Prabowo’s win is dismal news for democracy
Half the country’s electorate is under 40; many voters do not remember his past or the days of military dictatorship under his father-in-law, Gen Suharto. Those who do predict that “winter is coming”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/15/the-guardian-view-on-indonesias-elections-prabowos-win-is-dismal-news-for-democracy

Putin critic Alexei Navalny, 47, dies in Arctic Circle jail

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68315943

The list is growing of ‘elected’ leaders whose mission is to stay in power and make sure any rivals are either banged up or side-lined…or worse.

This is an interesting year for democracies. More than two billion people across 60 countries representing half the world’s population will go the polls this year voting in presidential, legislative, and local elections. Some will be free and fair and some, like North Korea, a tad less so. Quite where the US is on the ‘free and fair-sown up like a kipper’ continuum is a tricky question but if the orange-faced candidate wins we all know the direction of travel. It may anyway be that genuine democracy in the US is not really threatened by Trump because it was subverted a good while ago. American politicians appear now often to be the best that money can buy. Generally they have to have, by UK standards, huge amounts of financial backing to get elected (fortunately and I’m sure co-incidentally, those same politicians have enacted quite loose legislation on political funding) and then, once elected, show themselves to be quite partial in which of ‘the people’ they really represent. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the notion of toppling an elected government is now being applied within the US as well as outside it.

Can it really be that democracy has had its day? that it wasn’t after all a major step on the road to freedom, just an experimental alternative to the ‘strong’ leadership we all secretly want, or at least will take a punt on when the going gets tough.

The ideal of democracy has a genuine appeal and had an even stronger one when memories of the alternatives were still fresh. Government ‘by the people for the people’ for a fledgling US compared well with ever-increasing taxes imposed from the other side of the world. And, on the other side of the world, a peasant class (liberated by plague-deaths and consequent labour shortages) proved itself unwilling to return to serfdom and began the long treck towards universal suffrage. It took a long time for the UK to build the rather quaint version of democracy we have now. Influence over, often despotic not to say mad, kings (and a very occasional queen) was limited to an aristocratic elite and then only secured via threatened or actual revolt and rebellion. Magna Carta gave the barons a degree of influence and over many, many years the influence of parliament grew as a counter-balance to absolute rule. Suffrage was limited to a pretty small proportion of the population for most of our history. It was extended over time, notably in 1832 with the Great Reform Act, which basically gave the vote to middle class men, leaving working class men (not to mention all women…and they didn’t) disappointed. Universal suffrage (surely one of the defining characteristics of a full democracy) was still years away. Two world wars accelerated progress in the UK and its imperial possessions. It brought the classes together and was particularly effective at showing the working-class cannon fodder that their ‘betters’ weren’t actually any better. Ironically, the Second World War was probably the high point of progress towards democratic government, at least in the west. In fact, part of the reason it took so long to get the US into the war was that it was a democracy and the strong inclination of many Americans was towards isolationism; Europe had been bailed out twenty-five years earlier and not many Yanks felt it was worth more Americans dying to save Europe again. Had it not been for  Pearl Harbour the world might look quite different now. WW2 brought together and united peoples from pretty well everywhere.

“Walk down any of its (London’s) streets and every uniform of the Free World was to be seen…..The uniforms of the Canadians, South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, the Free French, Polish, Belgium, Holland, and of course the English and Americans were everywhere.”

Band of Brothers pp 49, Ambrose, Stephen E, Simon and Schuster, 2017

No mention of the Indians, Africans and Asians but then this was the perception of an elite, white airborne company. The point remains that World War 2 was (and is) perceived as a just war in the cause of freedom and against tyranny. It was seen as a victory for freedom-loving peoples of the world, again at least by the West. Unfortunately, the post-war world saw two at least of the freedom-loving nations, the US and the UK, engineer the removal or death of democratically elected leaders in Africa, Asia, South America – anywhere in fact where the people’s (left-wing) choices were felt to be incompatible with the interests of….. ehhhm,… the US and the UK.

It would be a mistake too to think that democratically elected politicians always believe in democracy. Quite a few seem to believe in staying in power for as long as possible by subverting democratic safeguards and processes. There is a common playbook of strategies and tactics used by national leaders to weaken opposition and strengthen their own position.

• Lie; no I mean really lie, whatever the evidence. If you lose an election claim you didn’t. Claim, if you did lose that it was because of fraud and criminal actions by your opponents. Claim you’re a victim. Claim there’s a deep state plot to steal power.
• Attack and neuter any serious political opposition; jail them, drive them out, mobilise trolls or, if push comes to shove, just kill them. Examples that spring to mind include Pakistan and, of course, Russia. These days it’s quite dangerous to lose an election because the winner will come after you!
• Supress voter rights for those groups unlikely to vote for you.
• Attack and emasculate any and all independent press journals and web-sites and tightly control state media.
• Sow division – religion is always fruitful ground or ethnicity/race.
• Attack the judiciary and ensure that they will always act in accordance with your wishes (or else). Make judicial appointments with this in mind.
• Suppress protest. Make most forms of protest illegal and increase penalties.
• Attack and suppress other forms of collective action such as trade unions. Legislate to control and outlaw them.
• Control social media and the internet; shut it down when ‘appropriate’.
• If all else fails manufacture an external threat: a war always helps.

Here are some notable examples of ‘strong’ leaders who have the T-shirt:

It may seem odd to have the likes of Putin for example in a piece about democracy but they do have elections in Russia – not free and fair elections of course but then again it’s getting quite hard to find a country where the direction of travel is towards free-er and fairer. Is it fair to have parties with vastly different funding bases? Is it fair to redraw constituencies so that one party benefits? Is it fair to restrict the franchise?

Orban, Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Modi, Erdogan. ……it’s far from a complete list; countries like Poland, Brazil, Pakistan, and, oh yes, the UK, have seen or are seeing elements of the right wing song-book played out. And in Poland, Donald Tusk is finding life difficult as he tries to reassert democratic safeguards following his 2023 election victory because media, judiciary and presidency were all politicised by his predecessor.

