the Party feels very energised. Success has been thin on the ground for SDLP in recent years. A lot of people …Alasdair McDonnell, Mark Durkan, Claire Hanna, Colum Eastwood have a spring in their step.
Obviously they would all have preferred if “UK” had voted REMAIN.
For once I called things right. Few, if any in SDLP will admit to supporting the historical truth that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”. It is no longer politically correct to utter such a phrase.
But what can I say?
I am delighted at a LEAVE vote in England…and a REMAIN vote in Norn Iron and of course Scotland.

Even if it is no longer acceptable to say “Englands difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”, it might be possible to say that “when Life gives you lemons, make lemonade”.

So while my SDLP colleagues continue the campaign, they might at least consider there is some merit in that thought.

“Events dear boy….Events ” (Harold McMillan allegedly) but the only way the current dynamic in Norn Iron can be changed is thru an “event”.  Maybe the thing that is the difference between Politics and History is “Events”. Thus the great event of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998  set a course. It has not worked out well for nationalism in general and SDLP in particular.

DUP and Sinn Féin are joined at the hip…benefitting from institutionalised sectarianism …a one party state …a coalition where SF is a very junior partner. And as the most recent Assembly Election has shown, nationalists have lost faith.

Nationalism needs a new event. Such as Brexit. And SDLP needs a new event. Such as Brexit.

SDLP has looked relevant in the last two weeks. More relevant than at any time in the last ten years. The Party is on the right side of History and led a coalition outside the narrow Party structure.

The SDLP mobilised its allies in the Irish political world. Calling for a joint “Irish” approach , before Sinn Féin jumped on the bandwagon. Mobilising European social democratic contacts while SF could only make shrill noises about the fate of Norn Iron being in the hands of English Tories….but didnt SF hand over “welfare” to Westminster.

Sinn Féin looks to be caught on the hop.

But SDLPs nominal allies at Westminster …the British Labour Party is imploding. It has already lost Scotland and the north of England will follow unless Labour gets its act together. The most effective Opposition Party in Westminster is the Scottish Nationalists….Alex Attwood reminds us constantly….so no coincidence that Stephen Gethins MP (SNP) was the big name at todays SDLP event at the MAC in Belfast.

SNP has the numbers (54 MPs at Westminster) and SDLP (3 MPs at Westminster) certainly need them onside. On the other hand Scotland (a region of the “UK”) needs Ireland (a member of the EU) as an ally. And SDLP is the bridge. There is a natural coalition.

The British Labour Party  are extremely unreliable allies and while some “progressives” will see a need for SDLP to maintain links to fellow socialists….Labour, whether on Welfare, Foreign Policy is not nearly as “socialist” as SNP.

Mark Durkan gets it right…again.

image

As I have said before SDLP and SNP are natural allies. And few SDLP people (post-Sunningdale or post Good Friday Agreement) have any respect for British Labour….Whether Merlyn Rees, Roy Mason, Peter Mandelson, Peter Hain…..what exactly do SDLP owe Labour. They have stabbed SDLP in the back in two centuries.

Watching those apologists for Tony B Liar today….the retired courtiers like Falconer, Straw, Campbell, ….do you trust them? Do you trust Angela Eagle, Yvette Cooper, Jess Phillips, Liz Kendall, Stephen Kinnock?

The big thing about Brexit is that it produces a re-allignment in Politics. This is an opportunity.

The only concern that I have is that SDLP have sat around wanting an “event”…. wanting something to happen …that they might not actually reacognise it when it happens.

 

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Felix Longoria

Posted on July 6, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

I was watching a drama-documentary on President Lyndon B Johnson on Sky-Atlantic last night. Called “All The Way”. It starred Bryan Cranston in the title role.
I was 11 years old and already interested in politics when LBJ became President of the United States after President John F Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.
After the charismatic Kennedy, LBJ would always seem disappointing.
More so, as I got more interested in politics, the Johnson years would be depressing. The Summer of Love (1967), the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Vietnam and Race Riots are the legacy.
Yet that in retrospect is unfair on Johnson’s first term which was marked by the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
I dont think LBJ gets enough credit.
An “accidental President”, he was a southerner (from Texas) but outside the “Deep South” where segregation was rampant. While Kennedy was in favour of Civil Rights, I dont know if a Massachusetts liberal could really have delivered it. Of course Kennedy’s death did provide some sympathy and goodwill to his successor but it was Johnson who had to negotiate Civil Rights legislation thru Congress in the face of the good ole boys in the Dixiecrat wing of the Democrat Party.
He succeeded.
Yet LBJ…the folksy occasionally profane cowboy is constantly in the shadow of Kennedy.

