Labour Leadership Election 2016; Why I'm Team Jezza

A few minutes ago I received my online ballot for the labour leadership election: Anyone I have ever had a political discussion with will probably assume I voted for JC.... You are right. Yes I did.

Throughout the leadership election I was inclined to vote JC because he was the man who inspired me to join the labour party to begin with, and because I view the election we are going through as a attack on him & an anti-democratic coup rather than an election to exercise a democratic right.

Before JC became leader I looked at the labour party and saw what looked to me like a shell of its former self, and doubted that it could play more than a minimalistic role in the workers movement leading to a fairer, more egalitarian society. JC's commitment to restoring that party to a party of social change, a party about standing up for the metaphorical 'little guy' and a party of the most fundamental of socialist values; equality, liberty, democracy and peace made me re-evaluate that belief; I now believe that the labour party can be saved, and I stand by my belief that the leader best placed to do that is now and will be for the foreseeable future JC.

In the interest of fairness I read the statement provided by Owen Smith on the voting form and wasn't that impressed. Namely because I don't actually believe that he is the 'unity' candidate that the 'anyone but Jezza' crowd are demanding.

Jezza is who I voted for because he IS a unity candidate in my view; namely because of his his pledge to democratise the party and his willingness to work with those who have made it perfectly clear that they don't agree with his views despite there open and destructive opposition - it beggars belief that an open hand was treated like a clenched fist simply because it was JC who held it out.

Not only do I have every faith that JC has the skill and the determination to unify the labour party, I believe that he has the skill, the drive and the compassion to unify the country and deliver a labour victory in the 2020 general election.

Comrades: It's Time to Come Home.....

Hello again.

I has been a while I know since I’ve written a blog article about what I’ve been up to, so this one is going to double up as a confession. About an hour after Jeremy Corbyn was elected the leader of the labour party I joined the party and then I e-mailed the Green Party to inform them I was leaving.

The reason I joined the Green Party was actually simple; it was my way of telling the labour party off. The labour party had basically lost its mojo; Blair’s government was almost as right-wing as the Conservative Party, and up until a few days ago had been committed to political centrism believing the only way to victory was a programme of ‘small C conservativism’ rather than embracing Left-Libertarianism & Democratic Socialism as it’s way forward.

I joined the greens as I was becoming increasingly political since the ConDem government took over in 2010 and I could see the effects of their policies first hand, from friends who had been sanctioned, to poverty wages and now since the Conservative majority government’s attacks on trade unions, however I could not in good conscience join the labour party as it was failing to outright refuse to cooperate with the Conservative government’s austerity programme; a programme which has hurt the most vulnerable members of our society causing many people to die or commit suicide through reckless economic policies.

The fact that the labour party has since elected its most left wing candidate in its leadership election, and has its own surge of support shows that a great many people in the British public want an alternative to austerity and that they are more willing to support a left-wing labour party; myself included. As I said earlier I joined the Green’s to give the labour party a kick up the arse – I am myself the stereotypical labour party member; a working class northerner, and I joined the Greens because despite their reputation as a single issue environmentalist party there policies were far more socialist than the pre-Corbyn Labour party.

This is in my opinion what caused the green surge, the phenomenon where over a relatively short period of time the Green Party managed to quadruple its membership; not because people suddenly started believing that environmentalism would stop poverty, because they were socialists and the Green Party was preaching anti-austerity & social justice. Don’t get me wrong; protecting the environment is a necessity and to quote my barber “as the caretakers of this world we are doing a shite job”, but if someone is going hungry to feed their children then I highly doubt they will have the luxury of thinking of long term issues like wind farms & climate change (despite the fact that they are important issues). But with a red surge which has put the green surge to shame in terms of the numbers of members who have joined it is my view that it is now the Labour party who is best suited to represent the views of members of the British left & be the voice of trade unions in government as it was meant to do, while campaigning as the leader of Britain’s anti-austerity movement instead of leaving that task to minor parties.

