Politics can change at very short notice and so can geopolitics

Keir Starmer

What happened in the last 48 hours is the equivalent of a political earthquake. Two political figures - Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon have been sidelined or so is that the forces that put them out of the way want to believe.

Nicola Sturgeon was not so much important as the Scottish leader that moved to break down the United Kingdom. She has been the tool used by those in charge of the European Union to put hurdles across the way of the Conservative governmenty in Westminster. She has been the outspoken defender of the EU against the British government. Who will have the political caliber to replace her and will the replacement follow the orders of the European Union? This remains to be seen.

No one apart from Nicola Sturgeon has the profile to play such a role and the Alba Party led by Alex Salmond will surely capitalize on her departure, in spite of the fact that Alex Salmond has been one of those targetted as part of the anti-Russia campaign. 

Some say that the Labour Party in Scotland will benefit, but this remains to be seen. The Labour Party is considered to be a London Metropolitan Party, not a national party, not a defender of Scottish interests at all and whoever has hopes regarding independence will not support the Labour Party.

The command given to Keir Starmer was to erradicate the left of the Labour Party that has been traditionally supportive of Palestine and very critical of Israeli policies in the occupied territories. Keir Starmer might not be Jewish, but his wife is Jewish and daughter of a Rabbi and their children are raised as Jews. Starmer married Victoria Alexander in 2007. The couples's son and daughter are being brought up in the Jewish faith of their mother. Victoria worked as a solicitor and now work in the National Health Service in occupational health. Victoria is originally from Poland and Keir Starmer stated that 'on her father's side there are mitzvahs, synagoques - there's all the traditions'. And also, presumably, all the related geopolitical allegiances that come with it.

Therefore, you don't have to struggle to guess what his views in terms of geopolitics and regarding the State of Israel actually are and this is why just a few hours ago he declared that Jeremy Corbyn will be excluded from the Labour Party and not allowed to stand as a Candidate in Islington, a seat that Jeremy Corbyn has represented for a very long time.    

In recent elections, the Conservative Party won control of the so called Red Wall, turning traditional Labour seats into Conservative seats. I wonder how traditional Labour and in particular Labour areas that have a predominantly Islamic population will react. Keir Starmer is a Metropolitan Londoner. It will be hard to persuade non Londoners and especially Northerners and Middle England. In the north, Andy Burnham, despite his retiscence to declare his aspirations regarding the leadership, has the right age, the right amount of experience and the right profile and as Mayor of Manchester can claim that he is not a privileged Southeasterner when a sizeable number of voters claim that Westminster has forgotten the rest of the country. In this regard, Keir Starmer's allegiance to Israel, his total contempt for the cause of Palestine, his inability to define what a woman is (surely he knows what a woman is, but he is afraid of straight answers that could put him on a collision course with segments of his own political party). To gain some support he will have to stop being a lawyer and become a politician. He will have to show courage and take real risks.

In terms of public image, he hasn't done extremely well. Kneeling down for the cameras was not his best moment. Emulating Boris Johnson by travelling to Kiev was not his best move either. His at best lukewarm support for the trade union movement did not dress him with flying colours either and it must be remarked that some critically important segments of the trade union movement no longer support the Labour Party. Will his charge against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters win him many votes? Given the present political environment, the next General Election is for Keir Starmer to lose. Having said that, as we never expected Nicola Sturgeon to fall from power so ungratiously and so dramatically, it remains to be seen if Keir Starmer will be Labour leader in 2024. Will Jeremy Corbyn's supporters accept the invitation to leave the Labour Party? Will the Trade Unions that still support the Labour Party continue to support the Labour Party? What if the Labour Party is once again divided? Worse still, what if Labour voters as it has happened in recent times, decide to abstain?  

UK Happy New Year: The threat is that the New Year will bring more industrial unrest with foreseable and unforeseable consequences

If the Lockdown can be blamed for the loss of economic activity, endemic strikes will cause untold damage to a weak British economy and the chances are that inflation will then skyrocket with rates of inflation not seen for ages or ever happening in the United Kingdom. You cannot have a national budget in times of significant economic losses. How can you predict how much you are going to spend if the very same day in which you announce the budget the indicators used to calculate your budget have moved upwards. 

Put it this way. You plan to spend X amounts of Pounds for Health. Inflation will eat away whatever monies you invest in Health. If you say that you will invest 100 Pound and then inflation eats away 20 of the 100 Pound, the actual investment will fall from 100 Pound to 80 Pound. If inflation keeps going up and you end end up with an endless series of strikes with people demanding a series of increases just to keep up with inflation, whatever monies are given as increases will never be sufficient. You cannot go on borrowing indefinitely.  Other countries have tried to survive such a cycle and have ended up defaulting and Britain is not big enough not to fail. Given the size of the British economy, there isn't a single institution that could supply the amount of funding necessary to keep Britain alive.

