Flash Fiction

Grandad, what are you doing with the laptop?
Making a Book

Won't your fingers get tired?
I'm going to use a mouse.

How can his tiny paws press those huge keys?

This is an audiobook of short stories (flash fiction) for your entertainment.
Postage is free in the UK.

It also makes an excellent gift.

Buy one of these and you are giving money to Alzheimer's research.

Just Click here

Slavery

"We must learn the lessons of the past" according to unelected inbred imbecile King Charles the Last.

The main lesson is that the royal family benefited from the slave trade more than anyone else in this country. If anyone should be forced to pay compensation it is certainly them and one in five of the rich bastards in the UK who also owe their fortunes to slavery.

The Bank of England made capital available for slave voyages and the City of London became the financial centre of the slave trade.

Politicians talk smugly about the abolition of the slave trade. They forget that British capitalism had to have a slave trade, and a massively profitable one, in order for it to be abolished. The profits of slavery were falling before abolition was considered.

The Kings School in Hampshire

The Kings School in Hampshire is appealing against the imposition of VAT, claiming that it is a school for Christians. It is not. It is a school for people with £8000 to spare. And such people will not enter the kingdom of heaven until they can push a camel through the eye of a needle!

Truth is stranger than fiction

We attended a Shoreham Wordfest crime-writer get-together yesterday. It was great fun. One writer who is also a lawyer was asked if something happened in real life which nobody would believe in a book.

Apparently, she said to a witness who had just told a remarkable and untrue story. "I put it to you that what you have said is a pack of lies." The witness's response left her speechless. The witness said "Yeah."

MPs assisted suicide bill.

Politicians will vote for assisted suicide because they will not spend the money on palliative end-of-life care. What a shower.

This is not an abstract debate. It is a direct threat to people who are old or ill. Call them worthless. Make them believe they are a burden. Then offer them assisted suicide.

I have received a reply from Becky Cooper MP which is available on this blog.

https://derekmcmillan1951a.blogspot.com/2024/10/becky-coopers-reply.html

Why not write to your MP? It could be your own life you are saving!

Netanyahu

Surely Netanyahu will not end the war ever. Without the war, he has no purpose. 

He clings on to power by virtue of the war. As long as he kills women and children in Gaza, the far-right fanatics will continue to support him.

Becky Cooper's reply

Becky Cooper MP replies:

Good evening,

Thank you for contacting me about the private members bill relating to assisted dying. This is a complex and emotive issue and I know there are strongly held ethical and moral views on both sides of the debate.

As a medical doctor and public health consultant I have spent 20 years helping people to be well and to access the best possible care when they are ill. It’s what brought me into politics.

I recognise the need to ensure everyone with a terminal diagnosis has access to high quality end of life care and to mental health services. Assisted dying is not an alternative to high quality palliative and end of life care but I believe it is right that we seek to minimise suffering and allow people a dignified death.

Any change to the law in relation to assisted dying must balance the need to have sufficient safeguards in relation to informed consent and protecting against abuse. It is my view that this Bill does provide appropriate safeguards and I will be supporting a change in the law to enable terminally ill adults to receive, at their own informed request, medically supervised assistance to end their own lives.

Thank you once again for contacting me about this issue.
 

Best wishes,
Dr Beccy Cooper MP | Member of Parliament for Worthing West

Becky Cooper may be unique in realising the importance of palliative care. Most politicians just think that assisted suicide is cheaper than palliative care. Of course they are not going to assist suicide for MPs so it is not a "tough decision" for them.

Hampshire County Council

Hampshire County Council has blamed the cuts to services on the fact that we have the cheek to live longer. Assisted dying can't come too soon for them.

Puzzgrid

I use the soubriquet "Doomdark" from "Lords of Midnight" for Puzzgrid. It is similar to "Only Connect" on TV.

Apparently, I have submitted one "superb" grid.

More to come.

Puzzgrid

Altogether I have 3600 players but this is the one which has done best.

BoJo

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/27/boris-johnson-considered-raid-dutch-warehouse-seize-covid-vaccine

Boris Johnson has remembered that he suggested a military operation against the Netherlands during the Covid crisis. 

You can just imagine his political and military advisers tearing their hair out.

