Sold Down The River

We Own This Country.
I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen.
Something that I think is very important.
We own this country.
We, we own it.
It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it.
Politicians are employees of ours.
( Clint Eastwood )

Once we realise there are more idiots in the world than those with common sense, more corrupt than honest, more backward than forward-thinking, more evil than good, more selfish than those who share, we will understand the reasons for the suffering of both humans and animals.

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.
Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
( Albert Einstein )

Our leaders in the world, and those with power and authority, who cling obstinately to lives of wealth, comfort, pleasure, and self-indulgence, are ignorant of the fact that their greed and selfishness is the main cause of both human and animal suffering in the world today.

The current debacle of strife-torn Libya, where Cameron posed as the new Tony Blair-style hero and with the same calamitous results, should remind our politicians that it’s easy to start a war but impossible to escape the consequences.
( Paul Routledge, 20.02.2015 )

The Tory Party Is Hostile To Workers Banding Together.
David Cameron and George Osborne are unable to utter the words ‘trade’ and ‘union’ without a posh boy sneer.
In every dispute the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer automatically oppose the union involved.
It’s a knee-jerk response, the angry reaction in the Bullingdon Club if a waiter asked the Hooray Henrys to behave.
Because the Tory Party is institutionally hostile to workers banding together.
Cameron & Co are all over bankers like a rash when the money men combine as the City of London to demand the right to crash the economy.
Hedge fund managers in Mayfair are welcomed with open arms when the tax-dodging speculators club together to buy the Selfservative Party lock, stock and Prime Minister.
Unions are popular with voters who recognise reckless banksters created the global financial crash and not workers wanting a decent day’s pay for a decent day’s work.
Cameron’s spite does the Tories a great deal of harm, the PM stuck in the past.
Unions are more in touch with hard-working Britain than a Buller Boy born with a silver dinner service in his mouth.
( Kevin Maguire, 09.06.2014 )

They cut essential public services while trousering huge wages and bonuses.
We desperately need politicians who will stand up and confront corruption and financial greed.
We need a higher quality of politician, men and women who have been in the real world and earned a living.

If hard work were such a wonderful thing.
Surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.
( Lane Kirkland )

Public servants need to be reminded that the people asking for their help are paying their wages.
We pay public servants to look after us, to protect us and to make our lives more comfortable.
Most of them have forgotten what the phrase “public servant” really means.

Unions have been the only powerful and effective voice working people have ever had in the history of this country.
( Bruce Springsteen )

The war on drugs brought in more drugs and the war on terror created more terrorists.
Perhaps next year we can have a war on honest politicians and well-paid jobs and see where it goes.

After me! “I’m a Prince. I go first” the Duke of Pork lectured his one-time girlfriend Koo Stark as they entered a London restaurant.
Being American, she told him where to get off.
He still pushed in front.
What a pompous, vain, crass, thick, moronic ass Prince Andrew is.
Lucky girl, never marrying him.
( Paul Routledge, 20.02.2015 )

The economic growth in the UK in May 2010 was 1.0%.
In April 2015, after five years of a Conservative Government, it was 0.3%.

Hundreds of thousands of our ancestors fought and died in two world wars to preserve the very things that the Conservative Government is destroying today.
Human Rights, Housing Rights, Education Rights, Workers Rights, Welfare Rights, Medical Rights, Animal Rights, Legal Rights, Childrens’ Rights, Womens’ Rights.
( R S Hutchison )

We live in a world where dishonesty is rewarded, where power is taken by the wealthy and the corrupt, and where the incompetent and the uncaring prosper.