Three years ago, I went to Texas…a city called San Marcos about half way between Austin and San Antonio. It is a “college town”, home of Texas State University and alma mater of Lyndon Johnson.
It is an unusual part of Texas…hill country, a liberal oasis in a conservative State, it was actually had some Union sympathies during the American Civil War.
I went there, knowing little about LBJ beyond what I had seen on TV screens in the 1960s.

But in San Marcos, there is a Johnson Boulevard and a small museum…and a statue in the grounds of TSU.
image

But there was always a doubt in my mind about LBJ. Just how sincere was he about Civil Rights. The museum tells the story of Felix Longoria…a young man from Texas killed in the Pacific in World War Two. His repariated body could only be buried in a “Mexican” cemetry in his home town. It came as a shock to me to realise just how much anti-hispanic prejudice was officially tolerated in Texas in the late 1940s. LBJ, then a US Senator was instumental in having Felix Longoria buried in the Arlington Military Cemetry.
I think this speaks volumes for President Johnson having the right instincts.

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“Mock The Week” Or “Mock The Weak”?

Posted on July 5, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

American readers will be unfamiliar with the BBC panel show “Mock The Week”. It is a faux quiz chaired by Irish comedian, Dara O’Briain with two teams of three comedians who comment on the main news items of the week.
Comedy is a serious business.
A healthy Democracy needs a safety valve. Comedians have a licence to lampoon governments. Indeed lampooning governments pre-dates Democracy and a wise King would have known that tolerating humourous dissent was a good thing.
I like Comedy. I like Words.
Back in the 1950s/1960s comedians were effectively “establishment” BBC figures….Ted Ray, Arthur Askey, etc…essentially relics from the variety circuit, pre WW2 end of the pier shows and of course (BBC) Radio. Beneath the cheek was deference. The Second World War ushered in a new breed…the Goons, Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper and the rest who replaced the “Old Guard”. But still “establishment”.
The permissive years at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s saw people search for a moral compass…and a nastier breed of comedian, Jim Davidson, Mike Reid, Bernard Manning was unleashed. By todays standards they are rightly deemed sexist, racist and homophobic.
Somehow within a decade, we DID find a moral compass and such acts were swept aside in a wave of political correctness.
But the revolutionaries of the early 1980s….Alexei Sayle, Adrian Edmondson, French and Saunders, Lenny Henry, Stephen Fry are now old people.
But there has been a steady stream of comedians …a conveyor belt…some are now in their 40s, some in their 30s, some in their 20s. …it just keeps rolling. But rather like Ted Ray and Arthur Askey were establishment figures in the 1960s, increasingly Stephen Fry and Lenny Henry (ooops “Sir” Lenny Henry) look like establishment figures in 2016.
Alternative Comedy claims direct descent from The Goons, via Beyond the Fringe, via Monty Python, via the Young Ones to wherever we are today. Nobody claims descent from the discredited years of the early 1970s.
Yet maybe the political correctness which was established in the 1980s is under attack from a new breed who actually are more vicious than Bernard Manning ever was.
Political Correctness…one of the great achievements in my lifetime is now itself under attack. The very phrase is a form of abuse and not just on the Fux News Channel.

It used to be the role of the Media to speak Truth to Power…to hold the politicians to account. But then the Media became more powerful than the politicians and despite Leveson, nobody seems capable of holding the Media to account. Indeed the Media would claim that nobody has a right to hold them account.

The role of holding Politics and Media to account seems to have fallen to Comedy. But what happens when the Comedians are too powerful. Who holds them to account?

Twenty-five years ago, Comedy was hailed as the new Rock and Roll. Ah…I remember Rock and Roll. Or at least the 1960s version. To be honest, it was pretty good. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons….and later Credence Clearwater Revival and the Eagles.

But to be even more honest, what came after the “golden years” wasnt that great. The Rubettes, the Glitter Band, Showaddywaddy…..need I say more?