No government could break such a cycle and the moment the country becomes literally insolvent we are going to lose many of the advances made in many areas including Health and Education. This has already been happening when you look at the number of vacancies that remain unfilled. Immigration will make a bad situation worse because the issue is management and not lack of resources and this is very much apparent when you look at other areas like Tertiary Education. If we keep pumping resources to produce things for which there is no demand then we are going to lack the necessary resources for things for which there is demand. The aim for many years has been to increase the number of those attending Universities without thinking about the kind of degrees we really need. The natural consequence has been rising student generated debt, degrees that end up in a drawer without ever been used in the real world and drop outs. The inconsistencies are pretty obvious but political correctness stands on the way of decision makers. As if this wasn't enough, those in charge of managing the budgets of education centres don't mind accepting students for courses for which there is no future as long as they keep getting funding.

We know that there are issues to deal with but there is no political will to deal with them and status quo sustains a permacrisis.

Strikes generate enormous losses for the economy by paralizing the country. As always, the ones who will suffer more because of strikes are the most vulnerable.

European Energy Rationing and strikes: Sanctions against Russian Federation benefit Russian Federation

 

Europe is shooting itself in the foot: sanctions against Russian Federation benefit Russian Federation

In the midst of a hot summer and talk about environmental crisis caused by rising temperatures leading to fires and meltdown snow caps, people can easily forget that winter will come and that when winter comes energy prices will not only hit the roof because of lack of energy sources. Winter will come with rationing and this will bring with it all kinds of unsavoury situations, conflict and most probably social and political unrest across Europe.

Before there was any talk about rationing, prices were rising steadily and utility bills were hitting consumers that are now going to be told that they not only will have to pay more more the energy they use. They will also have to face the certain possiblity of blackouts.

In Germany, head of industry, trade unions and politicians including the Deputy President of the European Commission are alerting about what is to come. Industries that have to pay higher energy costs and/or industries that are told that they will not have the energy they need to be able to function will face extremely harsh choices. If they decide to reduce operations or if they cannot obtain the energy they need to continue operating, the unavoidable consequence will be mass unemployment.

In Britain, the struggle has already begun. Strikes involving transport will be reinforced by strikes of public sector workers that demand salary rises to cope with galloping inflation. Any salary rises will drain even more an already exhausted treasury. Any loss economic activity will lead to economic losses and will threaten the stability of the British Pound. If the currency collapses, then there will be a double wammy. Britain will pay more for the energy it uses not just because of higher market prices, but because the parity with the US Dollar used to buy oil and gas will be less favourable.

The British government is aware that it will come the time when Britain will be paralized by strikes and this is why legislation is being put through Parliament to counter trade unions to allow agency workers to replace ordinary workers. The problem is that alienating ordinary workers is a leading cause to political and civil unrest and there might not be enough manpower to prevent street battles and widespread violence. By passing such legislation the authorities might be unwittingly creating two sides at war in the United Kingdom.

In the meantime, the witchhunt is already underway. British citizens that utterly disagree with UK policies regarding the Russian Federation are being hunted down and their assets are being frozen and there is even the threat of trials for crimes against humanity. Britain has been encouraging British mercenaries to get involved in the war to attack the Russian Federation, but does not like the fact that British citizens of their own volition actually support the Russian Federation.

Britain is at war with the Russian Federation and sooner than later Britain will pay a very high price for it and the same applies to most countries of the European Union. The idea that Europe and/or Britain can target the Russian Federation without any consequences for Britain and Europe is as naive as the words of Hermann Goering when he promised Adolf Hitler that German cities would never be bombed.

Europe and Britain will have to face the consequences, consequences that could be worse than anything conceivable or predictable. Europe and Britain are moving around with the same self-assurance the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the eve of the launching of two atomic bombs.

Just yesterday, both Conservative party contenders for the leadership of the Conservative Party were asked very simplistic questions about Britain involvement in Ukraine. Not even the journalists of the BBC have the brainpower to ask proper questions. The issue was not about sending or not sending the Royal Navy to the Black Sea. The issue is what will happen if Britain is formally involved in the war because sending the Royal Navy would be an act of war. The time for intimidation is gone because any additional actions will actually trigger a European conflict.

 

  

Owen Jones: If Labour does not stand up for people, Unions will

 

An article published on The Guardian today catches out attention. The title is pretty suggestive. Is The Guardian seems to indicating that the Labour Party and the trade unions will part company?

