You can see me speaking 24 minutes in here. Can’t work out how to embed this one. It was literally freezing and the very small crowd was understandable. I think four hour rallies outdoors in Scotland in midwinter are somewhat optimistic. I think we also need to face that the high excitement of the referendum campaign, where you could just put something out on Facebook and 10,000 people would show up, is behind us. What we have now is a period of hard graft towards the general election.
I think what I say in this short speech will give comfort to those in the SNP who blocked me as a candidate, because as usual I am joyfully off message. Shortly after me there is an amazing speech from Tommy Sheridan; his physical voice projection alone is astonishing! It was bouncing back off Salisbury Crags and Holyrood Palace.
This really is under 100 yards from where we live. That view of Salisbury Crags is what I see every time I look out the window. The balcony will be great once it gets a bit warmer.
“Gawd. Searching “dead pacific” immediately drags you into the world of gw propaganda. Capitalised “debunked” abound. I can’t be arsed to trawl through it, it won’t change my behaviour. Am interested to read any good quality (i.e. science based) links provided though.”
The archetypical glib reply of a City dweller who is desperately looking for a hole to stick his head in.
Wherever there are oceanic giro’s, rotating vortexes, you will find the detritus of modernity floating about, millions of tons of plastics. These differing plastics deteriorate, encouraged by UV radiation from the sun and from the salinity of the water. It is a fact that these plastics are now beginning to show in the food/fish chain, one of the most important and once healthiest option of protein.
If you find wikipedia’s use of the word ‘garbage patch’, somewhat emotive, then I apologise for having stopped you looking for a hole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
“I myself, are compelled to recognize the extermination camp as the ultimate capitalist factory, where the workers were murdered when no longer useful. ”
A good contender for loony left comment of the century.
It was not the loony left who pressed for concentration camp labour, anon, it was the deluded right wing industrialist who backed and carried out the NAZI’s tremendous industrial mobilisation for war, who took their money, the Krupps, Thyssens, Bayer’s of this world who thought of this as a kick back for their support of the fascists.
Dare I mention our multinational Swiss nazi sympathisers Nestle here who supported the NSDAP with some 33.000 Reichsmark, then a tidy sum.
Anon, your historic re writing of reality is misplaced here, try Bebo or FB with your fantasies, but be careful, the children in Britain know nothing better than this period of the 20th century, you might get rumbled there as well.
Habbabkuk
I should imagine the teaching union rep believes that giving the children the tools to get on in life would promote “elitism” and ‘inequality” in society and therefore the teaching should be dragged down to the level of the lowest performing child in the class. S/he might also be worried that a self-reliant child would be unlikely to vote Labour in the future.
‘camp’ -Obi-Wan is singular – pay attention!
Anon said, ‘given recent events in Ukraine’ I cannot judge liability until the true facts are known Anon – explain yourself.
So the ultimate aim of business is to herd people into camps, gas those who can’t work and work to death those who can. Right. I know the night shift at Tesco is bad, but that bad Ingo?
Nevermind – I agree – well said. Yes this rewriting of history reminds me of Katrina and the levee breaking. Thankfully as you say, next generations have the knowledge and tools to seek out truth.
“Can you – or anyone else – give more info on what is meant by “rents covered costs”?”
My comment was simple, short and fairly unambiguous. Rent covered costs. i.e. Rent paid for the building and maintenance.
That’s only half true in respect of the past Phil. Council rents pre Thatcher (the period Habba was asking about) did cover the building costs, which were very low as council house building was financed by low cost loans from the Public Works Loan Board, which the rents repaid. However repairs and maintenance costs were (from around the mid 60s to mid 80s) nearly always subsidised from other sources, usually the Council’s ‘General Fund’. The 1985 Housing Act separated out the ‘Housing Revenue Account’ from the ‘General Fund’ and disallowed cross subsidisation of the former by the latter. Rents rose as a consequence and expensive DLO repair teams (common in most Labour councils with a large housing stock) were subsequently gradually disbanded. Both of these consequences of the Act were intended.
By the time Gordon Brown was PM however council rents had risen to such an extent that (in the case of most non inner city housing authorities) the Exchequer over which he had presided was actually creaming off surpluses from the HRAs of these councils. Also, by the early years of this century both NuLabour and the Tories favoured the transfer of the remaining council housing stock to other ‘registered social landlords’- hence the founding (by Old Labour MP Austin Mitchell) of the ‘Defend Council Housing’ campaign. Mitchell is still a member of the campaign’s national committee-
http://defendcouncilhousing.org.uk/dch/dch_about.cfm
Mark,
Can you find anything confirming that Putin was not invited? It is peculiar omission I agree. But I don’t know if he was invited or not.
