Every single accusation against the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, I witnessed being done by Lord Patel’s enforcers on behalf of Labour in Blackburn. My thoughts are today with those, particularly women and young people, in the Islamic community there who are now under terrible pressure. They are obliged to show their completed postal ballots before sealing to community elders, often themselves Labour councillors. They are not allowed to vote other than by post. The heads of household who have to enforce discipline on their families are themselves sometimes not happy, but tied in to mostly Gujerati tribal structures of subservience. That this still happens in the United Kingdom in 2015 is disgusting. What is worse is that it happens with the knowing connivance of Labour Party officials and of Blackburn Council.
Remind me again. What precisely qualified Patel to become a member of the House of Lords?
and no surprise. In the Independent tomorrow as shown on Sky News paper review just now. Dismissed as a non-story!! by ex Express editor, Eve Pollard, Claudia Winkleman’s mother. All that family privately insured no doubt. No worries about the premiums.
General Election 2015: Tory election chief Lynton Crosby’s firm planned to expand role of private healthcare in the UK
The Independent – 2 hours ago
A firm run by the Tories’ election chief, Lynton Crosby, devised a plan to lobby David …
Link not working properly. It goes to Sunday’s edition.
Mary, don’t worry, the revolution is coming, and many of these vermin will get what’s coming to them.
“I realised as soon as the postal-vote-on-demand came in that this would be the overwhelmingly large proportion of its use. So did Tony Blair. The big big point is as you so clearly imply: there is NO SECRET BALLOT WITH A POSTAL VOTE and exactly the pressures the secret ballot was brought in to stop, from heads of families, employers, religious leaders, landlords etc. are still there.”
Why don’t we abolish it? If people want to go on holiday in the first two weeks of May in an election year that is up to them if they prefer a holiday to voting. Postal votes have been going for a long time. At least at the polling stations you are ticked off on a list of real constituents.
For God’s sake never allow electronic voting. That’s how George W. Bush was elected when he did not win.
Suhayl, good to see you here! Time for a cup of tea?
The nature of how much UKIP forms part of the British far Right is an interesting question, especially given the vacuum left by the implosion of the BNP. Certainly, UKIP as a political brand has rather been a one-man show, and I do wonder, if they were to win more than a trivial amount of power, whether they would know how to wield it at all.
I am conflicted as to how much Farage is himself racist. I don’t think he is a fascist in disguise, though there is something of the golf-club lout in him, which his background as a city trader seems to suit rather well. I was recently quite close to forming a view that he was not xenophobic himself, and was just turning a blind eye to how much of a vehicle UKIP has become to people of completely appalling views (the number of councillor resignations from Geoffrey Bloom types is rather high). However, his recent speech about “HIV victims” has rather given me pause, and I wonder whether he has just thus far been very clever about hiding a darker agenda. That speech was planned, and reportedly he discussed it with party officials beforehand, who wisely and strongly disagreed that such a topic should be used (he overruled them, which does not bode well for suspicions that UKIP is in fact “The Nigel Show”).
With all that in mind, Farage rather reminds me of Boris Johnson – both are very astute at presenting themselves as “men of the people” despite also coming from privileged and wealthy backgrounds. How much of their Thatcherite agendas they would themselves regard as helpful to “ordinary working people” is possibly one for psychologists as well as pundits.
Aside from the cultural impact of legitimating views that do tend towards racism, UKIP are seriously bad news for the NHS. Cameron is at least wise enough to know that excess profiteering in the health service does not win public favour, but put Nige in charge of it, and it’s really time to worry.
“Mary, don’t worry, the revolution is coming, and many of these vermin will get what’s coming to them.”
RobG, I wish you would not keep writing this kind of thing. If there was a revolution, and believe me lots of people in Russia today look back poignantly on the good old days of the USSR, I would hope the model would not be one of revenge. Yes, people who have created this Hell on earth should face some kind of penance. One of the things that surprised me at the Minsk protocol was that Putin emphasised that those guilty of war-crimes should not be prosecuted. I could not believe it. But I know why.