So is democracy finished? Well, to be parochial for a moment, the UK persists in a first past the post, winner-take-all electoral process which pretty well ignores the wishes of as many voters as it heeds. Proportional representation would be a quick and easy fix …so it probably won’t happen. The theory is that parliament, the judiciary and the free press interconnect as a finely balanced system of checks and balances.

Except that, on the whole, our media is owned by wealthy individuals with political affiliations which lean a tad to the right – well perhaps more than a tad – free in the sense of not owned by the state but, with a few exceptions, politically biased. Here’s an example of the UK’s fearless defenders of press freedom.

As for the BBC, it seems to have become increasingly susceptible to government influence in the last few years as a combination of threats, funding cuts and government appointed/sanctioned placemen (and women) have made themselves felt. Have a look at what George Monbiot wrote about BBC ‘impartiality’ under its previous Chair, a Conservative Party donor and mate of Boris Johnson.

We should never underestimate the extent to which the BBC changed this country by giving endless airtime to Nigel Farage, other far right extremists and the Tufton Street junktanks, while shutting out progressive voices.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/

More about Tufton Street later. On the up-side, the BBC seems at the moment to be breaking free of the intimidating straightjacket of government threats and cuts, presumably because the graffiti is on the wall for our benighted Rishi and his friends (friends in the Tory Party not being what you and I think of as friends). As for the judiciary, well they are independent (the idea of their being political appointees as in the US just wouldn’t run in the UK), but they are generally from well-to-do backgrounds and they are being ‘pressured’ to stop ‘interfering’ in matters that don’t concern them, such as illegal or questionable government practice. So, in the UK, a degree of media bias just goes with the territory. If you factor in the relatively recent launch of GB news, the UK equivalent of Fox News, it’s almost job done.

So the media are sorted; what else might make a difference to the health of the UK’s democracy….mother of parliaments and all that stuff? Well:

• in response to almost non-existent voter fraud, photo-ID has been made a requirement in elections, making it less likely that the young and the poor will vote;
• the judiciary are being pressured and laws changed to ensure policies claimed to be ‘the will of the people’ (honestly what does that remind you of?) can be implemented without legal challenge;
• the right to protest has been limited;
  and
• new legislation has been enacted to curb trade-union led strikes in areas like health and transport.

Small steps but then Rome wasn’t trashed in a day.

I wanted to write something positive about what we’ve imported over the years from the US but I can’t think of anything. A country with terrible environmental protections, in thrall to business and extreme wealth and where the people or the system insist on the election of a president who then fails to govern because one or other House blocks progress, is not one to imitate. I’m not even sure what the popular vote means in the US given this weird thing called an electoral college which seems to be able to overturn the will of the majority. That said, over the years Conservative governments have adopted the worst of the US’s education and other policies (think SATs, academies, free schools, workfare, elected mayors, elected Police and Crime Commissioners, privatisation or full jails) and not surprisingly, the UK now seems to be an attractive place for obscenely wealthy right-wing Americans to try and subvert, said wealth, having already subverted many democratic safeguards and the real will of the people in the US. For example, Roe v Wade was overturned by conservative Supreme Court judges hand-picked by the orange ogre after years of remorseless and expensive ‘pro-life’ campaigning. Wikipedia lists 96 anti-abortion organisations in the US . Here are a few from the list and don’t they all sound all-American, patriotic and wholesome?:

• Alliance Defending Freedom
• Alpha Center
• American Center for Law & Justice
• American Coalition of Life Activists
• American College of Pediatricians
• American Family Association
• American Life League
• American Pregnancy Association
• American Solidarity Party
• American Vision
• Americans United for Life
• Anglicans for Life
• Arlington Group
• Army of God (terrorist organization)
• Association of American Physicians and Surgeons

Those hand-picked Supreme Court judges of course promised, prior to appointment, that Roe v Wade would never be overturned. Moral? Always check if prospective Supreme Court judges have their fingers crossed behind their backs when in front of Senate Confirmation hearings. Overturning Roe v Wade was not really the will of the people just the will of neo-conservative, wealthy (often religious to the point of idiocy), individuals. While the battle was being won in the States a second front was opened in the UK and I expect in most other ‘developed’ countries around the world. Abortion clinics were picketed, misleading media campaigns were mounted, pro-life ‘impartial’ pregnancy advice organisations that were anything but impartial were opened and ‘suitable’ politicians were ‘supported’. So far the only impact has been the real distress caused to already distressed women…. but give it time.

‘If in doubt follow the money’ is always good advice but it’s really difficult to do that both in the States and here. That’s why it’s called dark money. Have you heard of 55 Tufton Street? It’s a kind of community hub and shared office space, only quite selective about who’s allowed in. Tufton Street provides facilties for, among others, The Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Centre for Policy Studies and Policy Exchange.

“These groups also happen to have been rated by the campaign ‘Who Funds You?’ as among the most opaque of all those it investigated.”

George Monbiot, ‘Has Liz Truss handed power over to the extreme neoliberal thinktanks?’, The Guardian, Fri 23 Sep 2022 06.00 BST, www.theguardian.com

55 Tufton Street is a four-storey Georgian-era townhouse on historic Tufton Street, in Westminster, London, owned by businessman Richard Smith, a major donor to the Conservative Party and pro-Brexit causes. The building was purchased for £4.25 million in 2009 by Specmat, a technology manufacturing company owned by Smith. Since the 2010s the building has hosted a network of libertarian lobby groups and think tanks related to pro-Brexit, climate science denial and other fossil-fuel lobby groups. Some of the organisations it houses have close connections with those at 57 Tufton Street next door, including the Centre for Policy Studies and CapX.^[

A group of these lobbying organisations, dubbed “The Nine Entities”,^[3] used the building for biweekly meetings to coordinate policy and public messages. The nine lobby groups—the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the office of Peter Whittle (a former deputy leader of UKIP), Civitas, the Adam Smith Institute, Leave Means Leave, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (the UK’s principal climate change denial group), BrexitCentral, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs—were accused by former Vote Leave employee Shahmir Sanni of using the meetings to “agree on a single set of right-wing talking points” and “securing more exposure to the public”.^[5]

This network has been linked to major US funders of climate-change denial and right-wing political causes including the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer, and to populist far-right parties in Europe, such as the Sweden Democrats and the Brothers of Italy.^[6]

So was democracy just a phase, like mullets, being served food on a slate or bell-bottoms? It feels like there is a real and present threat to ‘the least worst form of government’. With conspiracy theories on one side and dark money on the other, just getting out the vote might not be anything like enough any more.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…..