The green surge served its purpose; it gave a platform to people who wanted to speak out against the conservative government who couldn’t bring themselves to do it on the labour party’s ticket, and it made it clear to the labour party that if it wasn’t going to listen to its supporters then it could be replaced. But now the desired effect has happened; a party which will once again be the voice for the voiceless & hold out a hand to those in need. But now I can’t help but think that those socialists who joined the green party, like myself, would now do better stepping sideways into the Labour Party. Come 2020 Labour is the party which will be able to mount the campaign most likely to unseat the conservatives and the more lefties which join now the more the members of the parliamentary labour party who might attempt a coup against its new leader Jezza will be deterred by the knowledge that a left wing party is absolutely most definitely the wish of the members and the British left.

What’s the world coming to if you can't eat a pie, buy a loaf of bread or buy your lover some saucy knickers without funding the Tory party in the process???

Hello & thanks reading this. I'm writing this to promote a petition I started on change.org asking for a ban on corporations being allowed to donate money to political parties.

Currently the petition has 63 signatures; hardly the ringing enthusiasm I was hoping for when the House of Commons receives petitions with tens if not hundreds of thousands of signatures.

The current system for party funding is hardly fair - parties who are liked by the rich & powerful become major parties, those who have to rely on cold hard logic and public spirited-ness get side-lined and rarely get noticed.

Even more unjust is that it is there customers themselves are the people who are funding the Tory party - we are, each and every one of us, I am not a Tory yet by buying from businesses that support them I am funding them; in what world is that democracy?

Corporations take our money and they then donate it to the party that they want to win. Under the current system we are funding the Tory party buy buying from there corporate sponsors. I really don't want to have to start vetting who I buy my ties, my bread, my pastries and my fluffy handcuffs from based on who the shops and brands are funding so I'd much rather that big business and the state were separated, and businesses weren't allowed to donate at all.

We are funding Cameron's road back to number 10, each and every one of us, every time we buy a pie, a loaf of bread or decide we want a night of kinky sex according to this Mirror article, because of the number of big businesses and sheer quantity of money they are donating:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/buying-12-things-means-youre-5391826

Enough is enough, please sign:

https://www.change.org/p/house-of-commons-totally-ban-businesses-from-sponsoring-or-donating-to-political-parties-cap-the-amount-an-individual-can-donate-to-a-political-party-each-year-apart-from-party-membership-to-what-a-person-employed-full-time-on-the-minimum-wage-would-

#DemandDemocracy

It's not OK to hit a porn star stupid

This is fucking disgusting:

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/how-internet-responds-porn-star-abuse/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=main

This is disgusting for two reasons, firstly the hitting and beating people is never OK; especially if that person is your partner. Violence is wrong; period.

The fact that it happened against a porn actress is irrelevant which brings me succinctly onto the second reasons this is so fucking disgusting; the reactions of the people who’ve commented on this on Twitter: it’s wrong ‘even though’ she’s a porn actress – WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN ‘EVEN THOUGH’ NOOOOOOOOOOOO; I MEAN FUCKING NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, punching people is wrong, beating people is wrong; the profession of the victim has nothing and I mean nothing to do with how unacceptable it is, I cannot emphasise exactly how ‘GRRRRRRRRRR’ I feel on this matter.

Porn stars need loving personal relationships too: what they do must be emotionally exhausting, so they need a special someone to be there for them just as much (and probably more so) than the rest of us. The fact that they have sex on camera doesn't mean that they will be unfaithful to their romantic partners.  If you think being porn star makes someone scum: YOU SHOULDN'T WATCH PORN; you also need to Google the word ‘hypocrisy’.

Sex work is work, sex workers deserve respect.
Stigma Kills (just like it almost did here).
Rant over. That is all.

Dear Tory’s… Don’t you trust us with all the facts about tax?

Something that really pissed me off on an episode of BBC’s Question Time was opposition to the 50% tax rate, because when national insurance contributions are added this means that a person would be paying 52% tax, which might apparently be a hindrance to an individual’s aspiration to try to earn a salary over £150,000.