Huh. So complete agreement about that at the top of the major geostrategic powers, then.
If it swaggers like a Neocon, protects its henchmen like a Neocon, and has proxy wars like a Neocon, but points its forces in the opposite direction, what should we call it?
Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)
3 May, 2015 – 4:29 pm
“Indeed, Kempe. A welcome change from when I (recently) mentioned the gangs of Asian child-groomers, rapists, torturers and traffickers in certain English cities and was roundly abused by the likes of Mr Scorgie, Mary, RoS, etc for apparently supporting racism and Islamophobia.”
…………………………………………………………………………
“…roundly abused by the likes of Mr Scorgie…”
Another lie Habbabkuk?
If you can back-up your statement with references I will of course apologise for my laps of memory.
‘Are these imported electoral practises actually exported electoral practises from Victorian England come back to haunt us in the 21st century, I wonder?’
Gold plated piffle from Giyane there; as Craig correctly points out, those coerced by ‘these imported electoral practises’ are mainly women and young adults living at home and under the thumb of the paterfamilias. In ‘Victorian England’ neither women nor young adults had the vote, so shifting the blame for such electoral malpractices onto our Victorian ancestors is false attribution on stilts.
John G, whilst I respect and admire you greatly, don’t pish around with what’s happening in Scotland.
This is a seismic political event.
We are looking at 50 plus SNP MPs being elected to Westminster.
The SNP might even take all 59 seats in Scotland.
Who knows what’s going to happen? but the sure thing is that the 2015 election will change the dynamics of politics in the UK.
The left need to use this to their advantage.
And John, with regard to your distaste of ‘putting them up against a wall to be shot’ I have no hesitation.
They are all complete vermin.
It occurs to me that the security services have been and still are responsible for actively procuring vulnerable children to be sexually abused by those at the very top of the ruling class (MPs; Ministers; Civil Servants; Defence Staff; Senior Police Officers; Judges et al) in order to control those elites through blackmail.
It is not only sexual deviance that our spies are interested in but knowledge of any embarrassing detail of a person’s life, including illegal activity, gives them leverage and control over that person.
Agent provocateurs within the security services entice and entrap the powerful elites to take control of them; because of this our democracy is a mirage.
It doesn’t matter who forms a government; the security services call the shots.
If anyone steps out of line and the powers that be have no leverage; that person will have a fatal “accident” or commit “suicide”.
@Habbabkuk : “In that way, every one of them can claim they’re ignoring me and keep their virginity. But they’re all firmly up each others’ arses.”
I daresay. But you have invited me to discuss on quite a number of occasions, but whenever I do, the line appears to go dead at your end.
May I refer you to the most recent occasion, the discussion on O’Bomber’s drone strikes:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/dire-straits/comment-page-1/#comment-522805
Since we’re both clearly Enemies of the People, what have we to lose by having an open discussion about it?
OldMark
Don’t like my question to our historian of India? Try this:
I recently listened to a Maulana talking on Unity FM our Islamic radio station in the West Midlands. He recounted an incident when our prophet SAW and his companions were weak and persecuted and had come to an extremely disadvanteous agreement with the polytheistsa of Mecca which prevented them leaving a barren village to buy food, trade or emigrate.
The Maulana was delighted to tell us that the scholars derive evidence from this that you can in Islam stick to the absolute letter of an agreement rather than the generally understood meaning if you are being oppressed and starved to death.
But whoops! hang on, when I’m buying a second hand car from the brothers I’m offering to pay my hard-earned money on the basis of trust. I agreed with the one of them I was talking to that if there was anything wrong with the main components like the engine I could get my money back. There was a problem with the diesel pump and the car was jerking at speed. So the actual owner replied that he had made no such agreement with me.
A Muslim is not permitted to lie when making this sort of transaction. They seem to think that we, who supply free milk to their babies, schools and hospitals, universities, and laws to protect them from racism, are still in the category of persecutors and lieing to us is allowed.
Yes our government is persecuting Muslims abroad – fat lot we or they can do about it, so that doesn’t count. This problem of lieing in business occurs even when I am engaged at low price to re-wire the mosque. Even then it’s considered ok to blag the agreement out of the water after everything has been laboriously agreed.
