They Stole From The Poor

The UK Government has snubbed British steel companies by spending tens of millions of taxpayers’ cash on Swedish steel for two Ministry of Defence projects worth £3.9billion.
( Fiona Parker, 30.10.2015 )

Economically And Historically Illiterate.
We have finished the process of returning the Royal Mail to the private sector.
Right thing to do for Royal Mail workforce, customers and the taxpayer.
( UK Chancellor George Osborne )
But Royal Mail has never been in the private sector as it was set up for the nation in 1516 by Henry VIII.
And it stayed in public hands before being flogged by your government at a huge loss to hedge fund sharks two years ago.
Which makes you not just economically illiterate but historically illiterate too.
Not to mention morally.
( Brian Reade, 17.10.2015 )

Welfare is being demonised, but supporting fellow human beings is something to be proud of and the mark of a civilised society.
( Francesca Martinez )

The Conservatives Are The Party Of The Bosses.
Of all the lies told by the Tories, the one about them being “the workers’ party” is the most grotesque.
This cynical pose doesn’t fool anybody with more than two brain cells to rub together.
The truth is the total opposite – the Conservatives are the party of the bosses, always have been and always will be.
They are the creatures of the hedge fund millionaires, the City spivs, the greedy, corrupt bankers, the privatised utility sharks and the landowning gentry.
In coalition, they made it much harder for workers who are unfairly sacked to gain compensation through industrial tribunals.
But the Lib Dems scuppered their nastier ideas.
Now they have untrammelled power, it’s time for revenge.
They proved their hostility to working people again this week with the Trade Union Bill, a draconian programme of further restrictions on rights at work.
They intend to make legal industrial action to protect jobs and wages virtually impossible.
They will criminalise some forms of picketing, and compel pickets to give their names to the police.
What a useful political database that will make for MI5 and the other spooks who still regard trade unions as – in Thatcher’s words – “the enemy within”.
They will impose a 50% participation threshold on strike ballots.
Everybody who doesn’t vote will be counted as a “No” – by which measure David Cameron should not be in Downing Street.
They claim to be advancing democracy, but they demand that unions continue to use hugely expensive, slow postal ballots instead of voting via smartphones on social media platforms.
They will outlaw all forms of action in what they deem to be “emergency services”, which will cripple public service unions.
They will make it harder for unions to raise a political fund from members, dealing a mortal blow to the Labour Party.
They are taking away family credits from three million workers, who will lose an average of £1,300 a year.
And that’s what it’s all about.
Kill the strength, purpose and political direction of trade unionism, so employers and Tory governments can do whatever they like to a powerless, insecure, underpaid labour force.
They are the workers’ party alright.
They just forgot to put “Stuff the” into the title.
( Paul Routledge, 18.09.2015 )

Cameron wherever you may be
You’re not fit to run our country
You f****d a pig and made it squeal
Get off your arse and save our steel.
( A chant by Middlesbrough football fans )

Our Debt Is Now Worse Than Greece.
George Osborne has some brass neck.
Five years ago he sneered at the idea of a fiscal charter – a ban on the Government spending more than it earns after 2020.
Now Boy George has gone and brought it in.
Financial responsibility from a man who in five years as the Chancellor has doubled public debt to £1.5trillion!
Our debt is now 80% of what we make as a country each year – worse than Greece.
( John Prescott, 18.10.2015 )

Michael Gove is wasting millions of pounds on the upkeep of empty court buildings the Tories shut down.
Since 2010, 100 courts have been axed.
The Justice Secretary has 13 unsold buildings that cost £480,000 a year to run.
The Government said sell-offs had raised £49million.
( Daily Mirror, 25.09.2015 )

David Cameron Is Terrified Of Upsetting Saudi Arabia.
A couple of weeks ago David Cameron explained why we are terrified of upsetting a Saudi Arabian regime that stones women, lashes pensioners, crucifies teenagers and has beheaded more than 100 people already this year.
Big Chief Ham-head stated that if we don’t crawl around Saudi sheiks on all-fours begging them to buy our military systems, our national security would be put in danger.
As we know, he’s very concerned about our national security, as this tweet showed when Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader.
“Labour are now a serious risk to our nation’s security, our economy’s security and your family’s security”.
Fast forward to this week when he signed a deal allowing a brutal communist dictatorship to build nuclear reactors in Britain, leaving intelligence chiefs caking their Y-fronts over what undetectable cyber-snooping software, spooks from the People’s Republic may embed.
But, as the Government put it, when you see how much cash the Chinese are packing who needs to worry about morals.
( Brian Reade, 24.10.2015 )

We can’t do what we like with this country.
We inherited it from our parents and grandparents and we have a duty to hand it on to our children and grandchildren, preferably improved and certainly undamaged.