Same with Comedy. There is actually too much Comedy on TV and new faces are on screen every year…all working their way up  thru “8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown”, “Have I Got News For You”, “Mock the Week” to the cerebral credibility of a guest spot on “QI”. Actually it is all careerist…university, open mic, Edinburgh Festival, the comedy clubs, headhunted for TV, some TV spots, more TV, even more TV, adverts for credit cards and a sit-com and presenting a documentary on endangered wild life….and the Great British Bake Off.

There are just too many comedians. How else can Roisin Conaty, Josh Widdicombe and that Australian guy be explained?

But have Comedians just got too powerful. I watched “Mock the Week” last night….in the week that the news was dominated by the EU Referendum and the fall-out. By any standards a rich seam of Comedy to be mined.

Not surprisingly Dara O’Briain teased the panelists and audience by waving his Irish passport. Yet the programme left me cold.

In a rare example of me calling things exactly right, I blogged here before the Referendum that the campaign was being waged by the “Sophisticated” (REMAIN) and the “UnSophisticated” (LEAVE).

The “Sophisticated” include the Bankers, the Young, the Graduates, the Academics, the Metropolitans…..and Britain’s Comedians.

The fact that the Referendum result was 52-48 in favour of LEAVE (and a wider margin within England) should not be overlooked. The “Mock the Week” audience did not reflect this. Nor did the panel.

Forget all the divisions that the Referendum exposed….national, regional, age, education….the key one is CLASS. Dress it up any way you like and its still CLASS. The working class up north voted LEAVE and they wont easily be forgiven by the Sophiticated class that knows better.

I am ….as you  know ….a pretty damned sophisticated person. And yet I offended my sophisticated friends by actually voting LEAVE.

Yet I am still offended by the notion that nearly all public discourse following the Referendum result is dominated by the patronising notion that those who voted LEAVE were the victims of lies….or we are just stupid or racist…..or have sabotaged the future of young people.

“Mock the Week” panelists  followed that lazy narrative, supported by an audience that would cheerfully have lynched a senior citizen from Sunderland if he had wandered into the room.

Much as I like “Mock The Week” …I prefer it when it is mocking somebody who is not me.

There is of course one very nasty aspect to the fall-out from the Referendum…Racism on the LEAVE side.
But I would go further and say that there is a nasty aspect to the REMAIN side,a sense of Superiority. They simply (in their own view) have a higher IQ than those who voted LEAVE. It is not an edifying spectacle.
And it is counter-productive.
Does it matter?
Yes it does…because this is not unique to England.
John Oliver does much the same in USA…he is a former panelist on “Mock The Week”. His pro-EU rant is very unpleasant.
And on Facebook we see clips of shows from Noah Somebody and Samantha Somebody-Else. They are funny and more importantly rarely wrong.
Yes they are part of the liberal elite but targetting the Republican Party, Donald Trump, National Rifle Association, Bill O’Reilly and that Westboro Church is entirely legitimate…but targeting the less articulate, less educated in American society is a bit elitist.

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Born On 10th May

Posted on July 5, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

Is it really a coincidence that John Willes Booth (who assassinated President Lincoln) and James Earl Ray (who assassinated Martin Luther King) were both born on 10th May.

People born on 10th May are probably on some kinda “watch list”. This would include me…..and Bono. But one of us is completely harmless.

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From “Coronation Street” To “Brexit”

Posted on July 5, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

Did you know there has never been a black (West Indian or West African) family in Coronation Street?
Thats a bit odd …after all Corrie is set in fictional Weatherfield (real life Salford)…although a Salford street with Ken Barlow, Emily Bishop and Norris Cole seems unlikey.
You might think “what about Dev and his family?”. But Dev is of course an Asian and very westernised shopkeeper. Or you might be thinking of one of the stitchers in the “knicker factory” but she was a single person. Her family did not live in Corrie.

The producers did actually think about introducing a black family in the early 1970s but turned it down on the basis that the “Ogdens” would be racist. The Ogdens (Stan and Hilda) succeeded the Tanners as the most stereotypical working class family in the street.
Corrie re-cycles characters. The Ogden family were replaced by the Battersbys who were the most unruly family in the street until tamed. Then the Battersby family gave way to the Windass family.
In the same way gossipy old timer Albert Tatlock was re-written as Percy Sugden who was re-written as Norris Cole.
Thus Corrie is kept in a time capsule. Little to do with 21st century north of England. All that is missing is a cheery song from Gracie Fields and George Formby’s little stick of Blackpool rock.
Salford as seen thru the prism of nostalgia for a north of England that has been dead for half a century and thru the patronising eyes of Granada TV producers.
Yet that anecdote about why there are no black families in Corrie worries me. The patronising and insulting version is that the the working class up north are racist.