UN Ineffective

The UN has suggested politely that Israel stop murdering women and children in Lebanon. Israel has ignored previous suggestions from the UN to stop murdering Palestinians. And still the British and American arms keep coming to Israel. #gaza #lebanon #israel

Sharon Graham defends winter fuel allowance

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham today moved the motion on winter fuel allowance at Labour party conference. The full text of the speech is below:

“The nation wants food, work and homes… It wants a high and rising standard of living, security for all, against a rainy day…”

“Friends, that’s a quote from the 1945 Labour Manifesto, written in the shadow of death, destruction and debt, caused by years of war.

“A manifesto of hope.

“Written at a time when our debt to GDP was 270 per cent. Nearly three times higher than it is now.

“Yet, no mention of cuts, no mention of austerity and certainly no mention of making everyday people pay.

“Labour then knew, that to make Britain more equal, they had to think and act differently.

“They knew to make it count. To make a real difference, Labour could not simply be better managers, they had to make lasting change.

 “They promised: jobs, homes and education. And built a national health service on the back of crisis.

 “Their story wasn’t one of tightening belts or making some of the poorest in our society pay.

 “Friends, people simply do not understand, I do not understand, how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched.

 “This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and needs to be reversed.

“Friends, we are the sixth richest economy in the world. We have the money. Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two. We won’t get any gold badge for shaving peanuts off our debt.

“These fiscal rules are self-imposed and the decision to keep them is hanging like a noose around our necks.

“Friends, our public services and British industry need investment now. It’s no good having sympathy for workers at Grangemouth losing their jobs. They don’t need pity. They need Labour to step up to the plate and not allow a billionaire, who buys a football club as a hobby, to throw these workers on the scrap heap. 

“We cannot leave Britain at the whim of footloose corporations.

 “Hoping for them to invest is a prayer not a plan.

 “Yes, Britain is broken. Yes, the Tories have left a mess and yes, they are to blame.

 “But Labour is now in Government, and we can't keep making everyday people pay. Friends, I keep hearing, ‘a wealth tax is too difficult, would take too long’.

 “I say absolute rubbish. We seem to be able to get workers paying their taxes in a matter of weeks! 

 “The system is rigged and the country knows it. 

"Friends, let's hold up our heads and be proud to be Labour. Let everyday people know - we are on their side. Let's put our arms around the working class and make lasting change.

“Solidarity, I move.”

A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Papers are full of who pays for Keir Starmer's clothes. This diverts attention from the numerous billion-pound corruption scandals of the Tory administration.
And on the other hand, the Tories can point to the leader of a "party for the British people" being such a dedicated follower of fashion.

1984

Much of Orwell’s book is still relevant today. How many political slogans actually tell the truth?

Germinal

I have been reading Zola's "Germinal".
Like Jack London's "People of the Abyss" this is a description of the conditions of the working class at the turn of the last century. Although it is based on research, the narrative is itself fictional.
Although it describes in detail the conditions of poverty in which workers in France were living, it also offers a vision of a possible future in which these old conditions will be swept away.
As well as being a month in the Republican French calendar, "Germinal" also suggests a new beginning.

Damned lies and statistics

The BBC repeat with glee the statistic that one in five pensioners are millionaires. The problem is that the "statistic" is fraudulent.

It refers to the number of pensioners who live in a household which has a value of a million pounds. The pensioner themselves may have access to a value of a million, or half a million or a fraction of a million or just plain nothing.

And yet this is one of the many lies being used to justify cutting the winter fuel allowance.

Never mind that many pensioners will die of hypothermia, they can just be branded "millionaires" and that is the end of any public sympathy.

Ending the winter fuel allowance will also affect the four-fifths of pensioners who are nothing like millionaires but forget about them.

Labour has to take tough decisions. No politicians will die of hypothermia so it is not that tough for them.

OFSED Bullies

The government has made one small step towards stopping OFSTED bullying of teachers but even that is too much for the Tories.

Conservatives argue that parents will be unable to understand a comment about a school that is more than one word long!

Most of us can understand whole sentences. 

Classroom Teacher Manual

Chief Hypocrite

Boris Johnson and the Chief Rabbi think the pathetic reduction in arms for Israel is appalling.
.
They give hypocrites a bad name.

Why have neither of them been arrested for hate speech?

Apparently, God wants the Israeli Defence Force to kill children in Gaza. I have my doubts.

Winter Fuel Payments

Whoever is in power, pensioners will have to fight for their rights.