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

I quite enjoyed the bits I saw and read of ‘What the Romans Did for Us’. It was quite a list as I recall.

Central heating and siege weapons, bridges and fire engines, frescoes and fast food – what do all these things have in common? They were all introduced to Britain…..by the Romans.

‘What the Romans Did for Us’, Foreword, Adam Hart-Davis, Boxtree, 2000

We forget so easily don’t we who did what and why, so I thought, in the interest of balance, I’d try to remember what, in the last 13 years or so, the Tories have done for, I mean to, us. Why not join in? my list won’t be anything like complete. See what you can add and I’ll offer a Mars Bar to the winner, though, of course, Mars Bars aren’t anything like as big as they were thirteen years ago.

Some of the things on the list go all the way back to 2010 and the Tory/Lib Dem co-alition – what a treat that was. That means the average thirteen year old’s view of life will be of things steadily getting harder and less promising and it’s hard enough being an average thirteen year old without that.

Anyway, here’s my list in the order I thought of them rather than ranking by seriousness, chronology, the scale of the misery or the number of deaths caused. I’ve added a little detail and source links for those who like to check things or find out more but put the stand-alone list first for those only interested in the Mars Bar.

• Food banks
• Brexit
• Stoking racism/gaslighting migrants and refugees
• Bedroom tax
• Inflation
• Boris Johnson
• Liz Truss/economic meltdown
• Rees Mogg
• On-shore wind turbine ban
• Austerity
• Child poverty
• Public services and LA’s  underfunded
• Privatisation
• Covid mismanagement/excess deaths/fast-tracking mate’s PPE and other contracts
• NHS in crisis
• A wrecked social care system, failing residents, employees and bed-blocking the NHS
• Trashing vocational qualifications
• Packing the House of Lords with mates and chancers. (see above: Michelle Mone and PPE)
• Trashing of due process and standards of behaviour in political life
• Economic decline
• Politics of division
• Attacks on civil liberties/right to protest/human rights

Food banks

There are over 1,400 Trussell Trust food banks in the UK, in addition to at least 1,172 independent food banks. 

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8585/

Since 2010 the number of emergency food parcels distributed by Trussell Trust food banks has risen from just over 40,000 to well over one and a half million – an increase of 3,900% in just 9 years.

Food Bank Britain – Charityworks, 17 Jun 2019, https://www.charity-works.co.uk/food-bank-

Since food insecurity implies a nutritionally inadequate diet, it is a phenomenon of significant importance for public health. Poor dietary intake has been linked to a number of diseases and chronic conditions, including cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, some types of cancer, and osteoporosis [15, 16]. In addition, inadequate dietary intake during pregnancy and early childhood can increase the risk for birth defects, anaemia, low birth weight, preterm birth, and developmental risk.

‘Understanding the post-2010 increase in food bank use in England: new quasi-experimental analysis of the role of welfare policy.’, Filip Sosenko,, Glen Bramley & Arnab Bhattacharjee, https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/

Brexit

There are too many consequences to detail from travel restrictions and costs, a hammering of small businesses and declining exports, untypically high inflation, labour shortages to damaged science and higher education sectors so I’ll limit myself to the economic impact.

The UK-based Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) states that the long-term impact of Brexit will be worse for the UK economy than Covid-19. The OBR estimates that Brexit will reduce the UK’s potential GDP by 4% and the pandemic by a further 2%.

EU exports fall by 46% following UK exit from single market

UK-EU trade lags China and the US

UK FDI (Foreign direct investment) fell by 17% in 2020–21

Inflation hits 13-year high

Trade deals with third-party countries will have little impact

OBR: https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/features/two-years-brexit-uk-eu/OBR: https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/features/two-years-brexit-uk-eu/

Stoking racism/gaslighting migrants and refugees

So the plan here is to stoke fear and resentment among ‘Brits’, close down, or make difficult to access, almost all legal routes, declare that anyone not entering the country ‘legally’ is a criminal and deport them.

Caitlin Boswell, policy and advocacy manager for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) said: “The racism of the UK’s immigration system couldn’t be more clear, with this government drawing policies affecting people seeking safety along stark racial lines. At the same time, ministers are using unashamedly inflammatory and far-right language, whipping up hatred towards black and brown migrants.”

Mark Townsend Home Affairs Editor, Guardian, Sun 7 May 2023

Robert Jenrick has cartoon murals painted over at children’s asylum centre

Paintings were considered too welcoming at Kent centre for lone children arriving in UK,

Guardian 7 July 2023

Of course there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this nastiness. According to the Minister, the mural was not ‘age-appropriate’.

Bedroom tax

A really great idea; everyone knows the poor don’t need spare bedrooms and it’s only common sense to make them poorer if they don’t move to smaller hovels, sorry, homes. At its worst the tax made bereaved parents (no need any more for that extra bedroom) poorer. It didn’t encourage people to move, not least because of the shortage of suitable smaller properties.

In July 2014, a report was published by the DWP that said only one in twenty claimants affected by the change had downsized their property. A study published four months earlier had similar results.

The report also showed that there has been great demand for downsizing properties but there has been nowhere near sufficient supply of suitable sized housing.^[47]

The under-occupancy penalty (also known as the under occupation penalty, under-occupancy charge, under-occupation charge or size criteria)^[1] results from a provision of the British Welfare Reform Act 2012 whereby tenants living in public housing (also called council or social housing) with rooms deemed “spare” face a reduction in Housing Benefit, resulting in them being obliged to fund this reduction from their incomes or to face rent arrears and potential eviction by their landlord (be that the local authority or a housing association).

The under-occupancy penalty is more commonly referred to as the Bedroom Tax; especially by critics of the changes who argue that they amount to a tax because of the lack of social housing (or in some areas, any rented accommodation) for affected tenants to downsize to (and the refusal to accept the risk of taking in lodgers).