Latest from the Welfare Party:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11383152/Gordon-Brown-to-promise-Scots-higher-pensions-and-benefits.html
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to unveil a major Labour election pledge allowing Scotland to top up UK-wide state benefits and create new benefits not available to people south of the Border.
It’s going to be tough for the Scots to resist a fresh round of free money. I’d start to worry about a Labour resurgence..
Just as I thought, ‘events in Ukraine’ are so obfuscated even with OSCE monitoring much frantic googling only returns a clutter of conflicting views.
Mark Golding
“Explain yourself”
Putin invaded Ukraine in a manner not too disimilar to some of the Nazi invasions of WW2. No invite.
Craig – The Interfax news agency quoted Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Tuesday that Putin hasn’t received an invitation and therefore will not attend the event later this month.
Thanks.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/01/13/uk-auschwitz-anniversary-putin-idUKKBN0KM0QJ20150113
Oh, I think Ingo has a point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp_Trial
It all started with a rightwing elitist party masquerading as a populist one, appealing to the notion of racial superiority, didn’t it?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukip-says-babies-born-to-immigrants-in-the-uk-should-be-classed-as-migrants–which-would-include-nigel-farages-own-children-9884841.html
And then it sorta got out of hand. With the active support of business.
First they went on zero-hours contracts. And then…
That is a good example of ‘clutter’ Anon and only reinforces minority ‘terrorist’ views of the British and American geo-political think-tanks.
‘Immigrants are not the problem. The powers that be promote this idea to divert our gaze from the real problem.’
Really Phil ?The ‘powers that be’, be they the leaders of the main political parties, the Beeb, the Financial Times, or the CBI, are always claiming that the consequences of immigration are primarily beneficial. If there is one, the consensus within such elite groups is that the opponents of further immigration (such as UKIP) are the problem, and not ‘immigrants’.
Nevermind
Trawling through mountians of propaganda searching for an existential threat that I doubt is not something I fancied doing. Your wikipedia link to the very well known ocean dumps was not really relevant.
I’m going to guess this is what got you going:
“it won’t change my behaviour”
Actually that’s because I know where I stand and what action I am taking. I don’t want to get into some less-carbonier-than-thou knob waving contest but trust me my footprint is low. More from finance than guilt I must admit but it is friggin low. Even if it was not so low you can stick your moralising up your arse. Middle class bullshit most often said by people who think their recycling bin is enough to save the planet. Political reform is all that can save the planet.
My comment was not glib. Nor am I looking for a hole to stick my head in. You were right about me living in a city though.
Putin invaded Ukraine in a manner not too disimilar to some of the Nazi invasions of WW2.
Anon- is that an allusion to the fact that the Panzer divisions that invaded in 1941 were welcomed by the mass of the people in Western Ukraine, sometimes even with garlands of flowers ?
In other respects there is little comparison between a massive invasion by armoured divisions (such as occurred in 1941) and covert support for insurgent groups in the Donbass (such as Putin is alleged to be providing now).
By ‘mass of the people’ in the comment above I am of course referring to the region’s gentile populations. The Jews of western Ukraine most certainly did not approve.
OldMark
I’m working will reply later.
Komodo
“The party highlighted a report issued today by the right-wing thinktank MigrationWatch UK, which said immigration’s impact on population growth had been underestimated by more than 1.3 million because babies of those coming to this country were not taken into account.
Neither MigrationWatch nor Ukip suggested that the citizenship of those born in Britain was in question.”
Sounds reasonable to me. And it fits in nicely with what we were saying earlier about immigration and housing. You have to factor in the children of immigrants to get a true picture of the impact immigration has.
Don’t know what you’re blathering on about “racial superiority” for. Sounds like another attempt at a smear. You really have a bee in your bonnet about UKIP don’t you?
Komodo
From your link:
“The party highlighted a report issued today by the right-wing thinktank MigrationWatch UK, which said immigration’s impact on population growth had been underestimated by more than 1.3 million because babies of those coming to this country were not taken into account.
Neither MigrationWatch nor Ukip suggested that the citizenship of those born in Britain was in question.”
Sounds reasonable to me. And it fits in nicely with what we were saying earlier about immigration and housing. You have to factor in the children of immigrants to get a true picture of the impact of immigration.
Don’t know what your blathering on about “racial superiority” for. Sounds like another attempt at a smear. Must try harder.
Sorry, thought my first comment had been eaten up.