No One Bangs Like The Brits.
Two years ago Cameron wanted to bomb the evil pro-Assad forces, but when he realised that the anti-Assad forces include ISIS he wants to bomb them.
Or maybe he just wants to bomb to remind everyone that no one bangs like the Brits.
No wonder the Russians dismiss us as a ‘small island that no one pays attention to’ which whores London’s poshest streets to their oligarchs so their wives have somewhere to shop.
( Brian Reade, 24.10.2015 )

One Law For Them, No Law For The Rest.
The citizens of Hampstead clubbed together to raise £200,000 to pay for three policemen to patrol their neighbourhood after a spate of violent robberies.
This is all very well for the well-heeled burghers of leafy North London who can afford to hire their own bobbies on the beat.
But what about the people who can’t?
Under the hideously ideological rule of Cameron and Osborne, even the prevention of crime is being turned into a business.
They sell our safety on the streets.
Police chiefs have privately warned the Government that spending cuts in the pipeline will mean that the traditional bobby on the beat and in patrol cars will “disappear completely” in some areas, leaving officers responding only to emergencies.
So much for the Tories being the party of law and order.
They have cut funding for the police beyond the bone.
It has been amputated.
I may not be the force’s best friend, but even I can see that this crazy policy bodes ill for our society.
But why should ministers care?
They ride around in bulletproof limousines, with 24/7 protection.
Like the Royal Family.
One law for them, no law for the rest.
( Paul Routledge, 02.10.2015 )

Ricky Gervais has told American TV that he didn’t have any kids because “basically they’re spongers. They don’t give you anything”.
They do serve one purpose though, Ricky.
They’re the first to tell you when you’re the only one laughing hysterically at your own unfunny gags.
( Brian Reade, 26.07.2014 )

They Stole From The Poor.
I don’t think people realise how the establishment became established.
They simply stole land and property off the poor, surrounded themselves with weak-minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.
( Tony Benn, 1925 – 2014 )

Hell Is The Place For Me.
When your people came to our land, it was not with open arms, but with bibles and guns and disease.
You took our land.
You killed us with your guns and disease, then you had the arrogance to call us godless savages.
If there is a Heaven and it is filled with Christians, then Hell is the place for me.
( Native American Indian )
By the end of the 19th century, native Americans had suffered the worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed.

Citizens Need Protection.
We have come to learn that a majority of citizens need protection against loss of income due to unemployment, old age, disability, and illness in the interest of our national welfare.
If we want to maintain a healthy economy, we need to maintain the standard of living of the lower income groups in our population who constitute 90% of purchasing power.
( Francis Perkins, 1880 – 1965 )

A nation that has trouble keeping itself together has no business bombing other nations trying to force them to do their will.

Democracy In Action.
You may have missed it with everything else going on in Westminster this week but Arthur Charles Valerian Wellesley, 9th Duke of Wellington, was voted into the House of Lords by the remaining Conservative hereditary peers following the retirement of another one of their own.
To recap: A rich man no-one’s heard of, now makes the laws of this country on the basis of a distant ancestor who had a boot named after him for winning a war 200 years ago.
It’s called modern democracy in action.
( Brian Reade, 19.09.2015 )

My 82-year-old neighbour Dorothy knocked on my door and asked me to fix her telephone.
I checked her phone and told her nothing was wrong with it.
She said, “How come my son doesn’t call me anymore then?”

The Lied About Him.
There have been other weeks when I laughed so much my sides hurt.
But rarely have my sides rocked as hard as they have these past seven days, when a peace-loving, bike-riding, elderly man got promoted at work and unleashed a wave of panic not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis ( which you probably know was caused by Jeremy Corbyn if you’ve been following the panic).
After his resounding victory as Labour Party leader, the man the right-wing media had slaughtered for being a teetotal, veggie killjoy was slaughtered for taking his supporters to a bar and singing The Red Flag because it proved he was a terrorist spy.
The man they’d blasted for not wearing a tie, put one on for a Battle of Britain memorial service, and was blasted for having trousers their fashion police felt clashed with his jacket.
Or was it that he’d let them down by not wearing a Worzel Gummidge donkey jacket?
They crucified him for being a staunch Republican, then slaughtered him for not asking God to save the Queen.
Apparently, refusing to ditch life-long principles makes him untrustworthy.
They labelled him a grasping socialist hypocrite for accepting his pay rise without mentioning he claimed a mere £8.75 in expenses last year.
They lied about him abolishing the Army and agreeing to kiss the Queen’s hand to receive £6.2million party funding.
Cabinet ministers called him a threat to national, economic and family security, while voting through plans to steal from families billions of pounds worth of what used to be called social security.
But that was all to be expected, because the further from the centre Labour moves, the more the Establishment attacks it.
And I trust Corbyn, like me, laughed at every hysterical slur.
In a world short of laughs, long may it continue.
( Brian Reade, 19.09.2015 )