Well most people don’t pay 2% national insurance contributions they pay 12%; only people earning over £797 per week pay 2% and people earning under it pay 12%. £797 per week equals 41,444 per year. However as the 40% tax band kicks in at £31,886 per year, this means that when 40% income tax plus 12% national insurance are added, people are paying 52% tax on all earnings between £31,886 and £41,444 per year already.

This also means that people earning between £41,444.01 and £150,000 are paying 42% on earning’s in this range and people earning over £150,000 are at present paying 47% tax on earnings over £150,000.

And I always thought that a progressive tax system was where richer people paid more not less because they could afford it, but as we see here people earning over £41,444 are paying a lower rate than people earning less than £41,444. The only thing which is even more stupid than this is that the people who reduced the 50% tax rate down to 45% didn't think we’d notice this.

This proves where the typical Tory’s priorities lie; making middle earners pay more to give a tax cut to their millionaire mates…

Well I have an idea; instead of increasing the 45% tax rate back to 50%, increase tax on the rich by replacing the regressive national insurance bands with a flat rate of 10%, then people earning between £31,996 and £41,444 won’t be paying a higher rate than the minority earning a six figure salary; thus nullifying in the process the argument that high taxes on the rich are bad for business because thousands of smaller business owners will have been given a slight tax cut in the process. The tax difference may be small, 2% opposed to 5% but it would positively impact far more people so there’s a much better chance of someone being able to do some good with it, and the reduction would (at least partly) be cancelled out by the fact that people who were once paying 2% would now be paying 10%. 

I support Ed: the 'Daily Wail' had no right slagging his dad off

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/mail-defends-ralph-miliband-article-235155608.html#gQXyeDZ

I’m gunna be blunt: this pi**ed me off.

I think I’ve criticised every party leader in some way or another after seeing them on telly or reading something about them or what they’ve done/said, but 1 thing I will not do is treat someone as though members of their family are fair game to slag off because I don’t like them.

I am me: I am not my dad. Frankly my dad is an abusive arsehole. That does not mean that I am. It doesn’t mean that I can be expected to inherit being disliked, I didn’t pick my dad I got the one nature gave me, not my fault.

Fortunately for Ed Miliband he actually has a father worth defending, and despite their differences I’m glad that the other party leaders have stood by him in condemning the Daily Mail for claiming Ed’s father ‘hated Britain’ in order to tarnish Ed’s reputation.

Firstly I think Ed is a much better judge of his father’s politics than a newspaper can be, as they are after all family.

Secondly I think Ed should be judged on what Ed says and does, not his father’s beliefs; especially as clearly Ed’s father didn’t hate Britain because he defended this country in the 2^nd world war. Yes, I’ve criticised Ed myself once or twice; but who his father is does not reflect in my view his ability to run this country.

In fact it would be just as stupid as asking the current Daily Mail staff to inherit being disliked because of the fact that between 1934 and 1939 the Mail was pro-Hitler (we don’t hold it against you; but don’t think we’ve forgotten).

In conclusion I would like to say a big thanks to the Daily Mail: I already said I’m glad his opponents in government stood by Ed in this in giving you the middle finger - but if they didn’t they could probably have really used this to damage him and the fact that they stood up for him, and criticised you fear-mongering guys and girls has left me that little bit less cynical of British politics than I was yesterday. It proves that they are guided by a sense of right and wrong and not just self-interest. Not the outcome you were hoping for was it?

30 hour week: we'd get more done

I completely agree with this article: I have the luxury of setting my own working hours as I work as an author; however I know that a lot of other people don’t. Firstly working more than 40 hours a week and in my view your taking work away from someone else, working more than 48 and your being taken for a ride. A cut down from a 5 to a 4 or 4.5 day week in my view would better our productivity. We’d be less tired at work, we’d get to spend more time with friends and family so we’d be happier and to top it all off the unemployment figures would fall through the floor.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/working-longer-is-costing-us-all-135453511.html

Seriously we’re paying them even more now:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/12/mps-expenses-rise-record-high?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Apparently the amount of cash that the MP’s we elected to run our country are even higher now that before the expenses scandal. Oh dear.