In 2016 it was announced that the penalty would be extended to pensioners. Caroline Abrahams of Age UK said: “Imposing the cap on older tenants will not only cause them anxiety and distress, it is also pointless given the lack of affordable housing options available to them”.^[2][3] It has not been applied to pensioners.^[4]

One bedroom is allowed for each of the following:

An adult couple; Each other person aged 16 and over; Two children of the same sex under 16; Two children who are under 10 regardless of sex; Any other child (other than a foster child whose main home is elsewhere); A non-resident carer (or group of carers) for a person in the house requiring overnight care; Where a room is required by a disabled child who is unable to share a bedroom

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedroom_tax

Inflation

At least we’re good at something. The Bank of England has a 2% target for inflation, but like my own target for drinking less wine it is a tad tricky to achieve, perhaps because of the outrageous pay demands of food-bank using nurses.

The consumer price inflation in the United Kingdom held steady at 8.7 percent in May 2023, unchanged from the previous month’s 13-month low and above market expectations of 8.4 percent. The rate remained significantly higher than the Bank of England’s target of 2.0 percent, adding to concerns about its stickiness and placing additional pressure on policymakers to maintain the bank’s ongoing tightening campaign. Rising prices for air travel (31.4 percent vs 12.6 percent in April), recreational and cultural goods and services (6.7 percent vs 6.3 percent), and second-hand cars (3.9 percent vs 1.2 percent) were enough to offset falling fuel costs (-13.1 percent vs -8.9 percent) and slowing food inflation (18.3 percent vs 19.0 percent). The core inflation rate, which excludes volatile items such as energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, rose to 7.1 percent, the highest since March 1992. source: Office for National Statistics

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/inflation-cpi

Core CPIH (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 6.5% in the 12 months to May 2023, up from 6.2% in April, and the highest rate for over 30 years; the CPIH goods annual rate eased from 10.0% to 9.7%, while the CPIH services annual rate rose from 6.0% to 6.3%.

Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 7.1% in the 12 months to May 2023, up from 6.8% in April, and the highest rate since March 1992; the CPI goods annual rate eased from 10.0% to 9.7%, while the CPI services annual rate rose from 6.9% to 7.4%.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/may2023

There are many politicians I don’t admire. Here are three who I think have caused enormous damage to the country, its people and its reputation. Of course there are others including recent or still serving members of the government, though quite a few seem to be seeking gainful employment elsewhere.

Boris Johnson

A fantasist and liar who will make more money this year than most of us in twenty. Loved by the Tory Party until he crashed and burned (well got singed at least). They thought he was a winner following a Brexit election win after years of blaming the EU for any and everything and promising it would be a glorious new dawn once we’d stuffed Johny foreigner. No citation needed for this one. He will be the king over the water (his new house has a moat) until he ‘can’t be bovvered’. I gather he’s paid £21k an hour for whatever he does now.

Liz Truss/economic meltdown

Liz cost us all most or all of our pocket money with her fearless dash for growth.

Rarely has a budget caused such political and economic damage. Not even George Osborne’s “omnishambles” budget, when he was forced in 2012 to back down from the pasty tax, comes close.

Initially hailed by her supporters as “at last, a true, Tory budget”, the “mini” fiscal event included the biggest tax cuts since 1972, funded by a vast expansion in borrowing, and with only a vague attempt to argue it could be paid for by an unlikely economic boom.

Economists balked at the idea that £45bn of unfunded tax cuts for the rich could ever catalyse economic growth and pay for itself in the way the government argued. Not just critics from a supposed “anti-growth coalition”, but also from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the IMF. With inflation at a 40-year high, rising recession risks and higher borrowing costs across advanced economies, it was a big gamble at the wrong moment.

The international reaction was swift and damning. The pound fell to its lowest-ever level against the dollar, while gilt prices collapsed. Over four days, long-dated government bond yields – which move inversely to prices – rose by more than the annual increase in 23 of the past 27 years.

The mini-budget that broke Britain – and Liz Truss, Richard PartingtonEconomics correspondent, The Guardian, Thu 20 Oct 2022, https://www.theguardian.com › business › oct › the-mi…

Here are a few more headlines from Liz’s tilt at fame (achieved) and (mis)fortune.

The inside story of Liz Truss’s disastrous 44 days in office,

Financial Times, https://www.ft.com › Economy › UK › Liz Truss

Jeremy Hunt does not accept Truss mini-budget caused long-term damage, Sky, https://news.sky.com › story › jeremy-hunt-does-not-a…

The mini-budget mistake that Liz Truss cannot fix, https://www.itv.com › news › the-mini-budget-mistake…

Rees Mogg

What can I say?

On-shore wind turbine ban

I’m writing this just after the hottest June on record in the UK as wild fires burn in Canada and elsewhere and the government’s own advisers, the Climate Change Committee have just warned that the UK is missing climate targets on nearly every front.

Lord Deben, the outgoing chair of the CCC, said the UK had “lost the leadership” on climate action shown at Cop26 in 2021 and done “a number of things” – such as greenlighting a new coal mine and new oil and gasfields in the North Sea – that were “utterly unacceptable”.

He said the committee’s confidence that the government would meet its shorter-term carbon-cutting goals by 2030 was even lower than last year, despite the publication of a new green strategy by ministers. “We’ve slipped behind, and other people have moved ahead,” he said. “This is not a report that suggests satisfactory progress.”

Fiona Eliot, Environment Editor, The Guardian, 28^th June 2023

Yet the Tories banned on-shore wind, arguably far less damaging to the environment than off-shore wind. If large parts of the world become too hot to sustain human life Conservative MPs will find stopping wind farms in their backyard a tad pyric; ‘not in my back yard/constituency’ won’t work with climate change.

Austerity

Can you remember ‘We’re all in it together’ and the move to get rid of ministerial cars and first class rail travel? Talk about hair shirts. I’ve not managed to find out how long it took to reinstate both but my guess is not as long as the queue at the benefits office. Austerity implemented by the extremely rich George Osborne was needed to pay off the debts caused by the 2008 financial crash rooted in reckless financial speculation and gambling by banks and chancers. Just like the post-office sub-postmasters scandal, ordinary people and public services felt the pain. Still, it was worth it to get the country’s finances on an even keel wasn’t it? Except that:

From 2010 to 2019, total gross government debt increased by £643 bn from £1.2 trillion to £1.8 trillion. UK debt since 1975.

