Wise words (as one would expect) from Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK…
Source: Can we build a new consensus?
Tag: Politics
Iain Duncan Smith caves in at last.
Yes – the Inhumane Despicable Sociopath has gone. Yes – the Inhumane Despicable Sociopath has gone. Once more – The Inhumane Despicable Sociopath has gone and what I tell you three times is true… (courtesy of DWP Examination)
and not before time either. Your successor is in for a shock when he/she sees the mess you’ve left you mongrel. * Iain Duncan Smith said he is resigning as Work and Pensions Secretary blaming…
The Conservatives have been the biggest borrowers over the last 70 years
Next time someone dares to suggest in your hearing that only Tories can be trusted with the economy point them in the direction of this very detailed piece of analysis by Richard Murphy…
Source: The Conservatives have been the biggest borrowers over the last 70 years
A sample image just to encourage you…
Filibustering
My take on dealing with filibustering, provoked by yet another disgraceful display of egocentrism on the part of Philip Davies MP.
INTRODUCTION
This post is provoked by the Downright Dishonourable member for Shipley, Philip Davies making the news yet again for talking out a bill that had cross-party support. Following on from his deliberate talking out of a bill to provide carers with free parking at hospitals, Mr Davies’ latest effort is to talk out a bill that would have made first aid training a compulsory in schools. Therefore, before sharing some pictures with you, I am going to provide my plan for stopping the practice of filibustering.
PREVENTING FILIBUSTERING
Before getting on to the ‘how’ which is the main part of this post, I am going to address the ‘why’.
Mr Davies (IMO he should be renamed Phil E Buster after his recent performances) has merely highlighted a practice which is profoundly anti-democratic and dissatisfying. The anti-democratic nature of the practice is obvious – it prevents the matter being discussed from being voted on. The dissatisfying nature of the practice is obvious in cases where the bill that has been talked to death is one you support. However, even if the bill under discussion was one I did not support I would like to see it voted on – I prefer to settle the issue fair and square rather than have it go undecided.
THE HOW
The first part of my suggested solution would be to pass a law requiring that all bills put to the house get voted on no matter what. Secondly, to prevent scum like Mr Davies from making such a law unworkable, impose limits on the amount of time for which someone is allowed to speak and back them up with severe discipline, my suggestion being:
- For a first offence a warning
- For a second offence a ban on speaking in the house for a set period (say one month)
- For a third offence, a compulsory by-election to enable the offenders constituents to pass judgement.
I reckon that one person losing their seat in these circumstances would be sufficient to deter all other would-be filibusterers. If you would like to see filibustering stopped, please sign and share this petition.
PICTURES
I have some pictures from in and around King’s Lynn, and also some badges that will be in our auction on December 9th (a full catalogue for our November 25th auction can be viewed here)…
An Open Letter to Tim Farron
I received an email from Tim Farron inviting me to join the Liberal Democrats. This post is my response.
INTRODUCTION
I have today received an email from Tim Farron suggesting that I might be interested in joining his party, the Liberal Democrats. What follows is my response…
THE OPEN LETTER
Dear Mr Farron,
I am responding to your email of this lunchtime inviting me to consider joining your party.
While it is true that I voted Liberal Democrat in the 2010 General Election this was for a very specific reason: The Labour Party candidate had made himself impossible to vote for by making as virtually his opening remark of the campaign a comment about Gordon Brown being Britain’s worst ever Prime Minister – which as a candidate standing on behalf of Mr Brown’s party was clearly unacceptable. I did not believe that anyone other than your party’s candidate had a chance of challenging the sitting MP Mr Bellingham (Con), so I voted Liberal Democrat as a desperate tactical measure.
A lot has happened since that General Election, including five years of your party acting as handmaidens to the Tories. In the General Election of earlier this year I was proud to vote for the Labour Party candidate, Jo Rust, and if she is the candidate again in 2020 I will vote for her again. At the same time of the same day I voted for both the Green Party candidates in the local elections.
While I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the Labour Party performance over the Welfare Bill, there has been a new leader elected since then, and I am liking what I see so far. I will refer to two recent happenings here:
On Friday, Mr Corbyn missed a rugby match to which he could have had free tickets because he was busy helping his constituents (a surgery that ended up running for seven hours). As far as I am concerned someone who puts his constituents ahead of a rugby match deserves applause. The second thing I wish to refer to is that Mr Corbyn has now revealed plans to renationalise the railways (these were mentioned in his manifesto in the leadership contest, which I read in detail). I offer you this infographic that I picked up on twitter:
On the question of how credible Mr Corbyn is: I do not think that the leader of a party who crashed from 62 MPs down to 8 or an ex-MP (Sir Vince Cable) are in the strongest position to raise such a question!