Passport Office staff walked out for a day over job losses, and the Home Office accused them of spoiling people’s holidays.
That’s rich, coming from government bosses who cut 400 posts and caused a backlog of half a million passport applications to build up over three years.
( Paul Routledge, 01.08.2014 )

The Humiliation Of Not Being Able To Whinge.
Myleene Klass says she was bitten 73 times by insects while filming on the remote island of Mog Mog in Micronesia.
I pray that back home in Smogsmog (London) other creepy crawlies like woodworm weren’t biting into the timbers of her house making its value plummet.
The humiliation of not being able to whinge about being in a potential mansion tax band would kill her.
( Brian reade, 19.09.2015 )

The Disabilities Minister Voted Against Protecting Disabled Children’s Benefits.
New Shadow Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Kerry McCarthy has been roundly mocked by Tories for being (shock, horror, lock up your lentils) a vegan.
Which they believe makes her unfit for office.
No it doesn’t.
But I’ll tell you what does: Jo Johnson being Science Minister despite his father saying “I don’t think he knows anything about science”, Justin Tomlinson being Disabilities Minister even though he voted against protecting disabled children’s benefits, and Caroline Dinenage being made Minister For Equalities despite voting against same-sex marriage.
Plus the long list of Tory health and education ministers who would rather slash their wrists with their credit cards than send their loved ones to an NHS hospital or a state school.
( Brian Reade, 19.09.2015 )

Born In An Orgy Of Violence.
The state of Israel arose from the laudable Zionist dream of a homeland for the Jewish people.
It was born in an orgy of violence, led by terrorists such as the Stern gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi, against not just Palestinians but British servicemen upholding an international mandate.
Increasingly, it has become a terror state, occupying land, besieging Gaza, attacking its neighbours at will, and interning or assassinating its presumed enemies.
It has an undeclared nuclear arsenal, and an undisputed military supremacy bankrolled by American taxpayers.
Israel will never willingly accept the ‘two state’ solution giving Palestinians statehood.
Every time the so-called peace process looks like making progress, Tel Aviv cynically builds more settlements on occupied land to abort the talks.
Only a realistic U.S. threat to turn off the money tap would change this pitiless reality, and American politicians are too gutless for that.
Meanwhile, innocent women and children, including Israelis, will die.
( Paul Routledge, 01.08.2014 )

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.
Organised religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.
( Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011 )

A Silence Born Out Of Respect For The War Dead.
I’m with Daniel Radcliffe on Jeremy Corbyn.
Dan reckons: “It’s just so nice to have people excited about somebody. It seems to be because they are excited about sincerity”.
Yep, I reckon Jeremy’s lack of, amongst other things, guile or a £1,000 suit and focus-group politics, has cast a spell on us.
His sincerity was evident in his choice to remain silent during the National Anthem at a Battle of Britain memorial.
A silence born out of respect for the war dead combined with a refusal to believe in the worship of a privileged, publicly-funded Royal family.
David Cameron, on the other hand sang along in reverence of our unelected Queen while, with no compunction whatsoever, ruthlessly slashing benefits for the poor and the disabled; the people Jezza speaks for, even at PMQs, where on Wednesday, Marie, Steven, Paul et al must have been as proud as punch to hear their queries put to the PM.
( Fiona Phillips, 19.09.2015 )

In 1924, Tory politicians forged the Zinoviev Letter, falsely claiming Russian support for militant British workers and Labour lost the ensuing general election.
Fast forward to 2014 and the Tories are exposed as recipients of £160,000 cash backing from a Russian oligarch.
Not a lie this time.
( Paul Routledge, 25.07.2014 )

Elton John Deceived By Hoaxers.
There is something quite magnificent about Elton John being deceived by hoaxers when he thought he’d got through to Vladimir Putin on the Kremlin hotline to ask for a meeting “if both our offices can find a convenient date where we can convene”.
Both our offices?
One office houses the president of the second most powerful nation on Earth, the other a collection of platinum discs from the 80s, a gold weave comb and visual proof of 1,000 tantrums thrown after people failed to realise his global importance.
( Brian Reade, 19.09.2015 )