The three big English “soaps” are Coronation Street (set in Salford), Eastenders (set in east end of London) and Emmerdale (set in rural Yorkshire).
Real life drama?
Hardly…for real life is rarely mentioned.
A few years ago, “Eastenders” did feature some cast members mention a General Election and even a World Cup. The set on Albert Square was suitably dressed with election posters but even gritty drama (?) like Eastenders steers clear of anything that looks like real life.
For nearly a month, my wife and I amused ourselves during Corrie, Eastenders and Emmerdale by trying to guess how the characters would vote in the EU Referendum.

Is it important that “soaps” (ie a form of entertainment) feature Politics?
Insofar as the “soaps” have any pretence about real people with real problems, then I think it is important.
Take Carla Lane who seized the moment in the 1960s by writing “The Liver Birds”. Back then, the North of England was cool. But Carla Lane de-camped to London and wrote the less gritty “Butterflies”. Her other big series “Bread” was set in Liverpool but the Scousers did not like that series…a parody on them rather than an accurate presentation.
But of course the London critics loved it.
It was how the metropolitans saw the “north”…workshy, welfare-scroungers.
Of course London does not know the North of England.
The British Labour Party sent Tony B Liar north to Sedgefield, David Milliband to South Shields, Peter Mandelson to Hartlepool, Ed Miliband to Doncaster, Hillary Benn to Leeds and Yvette Cooper to Castleford.
The disconnect between Labour and the “north” is pathetic.
For all London knows is “that it is grim up north” ….from the 1950s, “This Sporting Life”, “A Taste of Honey”, “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” and “Billy Liar” have presented an image of the north . It was not a sanitised version.
But “Coronation Street” has consistently presented a sanitised version of the “north” and it has misled London.
Caroline Ahearne, who died at the weekend presented a more accurate version of a forgotten and marginalised demographic…funny but never really cosy in “The Royle Family”.
But London never really got it.
The “north” voted for Brexit.
Not all the “north” of course. The great metropolitan areas voted to REMAIN. But a lot of people in left-behind towns and villages voted to LEAVE.
It surprised London and the TV News sent reporters north to interview people who had dared to vote for something that London did not believe in their interest.
I dont suppose we can say how “Weatherfield” voted….but we do know how Blackburn, Burnley, Oldham, St Helens etc voted.
What would Jim Royle have said to a BBC reporter who asked him how he voted. “Europe….my arse!” obviously.

The real disconnect is not just within the Disunited Kingdom.
England itself is broken.
Can it be fixed.?

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Boycott “The Sons Of Liberty”

Posted on July 3, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

It is not much fun watching a movie with me. I tend to point out that in John Wayne’s version of “The Alamo”, the final assault by the Mexicans took place at night. And I might freeze-frame “Glory” to point out that the attack by Shaw’s Massachusetts regiment was from south to north along the beach.
So not a lot of fun for my family to sit down and watch a two hour movie, when it is possible for me to turn it into three hours, by pointing out some errors.
Let me be clear. This is NOT “nitpicking”. It is only “nitpicking” when other people do it.
Now I fully understand that movies are actually drama, not history…and for dramatic purposes it is necessary to make a few alterations to History. It does not affect the overall “historic drama” as in “Michael Collins” and “Braveheart”.

But last night, I was watching a mini-series called “Sons of Liberty”, set in Boston, in the years ahead of the American Revolution. It was obviously low-budget but a surprisingly unpatriotic version of (for example) John Hancock. The extent to which Hancock was a “smuggler” rather than a legitimate businessman who sympathised with American rebels is a surprising “warts and all” narrative. The popular version of “no taxation without representation” is principled but a version that suggests corruption between Boston merchants (who would turn patriots) and the British colonial administration is not so principled.
Despite the obvious low budget, the first episode was highly watchable until…the colonists decided to organise a “boycott”…did I hear that right? Yes twice they mention the word “boycott”.
Now this fictional use of the word is more than a century BEFORE the word was historically first used.
For the record, “boycott” was actually Captain Charles Boycott, land agent to “Lord” Erne. The proposed eviction of eleven tenants near Lough Mask in County Mayo during the Land League hositilities led to an organised withdrawal of labour, services, social contact …the word was “coined”.
Is there a point where watching a movie thru the eyes of a history nerd (too anxious to press the “pause” button to show an inaccuracy) stops being irritating and is actually important.
As in “Sons of Liberty”?
For me, the “boycott” thing was so obvious that it should have been noticed during the pre-production. It was sloppy. I really dont know much about the American Revolution. I just about know about Hancock, Sam Adams, John Adams, “the British are Coming”, Paul Revere’s Ride, Valley Forge, Ben Franklin….the basics. So when such an obvious mistake is made (about something that I DO know) then I am entitled to wonder about what I am being told about stuff I dont know.
The mini-series “Sons of Liberty” is being shown on (ironically) The History Channel.
I will …boycott it.