Thanks Maulanas. Got any fatwas on voting in elections? I think you probably have. What’s wrong with the verses of the Qur’an which state that those who live amongst non-Muslims will be given double punishment for not practising the religion correctly, once for not practising it right and secondly for not showing other people a good example of our truth?
The dodgy voting practises are not imported from Islam, it is important to note.
Hey CM one(or more) potent post to clear the smoke and smash the mirrors before Thursday, pretty please!?
The organiser of the competition for the best cartoon of the prophet Mohammned and the exhibition of the entries in Garland, Texas is none other than Pamela Geller.
Agent provocateur.
Reminder –
Who Funded Breivik?
July 29, 2011
There is an extremely important article here on Breivik’s funding, by Justin Raimondo.
It also makes plain that not only did Pamela Geller post a string of virulent anti Norwegian-Muslim articles on her website, not only did she travel to Norway to address a hate rally, not only did Breivik post to her website and quote it as an influence. She actively supported and encouraged those planning to use terrorism.
/..
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/07/who-funded-breivik/
Two protesters have been shot dead in Garland.
Gunmen shot dead outside Dallas conference on Prophet cartoons
Link
Gunmen shot dead outside Dallas conference on Prophet cartoons
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32579396
From the BBC link
‘The BBC’s Alastair Leithead says the event was controversial and provocative.
It was organised by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which has campaigned against the building of an Islamic centre near the World Trade Center site in New York.
The AFDI is run by controversial blogger and activist Pamela Geller and is listed as an anti-Muslim group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group.
Speaking before Sunday’s event, Ms Geller told AP news agency that the aim of the contest was to make a stand for free speech.’
~~~
Wikipedia
‘SIOA was founded by and is led by Pamela Geller and author Robert Spencer.[11] It is also known as the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI).[12] It was founded in 2010 at the request of Anders Gravers Pedersen, the leader of Stop Islamisation of Europe, of which it is the American affiliate.[12]
SIOA has been described as being on the extreme right of the political spectrum.[13]’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Islamization_of_America
Thanks, people, much appreciated.
Resident Dissident, I can’t vote for your Labour party. It is one of the child-abuse parties.
“Putin emphasised that those guilty of war-crimes should not be prosecuted…”
Huh. So complete agreement about that at the top of the major geostrategic powers, then.
—————————————————-
He did say those guilty of war-crimes on both sides should not be prosecuted. I do not agree with him on this. The reason I guess is that it would just perpetuate the divide, which it would.
Glenn,
I have to concur (and apologies to Habbabkuk for talking about him in the third person). Habbabkuk is rather capable of conversation, and it happens occasionally, but usually prefers to dole out conservative talking-points (or insults) without actually wanting to listen respectfully to other people’s perspectives. I was pressed for an answer twice on the “BBC mock balance” post, but once I had done, that was it – no reply at all.
I am afraid though that this mode of one-way conversation is rather common here, which is why we generate much heat and little light, and is perhaps why I visit a lot less often these days. I admire Clark’s and Ba’al’s postings on the left, and Abe Rene’s from the right, and there’s probably a few others. They are interesting, open to critique, and correctly devoid of meanness. But otherwise there is a great deal of yah-boo rhetorical posting that expects no reply, a mode which prevents the free flow of sensible and discursive conversation.
There are a couple of old posters who I think got bored of this, and who we now see rarely, if at all.
Helpful announcements (possibly a side effect of Craig’s prolific posting recently!):
Fred, Juteman – replies waiting for you on the Miliband Macho thread.
CanSpeccy/Posis1959 – reply waiting for you on the Labour Equals UKIP Lite thread.
Clark,
I think the possibility of cover-ups of institutional child abuse in all the main parties needs to be taken seriously, and like others I have concerns about the ability of the Establishment to investigate itself. The truth did indeed out, in the case of Saville, though rather too late for any justice to be done, and whilst I am not in favour of witch-hunting, there does seem to be some appetite to fix this wrongdoing. Perhaps, though, I am being naive in thinking that.