A Nation Sold Down The River By Tories.
Seventy years ago today, British and Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.
I struggle to comprehend what it must have been like, because if you weren’t there you can’t really know.
No more war.
Can I say that again?
No more war.
No more Germans killing Frenchmen.
No mad Mussolinis in Italy.
A continent at peace, working together.
That is the whole point of the European Union.
For me, that’s what it’s all about.
For all its imperfections, the European Union is infinitely preferable to a crazy conglomeration of warring nation states.
Nobody gets killed by daft regulations about straight cucumbers.
So, what is our inheritance from D-Day?
Those servicemen who fought for our country and our way of life, voted in their millions for Major Clement Attlee, Churchill’s quiet-spoken deputy, who had worked in the East End of London and knew about poverty and the tribulations endured by working class people.
That 1945 Labour Government laid the foundations of decent Britain, a land fit for returning heroes.
A National Health Service, giving everyone – no matter how poor – the right to a healthy life.
Established in the teeth of Tory hostility.
A welfare state, ditto.
Coal mines run for the country, not foreign money.
Railways for the people, not profiteers.
Water, gas and electricity run for the public not Chinese investors.
Secondary education for all, virtually full employment.
How easy it is to forget what was achieved in post-war UK.
And what has happened to that legacy, the country bequeathed to us by those D-Day heroes?
It has been squandered by the politicians.
The swinish Tories who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and their Lib Dem lapdogs – and the weak, stupid con men of New Labour like Tony Blair.
They have dismantled the society that was fought for 70 years ago.
They are taking the welfare state and NHS apart brick by brick.
They sold our water and our energy supplies to the highest foreign bidder.
They would privatise the very air we breathe if they could find a buyer.
A nation sold down the river by Tories and their allies.
A country in which the nastiest thing they can say about Labour is that it’s not ‘business-friendly’.
( Paul Routledge, 06.06.2014 )

We live in a time when people are more offended by words spoken and middle fingers than they are by famine, warfare and the destruction of our animals and the environment.

The Waste Of Potential In Poor Homes.
We know state school kids do better at university than privately-educated children.
The fact was proved again by the latest study detailing how they leave with better degrees.
So lower A-level grade offers to students from struggling schools is a sensible move.
Because the biggest social engineers in Britain are parents buying education.
The waste of potential in poorer homes is holding back this country.
( Kevin Maguire, 09.06.2014 )

Condemned again.
Five more damned years.
We fear for everybody who isn’t rich or wealthy.
( Daily Mirror, 08.05.2015 )

Young people are sent to far-away places to lay down their lives for their country, while the politicians lay down at home in their country.

An optimist may see a light where there is none.
But why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
( Rene Descartes )

The Tories Don’t See It That Way.
Never tried it, but becoming a multi-millionaire must be easier than I thought, if a fool like Tory bigwig Lord Fink can do it.
Just when he appeared to have the edge over Labour in the row about “dodging” what’s due, the rich party donor ranted: “We’re all avoiding tax!”
No, we’re not.
Only people wealthy enough to hire fancy accountants and stash money away in private accounts are doing it.
The rest of us are on PAYE.
The money goes before we even see it.
I pay my whack, and I’ve always voted for the party that taxes me most because the money pays for the services we need, like education and the NHS.
The Tories don’t see it that way.
They want to hang on to every last penny and see “the state” as an enemy within, to be resisted and rolled back at every conceivable opportunity.
It must be really unpleasant being so nasty all the time.
I have more faith in my fellow man than that.
( Paul Routledge, 20.02.2015 )

People want to know that promises made are promises kept.
It’s what we teach our children and it’s essential we live in a country based on a trust between people and government.
( Ed Miliband )

A Witch-Hunt Against Journalists.
The Crown Prosecution Service should have been pursuing powerful figures accused of sex crimes against children instead of an expensive and ill-fated witch-hunt against journalists.
Why was £20million wasted on a near four-year war on journalists doing their job?
Justice cannot be served when its scales are tilted towards injustice and oppression.
( Daily Mirror, 18.04.2015 )

It’s not a matter of what is true that counts.
But a matter of what is perceived to be true.
( Henry Kissinger )

Most politicians do not listen with the intent to understand.
They listen with the intent to reply.

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.
( James Madison )

You can break our spirit.
You can break our hearts.
But you will never break our will to go on.