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The Somme 1916-2016

Posted on July 1, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

I dont like military ceremony. More so…I dont like “Remembrance”, the way Officialdom takes over and uses “Memory”.

“Remembrance” is always a means of using suffering to create an agenda.

So I dont like my TV set being taken over by people….the great and the good….solemnly proclaiming about the “going down of the Sun”. Yet today, one of the centre-pieces of the Decade of Centenaries takes place…the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

It would be churlish of me not to recognise it, even if it means stepping outside my nationalist and republican comfort zone for the length of time it takes to compose this. I was actually impressed by the way football supporters from Ireland and Norn Iron “got along” over the past three weeks. The way it should be rather than some faux organised “letsgetalongerism”.

We DO have to face our History. It is right and proper that First Minister, Arlene Foster attend the ceremonies. The Somme has always been a big thing for unionists. As a nationalist and republican, it has never meant much to me. Traditionally nationalists are excluded from AND exclude ourselves from ceremonials that mean more to unionists.

It is right and proper that an tUachtarán na hÉireann should be at the Somme today. A lot of Irish nationalists died there too. Right and proper that they should be written back into the Irish story. But we must make the distinction that their bravery, their sacrifice and their service to a British cause has nothing to do with the “ethos” of the Irish Nation. Let us accept the History without re-writing it.

There should be recognition without an agenda. I reserve the right to be skeptical of the northern nationalists who had angst about commemorating the Easter Rising because of the militarism and civilian casualties but will place themselves …today….in the first row of any ceremonial that will advance their career. And press the “send” button on the tweets they composed last night.

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“Existential”

Posted on July 1, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

This Blog is sometimes about recording stuff that I have noticed. For some peculiar reason, everyone seems to be using the word “existential”. From European Referendum to European Football, everyone seems to have a contractual obligation to say “existential”.

I have heard it more in the last week than I have heard it in the previous sixty four years. I have no idea why.

So …..er….this is an existential blog.

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Labour Pains

Posted on June 29, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

Makes you sick, doesnt it?

The Tories are in a mess and on cue the British Labour Party get into a bigger mess. To some extent it is irrelevant that only 40 MPs back the Leader Jeremy Corbyn and 172 are against him. Nor does it really matter that Corbyn might have the vast majority of rank-and-file Labour Party members behind him.

The real point is that the Party is hopelessly divided. I cant say that I am overly concerned about the national interest of Britain but it is self-evident that a viable Opppsition is vital for the health of a Democracy.

Certainly there is something self-indulgent about traditional London-based socialists like Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone, Diane Abbot and John McDonnell.

And certainly there is something rotten about North London socialists who represent seats way beyond their normal Islington base…Hillary Benn (Leeds), Ed Milliband (Doncaster), Yvette Cooper (Castleford), Ben Bradshaw (Exeter), Tristram Hunt (Stoke). It is a dishonourable tradition that follows Tony B Liar (Sedgefield), David Miliband (South Shields) and Peter Mandelson (Hartlepool).

Is it any wonder that the parliamentary Labour Party is so disconnected from Labour voters.

This coup…it is a coup ….is Blairite inspired. The most constant fixture in the tented media village at Westminster is Alastair Campbell (Blair’s spin doctor). If you dont see him being interviewed on SKY News, just look past the interviewee and you will see Campbell being lined up by BBC News or chased by ITN News.

Not entirely a coincidence that the Chilcott Report is published next week. It will vilify Tony B Liar, over the war in Iraq. Entirely fitting that Jeremy Corbyn leads Labour’s response in the House of Commons. It is important that a Labour leader puts the boot into Blair…and puts the boot in hard.

Angela Eagle ….an alleged feminist….voted for the Iraq War. The Blairites are getting their retaliation in first.

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