Debt under Conservatives 2010-19, economicshelp.org,

https://www.economicshelp.org › blog › debt-under-con.Nov 2019.

Child poverty

This on its own would have finished any government not so long ago. Now we seem to have got used to it.

350,000 more children were pulled into relative poverty (after housing costs) in 2021-2022. That means 4.2 million children (29% of all UK children) were in poverty – up from 3.6 million in 2010-11. 45% of all children in poverty were in families with a youngest child aged under five.

CPAG Official child poverty statistics: 350,000 more children.23 Mar 2023

Public services and LA’s  underfunded

The pattern in UK political life and government since 1945 is of conservative governments cutting taxes and the funding of public services, privatising anything they can to raise cash for giveaways and letting a returned labour government, AKA ‘the party of high taxation in hoc to the union grandees’, rebuild public services during their term of office. Remember cuddly George Osborne’s ‘we’re all in it together’ claptrap, requiring austerity and then more austerity and a shrinking state. The country is still paying the price for their slash and burn approach to everything from public health to building regulations. Margaret Thatcher’s government used the North Sea oil revenues to fund tax give-aways (no sovereign wealth fund here!) and then began the movement to sell-off (at bargain prices) every public utility and asset around (see immediately below).

Privatisation

I’ve actually lost count of the number of privatisations. Macmillan called it ‘selling off the family silver’. It means that not much in the way of national assets is still owned by…well us. That makes us as a country, a tad lacking in collateral when we borrow. And we certainly do borrow. Privatisation was a sure-fire way of realising an asset (albeit at less than it was worth) and, of course, it could only be sold once). The cash raised was used as a short-term alternative to raising money through taxation – a vote winner for the party of low taxation.

Internal reports she (the chief excec.) commissioned repeatedly found the Post Office may have prosecuted completely innocent people and that the IT system was a mess. Vennells saw to it that no one was told about these conclusions, from the subpostmasters to parliament. She eventually left the Post Office with a CBE and £5m richer, failing upwards into some Cabinet Office business role and chairmanship of an NHS trust. Vennells has since gone to ground – but her giving evidence to the inquiry, when it finally comes, will be a momentous occasion.

‘After 20 years, here’s why the Post Office scandal is special: the cover-up is happening in plain sight’, Marina Hyde, Guardian, 18th July, 2023

Probation Services privatisation went equally well and a good deal of it had to be brought back into the public sector. The damage done to the service and to its employees has still not been recovered from.

Another (probation Officer) said: “I do not consider that we are in a position to protect the public, but we will be the scapegoats when tragedies happen.”

In their report Kirton and Guillaume said the privatisation had been carried out in the face of “massive opposition from criminal justice experts, senior probation leaders, the unions representing probation workers, and the workers themselves” and with “no meaningful consultation”.

It had created “conveyor belt” conditions in the privatised part of the service that meant officers were having to “compromise what they regarded as professional standards”.

Jamie Doward, Observer, 30 Jun 2019

And, as well as selling businesses and infrastructure, services have been privatised: Outsourcing has been extended into every possible area of government and public service. For example, Capita were ‘given’ the Army recruitment contract (no doubt because of their stellar record in other contracted work for government).

It also runs much criticised assessments of the eligibility of disabled people for personal independence payments on behalf of the Department for Work & Pensions. That business led to calls for an investigation last year after Channel Four caught one assessor on film dismissing a claimant’s “disability known as fat”.

The broadcaster’s Dispatches team sent a psychiatric nurse through Capita’s disability assessment training, where a senior staff member urged him to do “as many assessments a day as you can possibly manage”. Drag ’em in, get ’em rejected, and put another penny on the shareholders’ dividend.

James Moore, Independent, Thursday 02 March 2017 17:26

So how did army recruitment go?

Army and Capita must share blame for soldier recruitment. Capita admits that, at the time it bid for the contract it had been “chasing revenue”, being simply interested in booking additional contracts.

UK Parliament, https://committees.parliament.uk › committee › news, 1 Mar 2019 

I realise as I write this that it’s a ‘Magic Porridge Pot’ list – it keeps growing, makiing this a piece that will never be finished this side of an election. I’m going to say a little about two more items and leave the rest for any reader to comment on or add to, not least because the list seems to be growing faster than I’m writing.

Covid mismanagement/excess deaths/ fast-tracking mate’s PPE and other contracts

There are books written about all this so I’ll stick to snippets. How many excess deaths can be laid at the government’s door? It’s a tricky question. The main thing to bear in mind though is that there is a perfectly valid reason for what some have called a lack of preparedness and planning for an epidemic like Covid; it seems civil servants were required to spend their time planning for…..Brexit.

First a quick question: can you remember the seven Nightingale hospitals opened during the pandemic?

(They) had different purposes – with some mainly set up as critical care facilities and others designed to deliver step-down care for recovering patients (Figure 1). But the hospitals shared at least one common goal (listed on one of the hospitals’ own websites): ‘Bring hope’.

 And in the early days, the Nightingales did just that. Over March and April 2020, the consortia (including NHS, military and private sector experience) that built the Nightingales were rightly praised for rapidly converting conference and concert venues into places that could safely store and deliver oxygen to patients, support infection control and deliver complex critical care. Behind the scenes, a host of activity ensured the wider infrastructure that hospitals need would also be in place – from financing, to clinical governance processes, to ensuring there would be food and drink available to staff.

But over summer 2020, one issue came to define the narrative around the Nightingales – quite simply, they were not seeing many patients (Figure 2). And now, one year after they were built, many of the facilities are either being decommissioned or repurposed as mass vaccination centres or diagnostic centres.

But, in the end, the country has been left with relatively unused emergency facilities, hugely overworked existing facilities that were full of patients with Covid-19, and rising waits for routine care. The Nightingales have shown that in an emergency you can build ventilators, you can adapt buildings and you can manufacture personal protective equipment – but unfortunately, there is no magic NHS staffing tree to shake.