Tolerance Is The Last Virtue Of A Depraved Society.
When an immoral society has blatantly and proudly violated all the commandments, it insists upon one last virtue, tolerance for its immorality.
It will not tolerate condemnation of its perversions.
It creates a whole new world in which only the intolerant critic of intolerable evil is evil.

He Is A True Public Servant.
Gordon Brown ploughs most of his earnings into funding charities which work towards improving education and cutting maternal death rates in the developing world.
He is a true public servant who does not take the ex-prime ministerial pension to which he is entitled.
( Fiona Phillips, 07.06.2014 )

We Are Ignoring A European Crisis.
We are ignoring a European crisis that is going to change all our lives irreversibly and forever.
It is the huge, tragic surge of African migrants across the Mediterranean.
Once inside the borderless European Union, these newcomers can and will settle anywhere.
There is no law or power that can stop them..
The vast illegal migration from Mexico helped to transform the USA into the bilingual, multicultural nation it has since become.
Something similar may be in store for Europe.
Actually I admire the migrant’s bravery and determination.
Nobody can blame them for wanting to leave their blasted war zones.
Nobody, in turn, could blame the nations of Europe if they said they could not cope with them (for they cannot) and took serious steps to stop them coming.
As it is, the political leaders of the Continent prefer not to face the problem at all, leaving the worst-affected states to do what they can and hoping the problem will go away, while it gets bigger all the time.
It would be a good start if we admitted that this is actually happening.
( Peter Hitchens, 08.06.2014 )

Something That Simply Isn’t True.
For too long, you have been told something that simply isn’t true.
That what’s good for the richest and most powerful is always good for the whole of our country.
That as long as a few individuals and companies are ok, we can just wait for the wealth to trickle down.
Today we tear up these old assumptions.
( Ed Miliband )

A Place Where You Make Lots Of Money For Somebody Else.
How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6.30am by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
( Charles Bukowski, 1975 )

David Cameron Says He Needs To Finish The Job.
David Cameron says he wants to be re-elected because he needs to ‘finish the job’.
I thought he already had.
He’s certainly finished the jobs of over a thousand disabled Remploy workers, cruelly and unnecessarily closing their factories down and booting them into unemployment.
He’s finished off support for parents who needed help to give their children the best possible start in life by closing down Sure Start centres.
He’s almost finished off the will of good teachers by totally demoralising them and freezing pay.
The neglect caused by his wholesale near-destruction of social care services has literally finished off many of the most vulnerable lives.
His cowardly employment of ATOS to interrogate the sick and vulnerable and slash their meagre benefits has caused many to finish off their own lives.
He’s finished off increasing numbers of GPs who can’t cope with the pressure ceaselessly ladled upon them.
I reckon he’s definitely finished the job.
It’s time we were finished with him.
( Fiona Phillips, 18.04.2015 )

If I touch cat’s fur, I break out in hives, my eyes water, my nose gets stuffy and I can’t breathe.
( Nicole Scherzinger )

If you are going to sit on one of those seats for three people, you need to take up one third of the seat.
If your bottom is bigger than a third, then you need to reduce its size.
( Anne Milton )

Tories Plan Draconian Curbs On Trade Unions.
People look for different things from the political party election manifesto.
I look for the pledges on employment rights, because I believe that decent treatment at work lies at the heart of a decent way of life.
So I share the disgust of trade unionists who now face even more draconian curbs on the right to take industrial action when all else fails.
Under Tory plans, workers in health, the fire service, rail transport – indeed all public services – will have to win 50% support with at least 40% participation of employees involved in strike ballots.
This is impossible to achieve in postal ballots, as the Tories know, because virtually none of their MPs would have been elected to Parliament under such rules.
( Paul Routledge, 17.04.2015 )

Just trying to change the world one sequin at a time.
( Lady Gaga )

If you look at people who are immensely productive, they don’t seem to have done much fathering or mothering.
I mean, you can’t imagine Picasso taking the afternoon off to take the kids for a picnic.
( John Cleese )

Alcohol dependence is being treated like a lifestyle choice like Armani jeans rather than as a disease.
( Sir Ian Gilmore )