Sunday, June 27, 2021

Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Croydon


This book is a factual account of crimes committed in Croydon. It stretches back to the century before last. Two things seem strange to modern readers. People run out of the house and find a policeman almost immediately. People call the doctor and the doctor comes round to the house. Not these days!

In some cases, the murderer's identity will never be known but there are some suspects for the reader to consider.

In some cases the murderer is caught red handed and confesses to the crime on the spot so there is no need for a detective to exercise the little grey cells.

One interest for me was the number of locations in Croydon which I recognised but had no idea they had been crime scenes. The other books in the series, which cover 17 locations, would be of interest to locals for the same reason.

One crime will be familiar to many people. It has been the subject of a number of books and a TV series. The Craig and Bentley case is treated fairly and even-handedly in the final story in this book.

Overall, this is a very interesting read but it is about real life so it does not have the neat resolution you would get from a fictional detective story.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

The right to die?

 “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those sound like rights worth having. “The right to die” is the only right we will end up with unless we fight back.

Do we want to live in a country where elderly, sick or disabled people are made to feel worthless and then offered the ‘right to die’?

Imagine this.

Someone goes into hospital with a serious illness. They declare that they would rather be dead. To accelerate the process, they stop eating.

Would you give them the “right to die”?

A month later the same person is sitting opposite me, eating, drinking and ridiculing the government. They have re-engaged with life.

Would you reconsider their “right to die”?

A disabled teacher once made this plea to a conference I attended, “The media are only interested in those who want to kill disabled people because that is a good story. They are not interested in those of us stubborn enough to want to live.”

The case for “mercy killing” or “assisted suicide” is that it should not be treated the same as cold-blooded killing for gain. It never is. Juries and judges have every right to deal sympathetically with such cases if they are genuine.

If someone faces a choice of a painful death or an end to that pain, it would make sense for society to invest in palliative care rather than leaving them no choice but mercy killing. As it is, hospices which care for the terminally ill are generally charities without serious state funding.

What is anathema is a change in the law, which is being sought by campaigners, which would make the lives of people with illnesses and disabilities worth less than those with healthy bodies. Being healthy can be a very temporary state by the way.

According to Age UK, “Do Not Resuscitate” agreements have been forced on vulnerable adults during the pandemic. Give the government the power of life and death over the disabled and sooner or later they will use it “in the public good” or “to save public money”.

We cannot be confident that the opposition would oppose them either.

It is not beyond our capability to create a society which people would not want to escape from but rather enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

 

The euthanasia machine, on display at the Science Museum, would allow all those old, sick and disabled people to quietly exercise their "right to die" so their place can be taken by (temporarily) healthy people.
 

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Norton scam warning


 
I have received a series of semi-literate emails about Norton Securities which inform me that I have been charged such sums as £214.62 GBP. I very much doubt if Norton have anything to do with these toerags but it is not doing their reputation any good. 
 
I have reported each and every email to report@phishing.gov.uk and hopefully, the crooks will get their just reward.
If you get any such suspicious emails, do thou likewise! 
 
I do not use Norton and I certainly never will now. 
 
It is impossible to contact Norton about this. All I got was a bot programmed to sell their wretched product!
 

 


John Bercow

It comes to something when former Tory MP John Bercow looks a great improvement on the leader of the Labour Party.

He has denounced Boris Johnson as  "reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic". The Labour leader has trodden a difficult path supporting a reactionary populist nationalistic and perhaps xenophobic prime minister. When Boris started hiding behind the union jack, I am sorry to say that Starmer followed suit.

The Labour leader seems to be too busy trying to look statesmanlike to do the job of an opposition leader and judiciously oppose the government policies over 

* Fire and rehire

* The blatantly racist attack on EU nationals working in the UK.

* Serial incompetence in handling of the pandemic.

* failure to do anything about social care

* hypocritically clapping the NHS while offering an insulting pay deal to NHS staff.


* (I could go on!)


 Derek McMillan

 

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Proud Sponsors

We read a lot about ‘proud sponsors’ and ‘proud supporters’ but pride is first and foremost of the seven deadly sins. 

The full list is- 
pride, 
sloth, 
gluttony, 
pretending you know what ‘Woke’ means,
going to Eton, 
avarice 
and capitalism. 
 
Or am I describing the Prime Minister?
 

 




Saturday, June 12, 2021

Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

I took three main thoughts away with me from this book.

1) For Hegel the prime thing was the Idea, with a capital I, of the state. For Marx the prime thing was the material conditions from which the state arose.

2) Marx saw the class nature of the state. He believed that the working class could change society for good.

3) Religion is ' the heart of a heartless world' and for workers it was a means of escape from intolerable conditions. Here the famous phrase the opium of the people' comes in. The aim of Socialists is to create a society from which people do not wish to escape.

Incidentally, Hemingway said that cannabis was the opium of the people. It too is a means of escape.



Wednesday, June 09, 2021

Just imagine

 

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/socialistreviews

Ratko Mladic

 I am pleased mass-murderer Ratko Mladic, who butchered 5,000 people in Srebrenica, has been sent to jail. Such a pity the USA and its allies are exempt from any punishment. Blair, Mandelson and Alistair Campbell walk free and are fawned on by the BBC.

The civilian death toll of the Iraq war has been estimated at a minimum of 110,000 and is probably much higher. 

The Wikipedia link is here.

The fake story of "weapons of mass destruction" was used to convince members of the Parliamentary Labour Party to vote for war.

Blairites still crow about Blair's election victory but 110,000 deaths was not in his manifesto.

 


Friday, June 04, 2021

Amazon Reviews

 


Apparently, Amazon does not differentiate between book and other reviews, so you will find a review of my shoes here too!