There is one other reason you might have thought I would be willing to join your party, which is that one of the many petitions which I have signed happens to have been created by a Liberal Democrat (it was calling for a worldwide ban on FGM). I signed the petition in question because I am in full agreement with its aims, not because of who created it.
To conclude, not only am I not remotely interested in joining your party, I am unable to see any circumstance in which I will ever again vote for them – reputations are hard earned and easily lost.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Sutcliffe
Imaging and Other Stuff
An account of a day at James and Sons, with lots of lovely images, and a selection of quality links to round things off.
INTRODUCTION
The body of this post features today at James and Sons, but also I have plenty of other stuff for you…
BACK TO WORK WITH A BANG
Today was devoted to catching up on imaging for our August sale (two weeks tomorrow, Fakenham Racecourse). The day started with some coin lots done with the aid of the scanner…
After the coind there were some general lots done with the camera…
My final items of the day were militaria, and involved both scanner and camera…
LINKS
I start this final short-ish section with two pieces that refer to…
ATHEISM
First, a real life horror story concerning the fundamentalist Pat Robertson – I was sickened to read about him advocating that a grandmother take her grandchild away from its atheist father.
My second, at the opposite end of the spectrum is a really wonderful collection of thoughts from atheists on how they find fulfillment in life.
OTHER LINKS
Vox Political feature with this excellent piece about welfare benefit cuts.
This piece is from primepolitics is about something we desperately need – electoral reform.
A good news story from Sweets Way Resists, about bailiffs being sent away empty handed – yes!!!
For the finale, what looks like being a magnificent resource for anyone interested in autism.
Marxism 2015 11: The Final Rally
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the latest post in my series about my experiences at Marxism 2015, the five day political festival in Central London organised by the Socialist Workers Party.
THE FINAL RALLY
I did not stay for the whole of the final rally, missing one speech and the singing of the Internationale, because standing all the way from London to Cambridge did not appeal, so I wanted to ensure that I was on the 15:44 – the latest train on which one can bet on not standing.
Here is a picture of the platform, taken before the meeting started…
All the speeches were excellent, but the one that really made an impression on me was the one by a woman from the campaign to get justice for the Hillsborough families…
I hope that you have enjoyed this post and will be encouraged to share it.
Marxism 2015 10: Monday Morning
A personal account of the two meetings I attended on the Monday morning at Marxism 2015, with some photographs and a link to an old blog post.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts about Marxism 2015, the five-day political festival in central London, organised by the Socialist Workers Party. In this post, which I hope some of you will enjoy enough to share, I shall be covering the last two regular meetings before the final rally.
TWO SPLENDID MEETINGS
HOW BIG PHARMA STOPS US MAKING PROGRESS
This meeting, in Nunn Hall, where a lot of the meetings that appealed to me seemed to be taking place, was an excellent start to the final day of this great event.
I will limit myself to one story from that meeting – a tale of how 73 trials of which 37 gave the right result and 36 the wrong were spun by a combination of suppression and deceit into 48 successful trials and 3 failures – this is how the pharmaceutical industry chooses to conduct itself.
PEGIDA AND THE FIGHT AGAINST RACISM, FASCISM AND ISLAMAPHOBIA IN GERMANY
This was the last of the regular meetings I attended at the event, and it was superb. The main speaker, Christine Buchholz, a member of Die Linke talked about the rapid rise of Pegida and then the counter to them – appearing everywhere they did in bigger numbers. This of course is the way the Anti-Nazi League in this country dealt with the National Front and then in the 1990s with the first rise of the BNP, also how Unite Against Fascism dealt with the EDL and the second rise of the BNP – confront them, never let them have a moment’s peace and make it abundantly clear that there are more of us than there are of them. Check out this early blog post of mine on the matter.
Mention was also made of the brief and spectacularly ill-starred Pegida UK, which was really the absolute rump of the EDL and BNP, and never gathered any momentum. For examples of what happens of you do not take these people head on Holland and Austria where there are very major fascist organizations were cited (France with Front National being too well known to need much of a mention).
Here are some final photos…
Marxism 2015 7: Sunday Morning
An account of the first part of Sunday at Marxism 2015 and a fistful of important links.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts about my experiences at Marxism 2015, the five day political festival in central London organised by the Socialist Workers Party. Check out the previous posts in the series. As well as the post itself I have some important links to share – and on the subject of sharing I hope you will be inspired to share this post!