“Sources told Reuters on Monday that Poland deliberately issued foreign governments with a less formal announcement of the event to avoid the controversy that might surround extending a formal diplomatic invitation to Mr Putin”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11342981/Vladimir-Putin-to-miss-Holocaust-memorial-ceremony-at-Auschwitz.html
Yet;
“The Polish prime minister personally invited Ukraine’s president to attend the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Monday, despite Polish authorities denying they send traditional personal invitations at the highest level”
http://rt.com/news/224399-ukraine-poland-invitation-auschwitz/
So making a mockery of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum’s announcement that “the upcoming anniversary would be devoid of politics, concentrating instead on the memories of survivors”, and even worse, insulting the very victims that they were supposed to be remembering.
Suggested smears for Komodo:
☆Nigel Farage is Hitler’s secret lovechild.
☆Nigel Farage’s favourite hobby is putting kittens in the microwave.
☆UKIP members hold secret meetings in which they plan the Fourth Reich.
Can we get back on to the threads issue?
Tsiprias set the cat amongst the pigeons when he talked to russia about financing some days ago, but today, he’s smoothing relations with the EU echelons.
Greece is in a protracted position, it has not got much time before it runs out of money. Obama has offered help, but with strings attached. The little issue of 472 million Reichsmark, a ‘credit’ (SS steal) by Greece to Germany in 1942, was never paid back. It is now worth approx.8.5-11 billion dollars, a breathing space to negotiate, something Mrs. Merkel could use as a get out from her staunchly CDU/CS policies and colleagues.
At the heart of this problem, Europe wide, lies tax evasion and avoidance, tax havens such as Lichtenstein, Jersey, Switzerland, etc. the fact that money that has bypassed exchequers is sitting in limbo, dead money, whilst the individuals concerned who have profited for decades, are laughing at us from the sidelines.
This has to stop, because if Greek deposits in offshore havens would be confiscated to the tune of 80%, leaving all with a tidy sum to live on, this crisis would disapear.
At the same time we have to get to grips with the international accountants and global tax evaders such as Goldmann sachs, those who think their work so important that they can’t be blamed for the Greek malaise, but they can. Any demands by Goldmann sachs should be weighed against their initial advise for Greece to join, they must take some responsibilities for that wrong decision, they knew of the tax evasion that was going on and is going on, not just in Greece.
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/griechische-reparationsforderungen-wie-die-nazis-europa-pluenderten-a-1016178.html
Greece will soon face another election I fear, their team had not much of a plan, but are stumbling along a rocky path.
Osborne has failed to create legislation that regulates those havens still under British jurisdiction, he has failed to stop banks, we the taxpayers bailed out, having accounts there, outrageous. Osbornes is responsible for the movement of QE cash directly from banks into their offshore accounts. All he ever does is talk about what he might do, and tinker with sticky plasters, a coward who needs punishing, I hope he losses his seat, just as I hope Clegg and Lamb will loose theirs.
It’s going to be tough for the Scots to resist…
seeing this for the cheap trick it is. The scenario?
1. Labour miraculously hands over powers after Superman becomes leader.
2. Holyrood cannot excercise powers to reduce anything as there is still no money
3. SNP majority gets blame
4. Bingo! Labour looks credible again, as it still hasn’t called itself The Conservative Party.
Much further down the line:
5. Labour Holyrood, in pocket of big business AND corrupt councils, makes such a complete fuckup of running Scotland that public opinion returns to question of independence, big time. And there we go again.
And I bet 100 quid to MAP the Scotch bottle it again.
Nevermind
I agree about the financial pressures lining up to undermine Syriza. And of course relentless propaganda. If these aren’t succeeding (although they probably will) ultimately we may see a coup. Perhaps money pours in financing right wing groups to cuase havoc on the streets and the military encouraged to take over. Only temporarily and to restore order of course.
Their only hope is hanging on long enough as other European nations follow their lead. Spain, Italy, Ireland. France maybe. Even Germany. And yes maybe even here. Sweet dreams.
Whatever happens it is clear to me the only just solution to the rule of finance will need to be international. Nation states are a tool of oppression! No borders! Up the workers! And all that.
Leaves to say that it should be CDU/CSU.
The EU, as designed by the Club of Rome and its various treaties will fail if we do not get the issue of tax havens and avoidance schemes reformed, just as the CAP, TTIP, the unelected Commission and the powers of banks.
But if you want change that is democratically led and is hitting the right nerves, look no further than Molly Scott cato, here is one determined woman who has ideas, is looking for others to support her and who knows how to hit the soft underbellies that have grown fat on our disinterest in all things Europe.
enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWvLKAbKkG0
PS: a very good reason to vote green is social justice, the bits Bliar exchanged forever from the Labour Party, for champagne, when he removed clause 4.