Space Dog Alfred

West Sussex have agreed to stock my book 'Space Dog Alfred' after I told them other libraries treat local writers more favourably ( I had chapter and verse)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find out whether the book is therefore available for inter-library loan.

Either way I would like to know.

Announcement

Space Dog Alfred is now available from any library in West Sussex. The ISBN is 978-1517351182

This book will fire the imagination of any reader.

Know your place!

The local MPs are Conservatives to a man (no sexism there then) and the Trade Union Bill will not change that.

However what it will do is to severely limit the ability of working people through their unions to influence the political process. I am a proud member of a trade union which is not the lickspittle of any political party but uses a political fund to influence all parties.

The venom the Tories have towards the working classes is understandable. The working classes gave Margaret Thatcher a bloody nose over the poll tax and Tories have long memories if nothing else.

 It is undermining the basis of democracy in the UK. It will do nothing to prevent the rich, the tax dodgers and the spivs from using their dosh to influence (shall we say bribe?) politicians  but it will keep the lower orders in their place.

More than anything else, the millionares fear a movement like 15 now spreading across the world. This movement has even forced the McDonalds union-busting anti-working-class company to make concessions.

#socialistreviews

"Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you:

Ye are many—they are few!"

Dickens #socialistreviews

Dickens would not have spared the blushes of the Tories when it came to exposing social evils.

Dickens was not a Socialist. Indeed in A Tale of Two Cities he portrays the plebs as a bloodstained mob who would have all decent people decapitated. So far so Tory.

And yet it is a paradox that more people have been brought to Socialism through Dickens than through explicit Socialist writers like London and Orwell. It is Dickens' heart which appeals to the heart of those who want a better world. Reading Oliver Twist or Hard Times gets the most mild-mannered reader ready to tear a strip off the next hypocritical Pecksniff they come across. Be they Cameron or Blair!

Nobody can read Hard Times and Nicholas Nickleby without wanting to take Wilshire, Gove or Morgan aside to ridicule their outdated educational thinking. It is strange to think Dickens never even met the Gove when he can read the mind of the hypocrite so clearly.

Dickens takes things to extremes. While Bumble the Beadle, Josiah Bounderby and Wackford Squeers dine in luxury, they decry the greed of the plebs who dare ask for more. He cannot have realised that this is mild compared to the behaviour of the British cabinet who dine on caviar and champagne while three quarters of those paying the bedroom tax are cutting back on essentials and endangering their health.

Dickens appealed to the conscience of the rich. In Chrismas Carol, Scrooge is a version of Ian Duncan Smith until he sees the light. One percent of the population hog the wealth and make sure they use the power of the state to keep their wealth. Anyone who breaks ranks to help the poor can wave goodbye to all that. 

Ostentatious charity matched by private penny-pinching is the best you can expect from this canaille.

Dickens would have approved of the “trickle down” theory. Capitalism is fine but the poor need help from the rich so perforce the rich must be generous. The rich have no such scruples. In their view -enforced by the state -the poor and disenfranchised must be kept that way.

A user of a food bank in Horsham once shared this with me. “Any trickle-down is the effect of being peed on from a great height.”

Dickens' host of characters and caricatures have been a source of delight and enlightenment. This is true of the books, which had a genuine working-class following through "Household Words" and did not confine their audience to the novel-reading middle class. 
It is equally true of the television adaptations although the temptation to emasculate the social message of Dickens and focus on the humour is too much for the spineless BBC to resist.
Oliver Twist asked for more. The ruling class usually need more than asking. Lord George Brown used to say that "no ruling class in history has given up its position without a fight and that usually meant a fight to the finish with no holds barred."

Why should the poor be content with a piece of the cake when they could take over the bakery?

Know your enemy

Nick Robinson is doing his best to oppose Kuenssberg's Conservative agenda but his is a lone voice. There is more joy in heaven over one Nick Robinson who repenteth than over an hundred righteous though.

Tail wagging the dog.

Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian has broken ranks with the media to do an analysis of the changes in the Labour Party. Unsurprisingly it gives the lie to much that the BBC is saying and everything that the Prince of Lies, Mandelson, is saying.

The Guardian has the tail wagging the dog, saying “Leader’s hopes of remoulding the party boosted as Guardian survey shows surge in members, huge support and shift to the left”.

Any sane person would say that it is the surge in members seeking a new kind of politics which thrust a socialist into the leadership of what was a capitalist party hell-bent on war and privatisation.