I utterly fail to see how the MP’s can take more from a country full of broke people when more and more people are having to rely on food banks to feed themselves when it already blew up in their faces once before, and when in the past year we have had to listen to the justifications of why MP’s should be given a pay rise I for one think this is freaking ridiculous.

Frankly a new policy needs to be introduced that not only says what MP’s can and cannot claim for and sets an upper limit but also says that if any other public sector worker wouldn’t be given expenses in those circumstances, just don’t ask for it.

 

This is why the economic crisis is ongoing

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/20-workers-earn-below-living-073724996.html

20% of British workers are living of a wage below the ‘living wage’, that’s about £7.20 if you live outside London. And I can recall that the government considered things like giving smaller companies a lower minimum wage and various other things which would save money for companies such as making it easier to hire and fire which would in this climate probably mean easier to fire.

I say again what I have said before and that is that the capitalist system is relent on a comfortably wealthy workforce to survive, the capitalist system needs money to remain in circulation in order to function otherwise there is less money going round being actively used to keep capitalism going. Ergo we need a high minimum wage, so that people have the spending power to buy stuff, in order to keep businesses going with the trade from selling stuff. Ergo as long as a large chunk of the population are in poverty the economic cr4isis will continue.

It's the economy stupid: why capitalism is reliant on a high minimum wage

You know I think it’s absolutely stupid claiming that increasing the minimum wage would increase unemployment: Which western nation managed to cope with the global recession the best? Australia; and what is the national minimum wage in Australia? AU$16 per hour or AU$20 for casual staff. When translated into British currency that equals £9.42 per hour for contracted staff and £11.79 for those of us on those highly exploitative Zero-hour contracts, quite an increase on the £6.19 we get over here in Blighty.

For American readers; there is only about a 10-12% difference between the Australian and American dollar so after doing a currency conversion check: if you American readers were living in Oz you’d have the equivalent of a $14.59 minimum wage if you had contracted hours or $18.25 if you’re a casual worker.

Poverty makes a recession worse because in a capitalist system there is a reliance on spending power to improve the economy, if people don’t have spending power then the economy can’t grow. So if an economy exists where poor people are allowed to exist it will always have a fragile economy, subject to crashes and recessions. This means that the rich need to learn that economic stability is reliant on money exchanging hands – not being horded in a bank account that is full beyond any possibility of it ever being needed, yes people should have a reserve and money for retirement, but not to excess.

All that does is take large amounts of money out of circulation, which means it’s not actively being used to support the capitalist system. This means that there needs to be a fundamental change in the way we view money: we need to look at money as resource first and not as private property. Don’t get me wrong people who work hard should be rewarded for it. But that should mean that NOBODY who works for a living is living in poverty. It means that keeping excess money once you’ve got it should be just as hard as earning it in the first place.

I think we’ve all heard the phrase that money is the root of all evil, well thanks to capitalism it’s the lifeblood of western if not global civilisation: and who ever heard of someone being able to buy and hoard dozens of times more blood than they could ever need from a blood bank and keep frozen somewhere ‘just in case’ while clinic operations ground to a halt: well that is what is being done with low minimum wages and excessive wealth in the hands of the top 1%, because people are suffering a level of poverty in the west not known for decades, and there are people going hungry while a very small minority receive each year more than some earn in a lifetime.

UKIP at it again

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/ukip-bongo-land-mep-unrepentant-082840253.html#tpCJQH8

Perhaps this guy should go back to school. That’s where I learned what overseas aid is used for: A few decades ago we as a species did something we had never done before and have never done again since: we eradicated smallpox. We are only a few years away from sending polio the same way with a global vaccination programme. Should we cut that programme or keep it going? Bearing in mind before you answer that dear readers that polio is so contagious and the time difference between infection and the presentation of symptoms is so great that 1 case is enough to declare an epidemic. As long as 1 person has polio in the world everybody who hasn’t been vaccinated is at risk.

It genuinely frightens me how much support UKIP are getting right now, they’ve had so much bad press for not vetting there members properly and every so often someone really crosses the mark and the party has to disavow themselves of him- the other 3 parties might be out of touch in the UK but idiots like this are by no means the solution.