A government which claims the right to kill its own citizens with no judicial process on the basis of the vote of 24.4% of the qualified electorate, legislates that workers cannot strike without the support of 40% of their qualified electorate because strikes can inconvenience people. Not as inconvenient as being sliced to pulp by flying metal, I should have thought.
David Davis, a decent Tory, said that some of the provisions of the Trade Union bill are Francoist, and he was not exaggerating. You can read the dispassionate official analysis of the bill by Parliament staff here. One of least publicised yet appalling aspects of the bill is the arbitrary power given to an anti-strike witchfinder, the Certification Officer. He is specifically given the powers of the High Court to compel individuals to give evidence or produce documents, and to make arbitrary judgements.
That extreme authoritarian stance is reflected throughout the bill. It is more publicised that notice must be given of picketing, with names reported to the police and identifying armbands worn, with letters of authority from the union to be there which the Bill states must be produced not only to the Police but to anybody who asks on request. This gives employers a whole new avenue of harassment of strikers.
The provision that 14 days notice must be given of any strike is obviously designed to reduce the effectiveness of strike action. The right to bring in agency staff to replace agency workers is not in the Bill, but the parliamentary staff analysis indicates it is intended to bring that in under secondary legislation – power delegated to the Secretary of State. That obviously is designed to combine with the 14 day notice to make strikes ineffective. The regulation of what individuals say about the industrial dispute on social media is so repressive as to verge on the incredible.
It is obvious the Tory government serve the agenda of corporatism, pure and simple. But it is perhaps surprising they are so entirely open about it. If you do not have the chance to withdraw your Labour, you are a slave. In the days of real slavery in Jamaica, foremen or gangmasters were generally slaves themselves (as opposed to the southern United States where they were generally poor whites). Very often the black gangmasters were extremely brutal to the slaves under them, imparting floggings with gusto to try to cement themselves in the favour of their white masters.
That is the function that token Muslim Sajid Javid plays in this Conservative government, flogging the workers with more gusto than his Old Etonian masters would dare to do. Plus they wouldn’t want to get blood on their trousers. Javid is a most enthusiastic Uncle Tom determined to tick all the establishment boxes. He certified the Trade Union Bill as compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, when it is plainly in contravention of Article 11. But his most spectacular effort to fit in with his Tory masters came at the Conservative Friends of Israel where ignoring completely the terrible suffering, humiliation and repression of the Palestinian people, he declared
“Mr Javid, who described himself as a “proud British-born Muslim”, announced that if he had to leave Britain to live in the Middle East, then he would choose Israel as home. Only there, he said, would his children feel the “warm embrace of freedom and liberty”. For him, only Israel shared the democratic values of the UK.”
Sajid Javid promotes measures rightly called Francoist because he is a person it is perfectly reasonable to call a fascist.
Sajid Javid Hankers After “Israel’s Warm Embrace”
Dear me, there’s a lot of angry people here. Relax folks, and do quit aiming pot-shots at each other – it makes for tedious reading for most of us.
It isn’t particular radical to regard Israel as an apartheid state, and no amount of you’re-the-racist-really, from either side, changes that observation. I am perfectly willing to accept that India has a dreadful problem with discrimination and class, but isn’t this just whataboutery? People can talk about both India and Israel, surely?
“Rememberance these days is all about being seen to wear a poppy and ostentatious displays of crocodile tears.
Far more useful to making sure it never happens again is to skip the holiday in one’s Tuscan villa and spend some time touring the battlefields and cemeteries of the Western front.”
Well said!
“The University of St Andrews has climbed 20 places in a table ranking campuses across the world.”
Yes, more than two thirds of the students at St Andrews aren’t Scottish which gives them a much greater degree of independence from the Scottish government.
I’m straight a a die Pan, he’s just been saying what people have been on for ages now. So yea, I’m with Noam on this.
BTW, mods – where are you?
Well, my tea is a bit strong, lol..But no sugar or milk.