GETTING THERE
The journey in had two variations on previous days – firstly my host was able to give me a lift to Walthamstow Central, saving some money on the Oyster Card, and secondly I decided to change to the Piccadilly line at Finsbury Park because Russell Square is actually the closest station to the Institute of Education. My dislike of lifts reduced the theoretical benefits of saving distance because the only other method of access to street level is via the stairs, of which there are 175.
AT THE EVENT
Here is my program of meetings for the day…
You might not expect a theoretical meeting first thing on a Sunday morning to be lively, but it was. However I will settle for sharing a few photographs…
From this meeting I ascended two floors to Nunn Hall for my next meeting, Amy Leather (organiser of the whole event) on fracking. Here are some lowlights associated with fracking…
- Uses vast quantities of water – millions of gallons per site
- 2 – 2,500 lorry trips per well required
- Tap water near fracking sites so polluted that folk can set fire to it
- and 15 million Americans live within one mile of a fracking site – and it would be worse in this country because we are more densely populated.
- We are still talking FOSSIL FUELS – every part of the process increases emissions
- Process leaks methane – which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than methane
Instead of supporting this means of generating power we should be looking more deeply in renewables (for which Cameron and his cronies have cut funding while they are pushing fracking like billy-ho).
I will end this section with a few more photos…
LINKS
TWO PETITIONS
Each of these petitions comes with two links, the petition itself and a related article. First up, a petition calling on SeaWorld to release Tillikum the orca:
2)An open letter to Harry Styles of One Direction, who recently urged his fans not to go to SeaWorld.
The second petition I am sharing with this post is the one calling on Theresa May to establish a legal exclusionary zone around abortion clinics:
2)A related article in the Guardian
OTHER LINKS
My penultimate link is to a story on Take Part Daily about how roads could be made from plastic waste.
Last up, a story from Vox Political about the Speaker of the House making some very revealing remarks about the way in which Iain Duncan Smith conducts himself.
A Trumpet Blast for the King’s Lynn Festival
An account of a concert at King’s Lynn Corn Exchange featuring Crispian Steele-Perkins, some links and some infographics.
INTRODUCTION
Having put up three new posts about my experiences at Marxism 2015 today I decided a variation was called for, and fortunately, especially given the links and infographics I also intend to share I have the perfect change of tempo ready…
AN EVENING OF TWO HALVES
King’s Lynn’s historic corn exchange (see pics below) was last night the scene for a classical concert featuring that master of trumpet playing, Crispian Steele-Perkins.
The first half of the evening, with Steele-Perkins the centre of attention was magnificent. I have only a few pics because there is a no photographs during the performance rule which I obeyed to the letter…
Although I enjoyed the story behind the coach horn, and hearing said instrument played in the Mozart piece, the highlight of the entire event for me was the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, one of the greatest pieces ever composed for the instrument, and played quite magnificently.
In the second half there was no Steele-Perkins, and the quality was much less – there was one piece where one could not tell if it had been played well or badly so undistinguished was it.
LINKS
There are so many links to be shared that I have split them into subsections, starting with…
PETITIONS
The first petition I am sharing is the one calling for statistics on benefit-related deaths to be revealed. I have two links connected with this:
2)A Huffington Post article connected to the above.
My second petition is the one on change.org calling for automatic Group B Strep tests to reduce deaths of newborn babies.
My next offering is this from those who want to keep the National Gallery from being privatised.
Last and in the chief place in this subsection is the petition calling for clemency for William Underwood.
A SOUPCON OF SCIENCE
I shall lead into this little section with a piece showing just how low SeaWorld are prepared to stoop in their battle against those who dare oppose cruelty to Orcas.
Phuketbirdwatching introduced me a species of bird I had ot previously seen in this, their latest offering.
My next link is to a piece about the discovery of a new particle, the pentaquark.
Faraday’s Candle can be relied on for good stuff, and their take on Nasa’s recent Pluto fly-by is no exception.
POLITICAL PIECES
First of all, a piece celebrating an event of 100 years ago.
My next piece, on dealing with London’s polluted air, is a must-read.
Huffington Post are back, with this piece which viciously exposes the misogynism and ignorance of UKIP’s Paul Nuttall.
My next two links are both to pieces from Socialist Worker:
1)On the home front, this piece about tube workers.
2)This about Iran.
Finally, chosen because it leads into the next section, this link to what will be my first infographic.
INFOGRAPHICS
AFTERWORD
I hope that you have enjoyed this post and will be encouraged to share it!
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