Sometime ago, a high ranking Liberal Democrat, Vince Cable, proposed the creation of a new political force that would unite Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians. The talk about cooperation in terms of voting strategies in recent by-elections also suggest that something is cooking.

Vince Cable, like many other Liberal Democrat politicians are closer to the City than they are to the Trade Union Movement, and Keir Starmer seem to have turned farther right than his predecessors. In fact, getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn was part of the strateg, but all might no be what it seems. The Labour Party is split from the very top and The Guardian's suggestion that 'Labour's hostile posture to a newly assertive trade union movement could prove a costly error'. It is not a secret that Trade Union that finance several Labour MPs and that certain guidelines have been adopted in term of withdrawing financial support for those who do not support the Trade Union Movement as much as the Trade Union Movement wants to be supported. Even David Lammy came out saying that 'he does not support strikes'. Labour's stances are a double edged sword that can hurt its aspirations.

The Leadership of the Labour Party knows fairly well that the present troubles are not really caused by economic policies implemented by the Conservative Party. They know that there are geopolitical issues that are accelerating inflation and leading to industrial unrest, unrest that would exist one way or another under a Conservative government or a Labour government, issues that would undermine any administratoion regardless of political orientation.

By-elections are by-elections, won one day and lost the next. Some Conservatives are not happy with a government that they think is 'not Conservative enough'. They might prefer to stick to the old ways, talking about lower taxes, a smaller state, and so forth. Do we favour the use of more fossil fuels or do we favour the environment with less use of fossil fuels? Energy costs are going up and will continue to go up, pushing prices up and leading to an effective devaluation of the Pound. If you can buy less with your Pound, then this is in fact devaluation of the Pound or you can call it also 'a salary reduction'. Nominally, you might have the same number of Pounds, but due to inflation you will only be able to buy less with your money. 

Brexit and Nationalisation: Reality and fiction

Brexit and Nationalisation: Reality and fiction

Overnight, with the flick of a switch, Jeremy Corbyn plans to nationalise every single utility company and railway services. Now, apart from the monies needed for such enterprise, who is going to run the said companies and who is going to work for the said companies? Will the top managers and the middle managers want to become state employees? Will the workers want to become state employees?

Will specialized individuals want to work receiving lower salaries? What about the shareholders' position in what looks like a massive expropriation process? We are talking about billons of Pound invested in shares in companies that are valued in the London Exchange. The financial sector is the hearbeat of Britain and anything that affects the heartbeat of Britain can have widespread repercussions.

This proposed nationalisation has little to do with improving services for the general public. It has more to do with increasing the power of the trade unions that was dramatically reduced. In past public companies were used by the Labour Party for political purposes. Governments of a different political persuasion had to contend with the reality that despite having won an election they were often kept hostage by Labour Party controlled trade unions.

It was Tony Blair that despite being the Leader of the Labour Party knew that unless he curbed the powers of some elements within the Trade Union Movement the then Labour Party as it was would be unelectable. So he set out to transform the trade unions. The first thing that he looked at, together with John Prescott, was Clause Four - block vote.

The only way to weaken the influence of the bosses of the trade unions was to implement the rule of "one member, one vote". Having done that, for thirteen years - the Labour government firstly led by Tony Blair and in the end by Gordon Brown, never nationalised any utility companies and didn't nationalise railway services. Why? Because they didn't want to become themselves hostages of the trade unions.

When Labour Party MPs and now former Labour Party MPs speak against Jeremy Corbyn and describing him as dangerous, they know very well that Jeremy Corbyn is trying to turn the clock back in the Labour Party and in the country as a whole. The whole agenda is about power and control. Those led by Jeremy Corbyn want total control and controlling mass media and social media and any form of communication is very much appropriate in a dictatorial regime.

They will also control education in Britain. The idea of abolishing private institutions and the idea of putting everything under the control of a single authority will ensure that those born and growing up in Britain will have to conform to the ideological dictats. We have already seen quite a few examples when people who have different ideas or beliefs are excluded by Student Unions, Colleges and Universities.

At every level, this Labour Party Leadership is leading the nation towards a dictatorial regime dressed as a democracy in which everything you do will be scrutinized by ideological zealots. With this Labour Leadership we are going back to the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Massive tax increases, massive borrowing, loss of incentives for private investors, and in a country like the United Kingdom this will mean having to pay ever higher interest rates to attrack people willing to buy state bonds to manage the debt. The reality of low interest rates comes to an end and will go back to boom and bust that in the end will more bust than boom. The moment interests rates start rising homeowners that have mortgages will be hit hard and unable to make payments and we know what happens when this happen. 