Was building the NHS Nightingale hospitals worth the money?, The Kings Fund, 5th May 2021

According to the Office for National Statistics, there have been about 170,000 excess deaths in England and Wales since the pandemic began. Most of these can be directly attributed to Covid-19 itself: after all, the virus’s name is scrawled on the death certificates of more than 212,000 UK citizens. Some of those who died may have been vulnerable or infirm, but in other circumstances years away from death. As the pandemic waned, we could have expected excess deaths to shift to below average levels over time. This has not happened.

Britain’s excess death rate is at a disastrous high – and the causes go far beyond Covid, Owen Jones, Guardian, 15 Jan 2023

Among comparator high-income countries (other than the US), only Spain and Italy had higher rates of excess mortality in the pandemic to mid-2021 than the UK.  Overall, England has experienced a larger fall in life expectancy than most comparator countries between pre-pandemic 2019 and 2021. 

In addition to its direct impact on overall mortality, the Covid-19 pandemic may have caused an increase in the number of people dying from other serious conditions, such as heart disease. The number of people seeking and receiving health care from GPs, accident and emergency and other health care services for other conditions fell significantly during the early waves of the pandemic. Routine and elective care, referrals and care for cancer and other outpatient referrals were also postponed or cancelled because of pressure on NHS services, leading to backlogs in diagnosis and treatment. It is too early to say what the full impact of the pandemic on the number of people dying from other conditions will be.

The number of people who died in care homes increased sharply in the first Covid-19 wave in 2020 peaking at more than three times the 2015–19 average (see Figure 3c), with about 27,000 excess deaths from mid-March to June 2020, comprising almost half (45 per cent) of all excess deaths nationally. The relatively large numbers of excess non-Covid-19 deaths in care homes in the first wave likely reflects the later roll out of testing in care homes compared with hospitals, and under-recording of Covid-19 as a cause of death among older people with pre-existing conditions. The impact of subsequent waves on the number of people dying in care home was more moderate with the introduction of stricter infection control measures.

The Kings Fund, March 2022

As is so often the case, attacks on the government’s handling of Covid are really unfair. Take, as an example, clearing old people with Covid out of hospitals and back to their care homes, without providing PEP to care home workers but while enforcing isolation through denying visits from relatives. All this while publicly stating (actually boasting) that ‘a protective ring’ had been put around care homes. As a result, shameful numbers of elderly people died alone while their relatives were prevented from visiting.

First of all, Matt Hancock never said it…..

During an appearance on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, 6 June, Health Secretary Matt Hancock denied claims that he had spoken about throwing a “protective ring” around care homes at the early stages of the Covid-19 crisis. 

Asked by Mr Marr if he regretted his use of the phrase “protective ring”, Mr Hancock said: “Well I said that much later, about what we were doing for the winter plan, and it’s been interpreted.”

https://fullfact.org/health/matt-hancock-protective-ring-care-homes/

Then, if he did, it was all a misunderstanding.

But Mr Hancock actually did use the phrase multiple times in May 2020, to describe action taken during the first wave of the pandemic. 

During a Downing Street press conference on 15 May, 2020, Mr Hancock said: “Right from the start, it’s been clear that this horrible virus affects older people most. So right from the start, we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes.”

Days later on 18 May 2020, when questioned on this wording, Mr Hancock told the House of Commons: “We absolutely did throw a protective ring around social care, not least with the £3.2 billion-worth of funding we put in right at the start, topped up with £600 million-worth of funding on Friday.” 

Ibid

A fast-track route to securing government contracts for a company and loads of dosh for its owner(s) simply because they were known to Conservative politicians (even if the company had only existed for a week and knew nothing about the business defined in the contract) – well, what’s wrong with that?

On the sunny spring evening of 7 May 2020, in the lethal first wave of the Covid pandemic, the Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband, Douglas Barrowman, had themselves filmed for Instagram. Standing between the stone pillars at the front door of their mansion on the Isle of Man, they clapped for NHS staff, carers and other key workers, as they did weekly from different parts of their Ballakew estate.

“As always, Doug and myself would just like to say a massive thank you tonight to everyone … that are keeping the country going,” Lady Mone posted. “We appreciate each and every one of you.”

Two years later, officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) were investigating PPE Medpro, a company that received more than £200m of government Covid contracts weeks after Mone referred it to ministers.

PPE Medpro and partners made as much as £100m profits
At least £70m from PPE Medpro contracts taken offshore
Small electronics firm behind supply of gowns for NHS
Jet, yacht and racehorse purchased after PPE deal
Tory peer and husband now selling yacht and properties
Mone takes leave of absence from Lords and may leave UK

David Conn and Paul Lewis, Guardian, Fri 9 Dec 2022 12.00 GMT

And, you’ll have noticed, I haven’t mentioned the Downing Street lockdown parties.

NHS in crisis

Ten years ago the NHS was meeting all its key performance targets from cancer treatment waiting timer to ambulance waiting times.

Underfunded for years, staff pay effectively cut for years, staff shortages, low morale, staff burnout, staff seeking other employment or emigrating, buildings in disrepair, record waiting lists (but surely our P.M. promised to cut waiting times and lists), poor health impacting on economic growth (lack of: see ONS report, Health, demographic and labour market influences on economic inactivity, UK: 2019 to 2022, Donald Houston, Jane Evans and Vahé Nafilyan, health.data@ons.gov.uk), falling life-expectancy, what’s not to like?

Finally, after long delays, we have from the government a workforce development plan. It’s great news; it won’t happen but it’s a good news headline grabber when very much needed. It comes from the party that abolished the nurse training bursary and failed to plan for a staffing crisis for 13 years, believing that the market would take care of recruitment – they did the same in teaching, committing themselves to the notion that schools would train their own teachers to fill vacancies (and removing the need for qualified teacher status for teachers in ‘free schools’). Wages were frozen or increased at well below cost of living rises. Result?

Department for Education survey finds that 40,000 – almost 9% of workforce – left state schools in 2021-22 before retirement.

Richard Adams Education editor, Guardian, Thu 8 Jun 2023 16.53 BST

First of all, Brexit’s £40 billion annual hit to tax revenues means less money is available to spend on our public services. We have spent around 20% less per person on health than similar European countries over the past decade. 