“I have spent a lot of time in India and would say that the caste system there is much closer to South African apartheid than anything you will see in Israel”
Having spent a lot of time in both India and Israel I must beg to differ. In India you’re not going to get your home randomly bulldozed.
Ishmael –
“he’s [JC] just been saying what people have been on for ages now.”
Yes, in a sense.
But the HUGE thing is that JC is a politician in a powerful position right now (his words and ideas are actually making it into the corporate media) and he’s saying what ORDINARY people (those without the power to be heard) have been “on about” for ages. THAT’S what’s different, and making the waves.
The context of my comment about Javid in April 2014 follows. I had put up links to Javid’s visit to Israel with the CFoI in 2012 and that he had replaced Maria Miller as Culture Secretary. You see Javid described himself as a ‘proud British Muslim’. He is the hypocrite.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/03/andy-myles/comment-page-7/#comments
Then:
Mary
9 Apr, 2014 – 9:54 pm
Javid is a traitor to his country. to his Muslim heritage and to his Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Muslim Tory MP: After Britain, Israel is best
By Martin Bright, December 13, 2012
It is not often that the Prime Minister is upstaged when he is guest of honour at an official function. It is even more unusual when it is one of his own MPs who is responsible. But this is just what happened when Sajid Javid, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Bromsgrove, spoke at the Conservative Friends of Israel “business lunch” on Tuesday.
This annual jamboree has grown from humble beginnings to become one of the key events of the year for supporters of Israel. And each year one of the MPs who has been on a CFI delegation reports back to the gathering of funders and fellow parliamentarians. Usually this is a rather bland “what I did on my holidays” routine, but this year it was different.
Mr Javid, who described himself as a “proud British-born Muslim”, announced that if he had to leave Britain to live in the Middle East, then he would choose Israel as home. Only there, he said, would his children feel the “warm embrace of freedom and liberty”. For him, only Israel shared the democratic values of the UK.
/..
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/94117/muslim-tory-mp-after-britain-israel-best
~~~~
Anon
9 Apr, 2014 – 10:23 pm
“Javid is a traitor to his country. to his Muslim heritage and to his Palestinian brothers and sisters.”
Because he holds a contrary view on Israel? Dear me..
“Mr Javid, who described himself as a “proud British-born Muslim”, announced that if he had to leave Britain to live in the Middle East, then he would choose Israel as home.”
Well it would be the obvious choice. I’m quite happy in Haifa.
~~~~~
Anon
9 Apr, 2014 – 10:26 pm
Come to think of it, there is something slightly revolting about a white middle-class Surreyite, thousands of miles away from the action, pontificating about what a Muslim should or should not support. Almost a kind of inverted racism, wouldn’t you think?
~~~~
Many incorrect assumptions about me in the last comment.
I had missed that Anon lives in Haifa. Perhaps he and Habbabkuk are one and the same!
RoS: “Glenn I’m pretty disappointed in you, for doing Habbs gopher work, in backtracking other folks comments, especially Mary’s so Habb can use them against her in one fashion or another.”
Sorry you feel that way, RoS. If someone wants technical information, or indeed asks the time, that’s hardly “gopher work” to provide it. Maybe you’re thinking of a stat-checker I wrote a year or so back – before your own appearance here – which gave a breakdown of users by the number of posts they’d made on a single thread.
That was for my own amusement, and not at the behest of anyone else. If I get asked about it, what would you have me do, tell them to FOAD (à la St. Fred)?
Robert Greenwald, the director of Iraq For Sale’, was invited to testify before Congress by Rep. Jim Moran. Greenwald prepared four minutes from the documentary as part of his testimony. Republicans insisted that the clip should not be shown. This is the clip…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVEJq7-GggQ
The full programme can be found here (1 hour, 15 minutes; yeah, I know…):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q8y-4nZP6o
The same level of endemic corruption has been foistered on the UK by the blue Tories and the red Tories, and all enabled by an equally corrupt media.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/14/david-cameron-prepared-bypass-jeremy-corbyn-get-syria-airstrikes-backing
Mr Corbyn has got off to a flying start, but the rot is now so deep set that I’m not sure if anything other than open revolution on the streets will change things.