Wasn't the banking crisis caused by a crisis in the housing market in the USA when people could not afford to make mortgage payments and many lenders found themselves with massive debts and devalued housing stocks? This is called negative equity. The words was repossesion. Thousands upon thousands of homes repossessed and the state having to go out and rescue banking institutions to prevent total collapse of the economy. 

And we will get to the moment when borrowing will not be borrowing to invest or to pay for public services. It will be borrowing to pay debts and for little else. At this stage, Britain becomes a Third World Country, no more the thriving economy of today, but a country at the mercy of foreign lenders. This is the cost of the approach proposed by the present Leaderdhip of the Labour Party. 

For Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit is an unexpected issue to have to deal with. The real issue is the creation of a completey different kind of Britain. Some say that he is a secret supporter of Brexit because the enormity of the changes he plans to implement would not fit in in a free and democratic society. This is not just about Political Correctness. This is about Democratic Centralism and those who know the meaning of Democratic Centralism and the source of such expression will be horrified. 

    

Japan: How much is too much?

Japan: How much is too much?

Japanese culture has been for centuries about duty, tradition, responsibility and the combination of duty, tradition and responsibility often collided with modernity and the rising pressures of everyday life.

Japan suffers from very low birthrates and this is not surprising in a country in which working hours have become such a priority that everything else comes second or third. The stress of the struggle to be successful are crippling those who are usually seen as examples of success. One drink too many and people end up sleeping on the streets.

The British newspaper The Guardian publishes an article that depicts a tragic reality that affects one of the most industrious countries in the world. Japan is usually associated with technology, innovation, and creativity but the negative side of the coin is when people are pushed or push themselves to the limit, beyond the point when success turns to catastrophe.

In Germany, there is movement towards the implementation of a four-day-working week. Technological advances should improve living standards and allow people to have more balanced  personal lives and family lives but despite technological advances too many people are losing their humanity and being pushed over the limit.

After the sweatshops of times past, the 40-hour-week was a great achievement but the time has come to think again and look very carefully and ponder about how we could be doing better for ourselves and for the societies we are very much part of. Images like the one shown speak volumes. We are not talking about beggars. We are talking about people who are falling victims of what is usually described as success. Japan is not just facing a demographic catastrophe but also a social catastrophe.

Western Societies should take notice of what is happening in Japan and start moving in the right direction towards a better ratio in terms of working to live and not living to work. Capitalists care when markets crash and they should start caring when people crash.

Jo Cox: Right to the Point

Jo Cox: Right to the Point

• The then Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered. Fact. 
• The man who killed her had asked NHS for help because he was feeling mentally unstable and was told to come back another day. Fact

• Jo Cox was campaigning to deprive quite a lot of people of the right to have say in a Democratic Society. Fact.

• In the UK, there is legislation and regulations that bans members of legal political parties from certain professions. Fact.

These are the irrefutable facts and we know that this is the case and that for a very long time 1) the infra-structure to deal with cases of mental illness has been deficient and 2) there has been institutionalised political repression promoted by some political parties, the mass media and para-political organisations and the Trade Union movement to the point that one particular organisation called the National Union of Journalists actively encourages and promotes hostile attitudes against people who do not agree with its own ideological platform.

At this moment in time, I am not a member of any political party, I have no political affiliation whatsoever. Just a few days ago, I went to witness rallies that took part near the Houses of Parliament - one organised by Britain First and another organised by EDL.

I was accosted by a woman identified as a representative of the National Union of Journalists that in a very intimidating bully manner came to me and started a sort of interrogation followed by all kinds of accusations. I was there merely as an observer, filming and talking to people around me and this included talking to deployed Police officers both at Charing Cross BR and on the Embankment promenade. I didn't make any speeches. I didn't applaud or cheer anyone. I repeat: I was there merely as an external observer.

So called UAF and Hope Not Hate are bully organisations and we know the tactics some of their members use wearing balaclavas and physically attacking those that they don't like. It has got to the point when Conservative Party activists were attacked and politicians like Nigel Farage stated that at one point he was afraid of living his home for fear of being targeted by violent thugs.

The death of an individual is lamentable but how much of what is going on was promoted by Jo Cox herself? The present climate of intolerance and violence against political opponents has existed for quite a while and have said more than once that Police forces are deployed to protect people against United Against Fascism that I call United Against Freedom and Hope Not Hate that I call Hate Not Hope.

Banning members of legal political parties from certain professions is not only wrong. It should be illegal because it is not consistent with Democracy. The fact that such bans exist degrades Democracy and promotes discrimination and persecution.