That said, I think if there has been substantial cover-ups by the large parties, what we are seeing is mostly a dreadful product of human nature, rather than a specific endorsement of sexual abuse. I think this has happened since time began, and probably more so now in the age of the mass media: one party covers up a wrongdoing “for the greater good”, and promising never to let thing X happen again. So in the case of the Labour party, if there was any cabinet knowledge of sexual abuse, a very public house-clearing would be seen as “letting the Tories in”.
And, in one sense, that view is correct – a party could indeed sustain such reputational damage as to let nastier opponents into government, and wreak a larger amount of social damage than even the cover-up was hiding. To be clear, I am not defending such conspiracies – just trying to understand them. Of course, a related problem with Labour in the Blair years is that, from a Left perspective, “letting the Tories in” would have been only marginally more damaging than the incumbent, following as they were a Tory-lite policy at the time.
I have a friend of mine, a socialist, who is voting Labour in her area, to kick the Tories out. My eyebrows probably were rather raised when she admitted this – not because of the possibility of their complicity in Establishment child abuse, but because of their far greater crimes in Iraq and so forth. As I remarked on another thread, Blair’s neocon ghost still has not been fully exorcised, though I doubt she is voting for them with any great enthusiasm. Such is the problem with FPTP though, as Craig notes in his latest post.
For what it’s worth, I am sympathetic to people who are voting Labour whilst holding their nose. I have foreign policy concerns about Ed Miliband, though I don’t think he is quite as ghoulish as his Rumsfeldalike brother. I think he’d do a fair bit less domestic damage than Cameron/Osborne, so a Labour government is not to my mind the worst possible outcome. In my area, a Labour stronghold, I have the luxury of voting Green (who will get around 3%).
A troll is a troll is a troll ad infinitum. He is not here to have ‘conversations’.
Russell Brand changes mind about voting and urges support for Labour
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/04/russell-brand-changes-mind-about-voting-and-urges-support-for-labourRussell Brand changes mind about voting and urges support for Labour
“A troll is a troll is a troll ad infinitum. He is not here to have ‘conversations’.”
With all due respect, Mary, neither or you.
Correction: neither *are* you
Restrain yourself Dreoilin when you want to have another go at me. You are lurking again. What IS your problem?
I rarely chat here but contribute by providing information. The troll(s) merely divert and distract. About your contribution I am not entirely sure.
I know you like to have the last word but, as before, I will not be responding to you.
Mary,
1) There is nothing wrong with “lurking”. Calling someone a “lurker” is not any kind of insult.
2) A ‘lurker’ is someone who follows a forum but *never* posts on it. I don’t qualify.
3) “I rarely chat here” is your silly excuse for the reality – which is that when you’re asked to justify some position you’re taking, you don’t reply. It’s a handy way of not having to make any arguments because you’re not capable of making them in your own words.
Which is why you copy and paste all your so-called ‘opinions’. They’re all second-hand.
“as before, I will not be responding to you”
Like you don’t respond to Habbabkuk? LOL!
Are you sure you checked all the previous threads for responses to you that you may have missed?
Jon, my position is that Tory, Labour and Lib Dem have all been in power at the time of and since the start of the child abuse accusations and convictions – and the threat of D-Notices and the Official Secrets Act have been used to suppress evidence and investigation.
D-Notices and the Official Secrets Act – instruments of the STATE.
Labour, Tory and Lib Dem parties have all been in government. There should be NO WAY that these successive prime ministers and deputy prime ministers could not have known of this. So they are all complicit.
It is true that torture and illegal war are serious matters too, but they are more recent (only one change of government), they were not as covered up, and the rather slow, feeble investigations are still ongoing. There are also excuses like “it was a terrible mistake” or “but it got rid of a brutal dictator” – while I don’t regard any of this as valid, I can see how many voters could, especially with the ongoing propaganda and the generally lower concern for the welfare of “foreigners”.
But I can’ t see how ANY voter can excuse the cover-ups of abuse of UK children and the protection of the abusers.