The article explicitly gives the lie to Mandelson.

“Party membership figures are a controversial issue, with the former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, who is opposed to Corbyn, telling a Labour meeting in the Lords last month that “30,000 long-term members have left the party, real members, tens of thousands”.

“But the newly released figures undermine his claim, showing a total of 13,860 have left since the general election, some of them having resigned while others have gone as part of natural churn. The increase in membership is continuing, with just under 1,000 having joined since Christmas Eve.”

“The Guardian survey shows a shift to the left among the new members while those deepest in the counsels of New Labour have obeyed the instruction of Blair, Mandy and "dodgy dossier"Campbell to be more Tory than the Tories.”

Small wonder that grass-roots members are fed up to the back teeth with squabbling MPs. The system of election was supposed to prevent anyone on the left becoming leader. It failed. Now instead of kicking themselves the Blairite rump are kicking Jeremy Corbyn.

This is a golden opportunity for Socialists in the UK. Our ideas are have been deeply rooted in the working class movement since the days of the Chartists. Now is the time to build the momentum for a movement against the cuts which can drive this Tory canaille from power.

Adolf Duncan Smith worships lies

The Mirror reports that Adolf Duncan Smith thinks it disgraceful that people want to know the truth.

How dare they.

Plebs! It is none of their business.

Here is the link.

I bet the Tories privately boast about how many useless mouths they have silenced. "I killed a thousand paupers today. Have a drink with me old man."

David Jones Lockout - your money or your life?

A Doctor David Jones has proposed a £10 fine for attending your GP. If you are sick you will be punished.


There will always be people with more money than sense who will go to the GP with trivial complaints even if it costs them £10 or £100.

Charging the poor is contrary to the principles of the NHS. To emulate the Australian system, as Jones suggests would mean not having a national health service and paying
up to 150 dollars for a simple blood test.

I hope I never need the services of the mercenary David Jones because I cannot afford him.

Bill Nighy's character in Dead Man's Chest. There will be plenty of dead men and women without the NHS

 

Petition against BBC bias

According the the BBC Charter, the BBC and it's representatives MUST remain neutral in its approach. Laura Kuenssberg has completely violated that directive so can no longer function as a representative of the BBC. She must be sacked.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/impartiality

Sign

SUPPORT THE JUNIOR DOCTORS

8am-12.0 TUESDAY 12 JANUARY
Doctors will be there from 7 to greet early workers
Outside Royal Sussex County Hospital Eastern Rd, Brighton
and
2pm New Road Brighton “Meet the Doctors”

Picket as above also at PRH, Haywards Heath

 

Progress has dodgy donors

Lord Sainsbury of Turville has provided substantial funding for Progress, contributing £2 million of the £3 million of donations and sponsorship to Progress from 2001 to 2011. In 2014 Progress was fined £6,000 by the Electoral Commission for accepting donations of £390,000 from Lord Sainsbury while he was not on a UK electoral register, between December 2011 and April 2013.

And calling them a Blairite fifth column is rude?

Alson McGovern is the latest Blairite to trumpet her opposition to Corbyn. Neither Kuenssberg nor the other canaille thought of asking her about the dodgy donors she associates with.

Socialism - it's not a dirty word Kuenssberg

We have a great socialist tradition, it goes back to the chartists, to the creators of the first trade unions, the co-operative movement - everyone who sought social justice. There have been socialists inside the Labour Party (like my father in 1946) and those outside (like me in 2016).

They are not communists,they are not fascists and only a babe in arms, or  Laura Kuenssberg, would call them terrorist. They do believe in peace and like any sane person they realise that peace means sitting down to talk with people you disagree with and who probably want to kill you. That is the opposite of terrorism,Kuenssberg.

The blatant BBC bias against Corbyn prevents any serious criticism or analysis of the Labour leadership. Nick Robinson has his work cut out to counter the thousands of examples of bias which have been brought to light by social media. The BBC is, or at least ought to be, better than Murdoch. It does itself no favours by sinking to his level.

The "Corbyn insurgency" is a golden opportunity for socialists to work for common objectives. The Trade Unionists and Socialist Coalition, set up by Bob Crow, has been quick to sieze this opportunity with both hands and support those Labour councillors who want to stand up against Tory cuts. They have provided practical support and advice on how to carry out a needs budget rather than one dictated by the millionaires