Turning a blind eye
The news today is that the police will concentrate on other matters and not prosecute those who break the law against fox hunting too strenuously.
Do you think the police will be kind and tell us what other crimes they want to turn a blind eye to? It would be useful for us to know where we stand. They will never turn a blind eye to peaceful legitimate protest against the war - they will slap anti-terrorist orders on peace protestors as soon as look at them, but they want to tell the Countryside Alliance well in advance they can commit crime with impunity. Cheeky!

Sorry Mr Blair but not sorry enough
What a whining pathetic performance from the Prime Minister! There really does seem to be precious little choice in the coming election: vote for a corporate Tweedledum or a corporate Tweedledee: both overtrumping each other with the so-called "race card".

Whoever wins is likely to do so on the grounds people want to vote against their opponent rather than for anything positive.

I understand why people are tempted to vote for the LibDems and it is not their lack of experience which prevents me voting for them. It is the perception that when it came to the war they opposed it right up until it started then they went all patriotic, with privatisation they oppose all the schemes but think it is OK if called "liberalisation". I think we have to begin the long slow (well hopefully not that slow) task of building an alternative. I think the respect coalition could help and I think the trade unions could help more.

More and more people in the trade unions are concerned that their political levy is going to fund New Labour privatisation and war. Indeed unions without a political fund have discussed setting one up to oppose New Labour's appalling policies.

Standing protest candidates to fight against privatisation and war is better than people voting with their bottoms and staying at home on polling day! It is time for a change.

http://socialism.org.uk

Actuarial calculation
Public sector unions are responding to the concerns of their members over the pensions robbery. The more people know about it, the more likely they are to be angered by it.

Also there is a freedom of information issue. The government's sums are based on a cynical calculation. Teachers who work to 65 will die younger and therefore cost less in pensions. The government must have access to actuarial calculations on this. They should be made public.
(This presupposes actuaries presenting the information in a form which mere mortals can understand of course!)

The worm has turned (for now)
Now the teacher union leaders, once lukewarm, have turned around and endorsed a one day strike over pensions - urging members to vote for that option

If someone is being robbed and they have the temerity to shout out "stop thief" it makes no sense to stand around saying "oh dahling that is so seventies."

People are reluctant to take strike action for a number of reasons but now that Sinnott has been elected as leader of the union (I voted for Martin Powell-Davies) and now he is calling for action it is best to take him at his word.

Union leaders do not have to be "soft on Blair and soft on the causes of Blair". Let's see how far we can push them. It is an election year. Do that New Labour canaille want a massive public sector strike or do they want to stop bullying and start being sensible?

Excellence revisited
Even further back in the day: Men used to queue at the dock gates. A chargehand would appear before the shift was due to start and chuck a handful of tickets in the air, the men would fight sometimes to get the jobs available. Only the "excellent" ones got in.

As long as the owners could keep the dockers fighting amongst themselves they would never have to raise their pay.

If teachers spend all our time bickering amongst ourselves we will stand about as much chance against this ruthless and dishonest government as...shall we say...the People's Front of Judea?

New model army
Mr Tony Blair's latest stunt is to seek to involve NATO in the training of "new Iraqi security forces." The idea is to have a colonial model of security with Iraqi cannon fodder taking the risks and American and European advisers giving the orders. It is a policy which has been tried before. There is a name for this policy. President Nixon used to call it "Vietnamisation of the war".
It didn't work.


Apparently limb amputations have been carried out at Abu Ghraib prison. According to Time Magazine:

"Medical personnel and others who worked at the prison tell TIME that, with straitjackets unavailable, tethers--like the leash on Gus--were put to use at Abu Ghraib to control unruly or mentally disturbed detainees, sometimes with the concurrence of a doctor. That such a restraint-- which is supposed to be placed around legs, arms or torsos--ended up instead around a man's neck seems to be a case of a medically condoned practice degenerating into abuse. But there was also medical disarray at the prison: amputations performed by nondoctors, chest tubes recycled from the dead to the living, a medic ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide. That in itself would have made Abu Ghraib a scandal even without the acts of torture inflicted on the inmates by their guards."

Excellence
The government's latest stunt is to call some teachers "excellent" and pay them more, instead of paying all teachers more. By implication most teachers do not deserve more money.
The TES website debate included the following contribution from a teacher:
"Back in the day, Enoch Powell met a delegation of nurses. He told them that they were wonderful people doing a job which really made a difference to their patients. They were angels of mercy. So they had better forget any nonsense about trying to get more pay because they would tarnish their image. (Or to put it another way the newspapers would make damned sure it was tarnished).

"Lavish words on the teachers - they don't cost anything. The "excellent" ones are defined as those who can be relied on to denigrate the rest."

The new website for Socialist Party teachers is now up and running on http://www.socialistteachers.org.uk and has articles on this and other matters including government proposals to rob teachers of their pensions.

Sex Ed - Ignorance is Strength
I have been reading today's Observer which has a whole article about the American sex education program for kids - which just tells them not to have sex. Apparently there is a survey by Yale which shows that 80 percent of them go ahead and have pre-marital sex anyway and they are more likely to get sexually transmitted diseases because they don't know about safe sex. Oh well.

Also Bush is giving 5 million dollars of the 15 million dollars allocated to fighting AIDS in Africa to fundamentalist campaigns against sex.

It sounds a bit like the junior anti-sex league in Orwell's 1984.
Still "Ignorance is Strength" goes along with "War is Peace" and "Freedom is Slavery".

Phone taps
"Good morning, how are you? It's Osama Bin Laden here, we have a list of places we would like you to bomb this week, have you got a pencil?"
Is it likely that terrorists operate in this way? Or is it more likely that cells operate without direct communication with the centre so that phone tapping is of no use?
If so I wonder why the police are so keen to use them. Could it be that although terrorists may not be easily caught by phonetapping, peace activists or trade unionists - any legitimate protester or whistle-blower - may be less canny?
The state has blatantly used anti-terrorist legislation to target anti-capitalist and peace protestors who could not be described as terrorists by any sane person.
If they take away our rights, there will be nobody to protest when they take away yours!

Racism Ignorance Prejudice
Howard has caught the BNP in the shower and nicked their clothes. Realistically, if they want to deport all the immigrants they would have to wade through blood to do it. The holocaust worked because people (except at Treblinka) stood in line to be killed. They will never make that mistake again.
Howard knows full well that the BNP agenda cannot be carried out. He does not want to carry it out. He just wants their votes.
And I repeat the question which has been raised before. Where are the rivers of blood Enoch promised us all those years ago? Were they just lies to cultivate fear?

People fear "the number" of immigrants. This may be because they estimate between 18 and 28 percent of the population are immigrants. These are the "facts" these are the "common sense numbers" they are working from. In fact the figure is a bit less than five percent.

Racism
Ignorance
Prejudice

RIP