By now, we all know without a doubt that the extra £350 million a week promised to the NHS as a result of Brexit was a complete fabrication. If you missed it, please watch and share the European Movement’s latest video, exposing this lie:

Another issue is staffing. We can’t ignore the fact that numbers of nurses coming from the EEA fell dramatically after the referendum and have not recovered. Growing hostility to ‘foreigners’ also drove some to leave. The effect was a 28% reduction in nurses and health visitors on the UK register who qualified in the EEA, a net loss of over 10,000.

In other specialist fields, such as cardiac surgery and anaesthetics, the loss of recruitment from EU countries has been even more pronounced. In hospitals up and down the country, these EU colleagues are missed. 

Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health and Immediate Past President of the British Medical Association, European Movement UK, https://www.europeanmovement.co.uk/

A wrecked social care system, failing residents, employees and bed-blocking the NHS

When he became prime minister Boris Johnson insisted that he had a “clear plan” for solving the crisis in social care. However, he refused to offer any long-term solution to the social care crisis in his party’s subsequent general election manifesto. He did promise: to build cross-party consensus on a long-term solution for adult social care. The government promised to make a start on this within its first 100 days. After more than 1,000 days with no green paper most people gave up waiting.

Institute for Government, A parliamentary commission remains the best option to build lasting social care reform, Graham Atkins, 25 November,2019

Is social care sorted would you say?

In the last few months a number of articles have appeared in the right-wing press (where else?) claiming that ‘taking the knee’ is empty posturing, that the Black Lives Matter movement is led by avowed Marxists and, apparently worst of all, that it’s just ‘WOKE’ and therefore can be tolerated (just), ignored or better yet, booed.

It’s odd that such a cluster of articles with the same theme should appear so close together; as Ian Fleming wrote: “once is happenstance, twice is co-incidence and three time is enemy action.” Here are a few excerpts to give you a flavour.

Woke activists will tell you otherwise – but taking the knee will …

Taking the knee isn’t the best way of showing black lives matter

I’m a strong supporter of anti-racism both in the game and out, but by adopting this gesture, players risk alienating as many people as they persuade. Now that players have been taking the knee for some months now, it’s also worth asking: what has really changed?

Spectator, 21.6.21

The Marxist tag is presumably considered by the authors enough in itself to make it unnecessary to consider the rights and wrongs of taking the knee. So I guess I could just call the articles’ authors crypto-fascists (or just plain fascists) and end the piece here. But I’ve just bought a pictorial history of racial oppression in the US and it’s only a few weeks since players in one of our national football teams were vilified on social media, not for missing crucial penalties but for being black and missing crucial penalties. I guess they would rather not have missed the penalties but I somehow doubt they would rather be white; it’s increasingly embarassing.

I’ve attached below a few facts and pictures that might go some way to explain why making a public gesture against racial prejudice and intolerance is more important now than ever as black voter suppression legislation rolls back the years in the US and bigots and racists are empowered in the UK.

As a way in have a look at abridged lyrics of ‘American Skin’ by Bruce Springsteen (or better yet look at the YouTube clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQMqWAiWPMs)

“American Skin (41 Shots)”

Forty-one shots and we’ll take that ride
Across the bloody river to the other side
Forty-one shots cut through the night
You’re kneeling over his body in the vestibule
Praying for his life

Is it a gun? Is it a knife?
Is it a wallet? This is your life
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
No secret, my friend
You can get killed just for living in your American skin

(Forty-one shots)
(Forty-one shots)
(Forty-one shots)
(Forty-one shots)

Forty-one shots, Lena gets her son ready for school
She says, “On these streets, Charles
You’ve got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you promise me you’ll always be polite
And that you’ll never ever run away
Promise Mama, you’ll keep your hands in sight”

Is it a gun? Is it a knife?
Is it a wallet? This is your life
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
No secret, my friend
You get killed just for living in your American skin
……………
Forty-one shots and we’ll take that ride
Across this bloody river to the other side
Forty-one shots I got my boots caked in this mud
We’re baptized in these waters (We’re baptized in these waters)
And in each other’s blood (And in each other’s blood)

Is it a gun? Is it a knife?
Is it a wallet? This is your life
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
No secret my friend
You get killed just for living in
You get killed just for living in
You get killed just for living in your American skin

Forty-one shots (You get killed just for living)

The song is about the shooting of an unarmed 23-year-old immigrant named Amadou Diallo by four plainclothes officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss. Carroll would later claim to have mistaken him for a rape suspect from one year earlier. In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal. At about 12:40 a.m., officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy were looking for an alleged serial rapist in the Soundview section of the Bronx. While driving down Wheeler Avenue, the police officer stopped his unidentified car and interrogated Diallo, who was in front of his apartment. When they ordered Diallo to show his hands, he supposedly ran into the apartment and reached into his pocket to show his wallet. Soon afterwards the four officers fired 41 shots with semi-automatic pistols, fatally hitting Diallo 19 times. Eyewitness Sherrie Elliott stated that the police continued to shoot even though Diallo was already down.

The investigation found no weapons on or near Diallo; what he had pulled out of his jacket was a wallet. The internal NYPD investigation ruled that the officers had acted within policy, based on what a reasonable police officer would have done in the same circumstances. Nonetheless the Diallo shooting led to a review of police training policy and of the use of full metal jacket (FMJ) bullets.

On March 25, 1999, a Bronx grand jury indicted the four officers on charges of second-degree murder and reckless endangerment. On December 16, a court ordered a change of venue to Albany, New York because of pretrial publicity. On February 25, 2000, after three days of deliberation, a jury composed of four black and eight white jurors acquitted the officers of all charges.

Information fromWikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo)

Amadou’s shooting was not an aberration or a tragic but unavoidable accident: it was simply a continuation of the strong thread of oppression and violence running through American history from the slave trade on. In our modern and enlightened times there are many shootings in the US and around 1000 a year are by police officers. And race and colour often play a part. Black Americans account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

Information from the Washington Post, September 6^th 2021.