“Well, my tea is a bit strong”
Please, for your own sake – tone down the language, and READ what you have written before you click on the “Submit” button.
You are not helping your own cause.
A run through on our governance and PMs, our subservience to the US and monetary systems.
Overcoming Fabianism in Labour’s Class War of Attrition
Jeremy Corbyn, quo vadis?
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 15th, 2015
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/09/overcoming-fabianism-in-labours-class-war-of-attrition/
The concluding three paragraphs.
‘One of the factors that contributed to the victory of New Labour—aside from the exhaustion of the Conservative Party in its last laps under John Major– was the importation of US public relations – electoral campaigning style. The same focus groups that placed Bill Clinton with saxophone in the White House—and were developed to sell every other product under the sun—were introduced to Tony Blair’s campaign. The British general election took another step toward Americanisation—the election of a prime minister with a brand instead of a party with a programme. This trend continues because it is the main marketing and propaganda strategy for Anglo-American corporations—who ultimately make what becomes government policy.
Jeremy Corbyn will have to face this monster, not only in the House of Commons but also in the mass media and the Internet. He will have to face the decades of Anglo-American political and economic incest, not that only manifested in the past century’s wedding of US plutocracy with British aristocracy. He will have to face the overarching military control over Europe exercised through the NATO command structure. Not least of which he will have to contend with the power of Finance Capital, entrenched in multi-national corporations and their “independent” agents, the central banks and multilateral banks—IMF, BIS, World Bank et al.
To do this it will be necessary to sandblast the layers of deception that make “markets” seem natural and rational while presenting human needs as irrational and even irrelevant. To do this will undoubtedly create conflict with Britain’s liege-lord, the US. As the post-war era has proven, the British ruling class has no loyalty to ordinary Britons that it is not willing to sacrifice to international profitability. The irrational and ultimately unnatural political economy imposed by Britain’s rulers—against which the Germans Marx and Engels first systematically preached—is the religious fanaticism and terrorism that a revived Labour Party needs to oppose.’
patronized*,,,
And yea, bad influence on me… I think it’s part I spell so poorly, there is always this on-up-man ship im always waiting for, and I must get it on some level, that these people arne’t even on my side, ‘it’s my opinion, no it’s my opinion’. Vote for me. Look what I did…
Not you didn’t, that you can’t see that shows a profound lack of fact’s on the ground history. But of course what it logically leads to is mixing with the proles, Supporting activist gorps or organizing alternatives among the people. Your better than that.
Your Holocaust denial would be welcome in any number of countries in the region but again, I am asking for a rational choice, not one based on your existing prejudice against Jews, though I understand that might make life better for you outside Israel.
___________________
Have you no idea as to how irrational your question is ? the other nations are in a complete state if turmoil, most have been razed to the ground, death squads backed by in part Israel, and you can deny it all you like, are swarming around these nations killing indiscriminately, whilst blaming their opposition for the crimes.
Yet you ask me is it not rational to want to live in Israel as opposed to the surrounding nations.
To add to the insanity of it all, Israel is persecuting the same people that they stole their country from (violently I might add) post 1948, yet you persist in some strange sense of twisted loyalty to say it’s the rational country in the region to live in.
It may well be in the future that Israel, when it matures a bit, develops a less confrontational attitude towards, those who’s land they’ve stolen, I honestly think a Palestinian state would help take the pressure off Israel, and pave the way for a peaceful coexistence in the area…that if it so desires to do so, I do hope so.
Mary
7:47 pm
Outstanding!
I’m so grateful to this forum (trolls notwithstanding) for the quality and erudition of some of its contributors, and the articles they link to.
Jon, 7:26pm, the classic one-sided post pretending to be reasonable from Jon. The ENTIRE discourse from the pretend human rights scene here is about Israel. There is absolutely no mention of any human rights abuses which can’t be blamed on the Jews or the West. “Whataboutery”, as you call it, in that context is absolutely essential. Of course we can talk about both Israel and India but we don’t, and to even mention a country with a worse human rights record than Israel is seen by you as “unhelpful”, perhaps even a “distraction”, in classic Jon terminology.
I’ll tell you that before I commented here I was a lot more critical of Israel than I am now, and still am in other places. But this place is so revolting that it causes you to rebel, to argue for the other side with much greater vigour than you otherwise would have done. That is the effect it has on all those who are not hard-left anti-Israel obsessives. So what is the purpose of it other than as an echo chamber for virulent hatred of the Jews and Israel? You tell me.
“Having spent a lot of time in both India and Israel I must beg to differ. In India you’re not going to get your home randomly bulldozed.”
Lol. But it’s not funny. You do.
Ishmael –
Message received, loud and clear.
I won’t bother you again.
Stay happy.
Bill Clinton was the plutocrats’ choice to be president in 1991-2. As a candidate, he would shift the Democratic Party several degrees to the right (so that it wouldn’t matter to them which party won), and, as president, he would have a better chance of getting the majority Democratic Congress to approve NAFTA, as George Bush pere had proved unable to do. They may even have been thinking far enough ahead to see that the NAFTA fight would split the Democratic Party, and enable the Republicans to take Congress in the election of 1994.
No you don’t. Slums and shanty towns may get cleared, but it’s not random, there are consultations and new homes are built first for you to move into, a nicety that gets overlooked in Israel. It’s an important difference.
“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.”
William Blake…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P04JCvBWAXg
Huge demos erupted in Japan yesterday as, Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe enacted a law which will allow Japanese troops to fight abroad, for the first time since WWII.
Looks like Japanese soldiers will now enter whatever fray their Western allies ask them to.
This article impressed me partly because of its understanding of history and particularly the history of the Labour Party. It isolates the areas in which the UK has been pushed and demonstrates how past Labour and Conservative leaders have had to bend to the monetary obligations to the US via the World Bank and IMF.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/britain-the-end-of-new-labours-reign-of-terror-jeremy-corbyn-quo-vadis/5476162?
As to the corporate branding that funds all politics today, and thus calls the tune, Dr P Wilkinson writes:
“Jeremy Corbyn will have to face this monster, not only in the House of Commons but also in the mass media and the Internet. He will have to face the decades of Anglo-American political and economic incest, not that only manifested in the past century’s wedding of US plutocracy with British aristocracy. He will have to face the overarching military control over Europe exercised through the NATO command structure. Not least of which he will have to contend with the power of Finance Capital, entrenched in multi-national corporations and their “independent” agents, the central banks and multilateral banks—IMF, BIS, World Bank et al.
To do this it will be necessary to sandblast the layers of deception that make “markets” seem natural and rational while presenting human needs as irrational and even irrelevant. To do this will undoubtedly create conflict with Britain’s liege-lord, the US.”
MJ –
“a nicety that gets overlooked in Israel”
Yes. Another nicety they sometimes overlook is bothering to look and see if there are people inside the houses before the bulldozing.
This blog is a cult, and i’m all for cult’s if acknowledging that’s what they are.
*sigh* Using people…
Apologies Mary, I had not noticed you had already posted the same link I’ve just posted and also quoted almost the same paragraphs. I just got it through in my emails. Like minds. 🙂
John Goss
8:15 pm
Mary already linked to the same article (different website, but same article).
Still, some things definitely bear repeating.
Republicofscotland
15/09/2015 7:04pm
I mentioned Turnbull’s defence of Peter Wright on a previous thread. He wrote a memoir of that defence called The Spycatcher Trial, which is a riveting analysis of the Thatcher administration’s determination to keep Spycatcher from the public and the machinations it was prepared to enter into to ensure that that was achieved. It includes extensive transcription of Turnbull’s cross-examination of the then Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, who was made to look a right berk by Turnbull.
I just looked the book up on Amazon.co.uk and blow me, second-hand copies are going for around £80. I must dust mine off.
Kind regards,
John
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anthony-hilton-corbynomics-are-not-as-crazy-as-critics-suggest-a2948081.html