During the Civil War in the US black Union troops if captured would be sold into slavery or simply executed or burnt alive. And, of course, black Union soldiers were paid around half the white rate though there is no evidence that they suffered at half the rate when injured or killed.

The post-Civil War Reconstuction aiming at biracial democracy was remorselessly dismantled in the southern states and the 1876 post-election trade-off of a Republican president in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the south led to increasing repression and racial violence. There were attacks by the KKK and other groups on black churches, schools and public officials and then, in 1883, the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. Then as now the Supreme Court rolled back hard-won civil rights and then as now voter suppression accompanied discrimination in social, economic, political and legal areas of life. By 1910 to be black was to be disenfranchised in southern states.

And there was lynching. At least
2060 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1901.
In parts of the South public lynchings became popular events.
Photos were taken and turned into souvenir post-cards.

In Waco in 1916 a black man was publicly burned in front of a cheering crowd of several thousand whites including many children.

‘Freedom’, Phaidon Press, pp39

After the First World War returning black troops encountered a ‘wave of white racist vigilante violence and rioting. African Americans were publicly executed, sometimes burned alive, sometimes still wearing their uniforms.

Always the lesson that racist whites tried to instil in the peoples they enslaved and kept back was a simple one: “Don’t try to get up, we’ll just knock you down again.”

It’s a story of hundreds of years of oppression based on nothing more than some irrelevant difference, in this case colour, in others religion or gender. I’ve highlighted episodes from a largely American story – the English one is less violent, at least after the slave trade but won’t feel so different to many of us, whatever our colour. After all, the UK government deported some of its citizens because they clearly weren’t white and would have deported a whole lot more if the Windrush scandal hadn’t broken. Dawn raids were the order of the day along with a ‘hostile environment’ – just like Germany in the 30’s. And now we’re going to push refugee boats back where they came from. After all they’re not like us are they? Except…… I still remember Jo Cox’s maiden speech: “We have more in common than that which divides us.”

And we can believe that and act accordingly given the right leadership. Given the wrong leadership we can be blind to everything but division.

“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. ……….when they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

Stanley Milgram, 1974

There’s quite a lot at stake if we’re not allowed to be WOKE:

If we fail (to collaborate) the forces that contributed to Brexit, the envy and isolationism not just in the UK but around the world that spring from not sharing, of cultures driven by a narrow definition of wealth and a failure to divide it more fairly, both within nations and across national borders, will strengthen. If that were to happen, I would not be optimistic about the long-term outlook for our species.

Stephen Hawking

“And is the rift between Black and White? Or Poor and Rich? Stranger and Friend? Or between those whose fathers have died and those whose fathers are still alive? Or those with curly hair and those with straight? Those who call their dinner fufu and those who call it stew? Or, to ask it differently, what is the one true, crucial border?”

‘Go, Went, Gone’, Jenny Erpenbeck, pp211

So taking the knee is a pretty mild demonstration against the border between those who are held back, often suffer and sometimes die because of an accident of birth and those who thrive because of it; it might even be considered by some (Marxists no doubt) to be a relatively measured way to respond to, and protest about, hundreds of years of violence and injustice.

Bitter Lake is a film by Adam Curtis: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bitter-lake. If the BBC did nothing else but make this available it would be worth the licence fee – I doubt you’ll ever see it on Sky, it’s not Rupe’s cup of tea. It’s described as:

“a new, adventurous and epic film that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer”.

The film claims ‘the west became a dangerous and destructive force in the world‘. Most of the content is home or handheld video footage and it covers the middle east from 1946 to today, takes in banking’s takeover of geopolitics, oil and the rest. That’s quite a spread.

In 1946 the US set up a little colony in Afghanistan to ‘improve’ the country. Why Afghanistan? you may ask, I did, then I looked at a map.

Gosh, it seems Afghanistan bordered the USSR. So the US established ‘Little America’, as it became known, to build huge irrigation projects to modernise and westernise Afghanistan. The resultant saline soil was perfect for poppy growing.

Bitter Lake is intercut with lovely little scenes from ‘Carry on up the Khyber’ – hinting at farce repeating itself as history do you think?

Captain Keene: [news of the native revolt arrives] What do you intend to do, sir?
Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond: Do? Do? We’re British. We won’t do anything…
Major Shorthouse:…until it’s too late.
Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond: Exactly. That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.

The problem with seeing things as simplistically as right and wrong, good and bad (with us as the right and the good of course) is that it doesn’t keep us safe. Polarised views are dangerous – workshy/hard-working families, immigrant floods/refugees, free world/subjugated people, blacks/whites, jews/christians/moslems, Donald Trump/anyone else (except Palin!).

The US right seems to think if it could make the world in its image (and keep out migrants and arm school kids) we could all sleep at night. As President Regan said (and probably believed),  ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again‘

I sometimes think many Americans are brought up to salute the flag and watch Fox News – the equivalent in the UK of learning to read from the Daily Mail. That’s unfair of course and, without exception, the Americans I’ve met have been extremely nice, polite and generous, like the soldier below. Most Americans never travel abroad we’re told, so their view of the world is bound to be an odd one.

After all the US is God’s own country which I guess is why you can’t become president without boasting about the country’s greatness, invoking a Christian God at every turn and having a very big bag of money to share out.

Unfortunately, to stay safe, Americans have the largest military machine ever known and, of course, the right to carry arms. As a result:

• the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world. http://www.countercurrents.org/lucas240407.htm
• In order to defend its freedoms, at home it kills its own: 33,636 people died of gunshot in 2013 (that’s actually less than died from drugs or motor vehicles but still a tad high). http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm The US population is around 320 million. Within the EU (population 508.2 million) approximately 6700 persons die each year as a result of gunshot wounds.
  and
• In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world’s population, it houses around 22 percent of the world’s prisoners.

It’s understandable but unhelpful for the right in the UK to attack anyone who asks ‘how did we get to this?’ or worse, ‘Was it our (government’s) fault.’ It’s easy to attack Corbyn and others as weak on terror whenever they speculate on how we arrived here. The film Bitter Lake offers a pretty compelling explanation and you can still watch it.

Watch the film, it’s incredibly moving and disturbing. Make your own mind up.