Westminster Conservatives prepare for electoral defeat and plan lobbying campaign against next Labour Government

Westminster Conservatives prepare for electoral defeat and plan lobbying campaign against next Labour Government.

Poems

By my friend Neil.

Neil Elder Poetry

 

The Fish And The Jay

Kick out the clichés about birds;
flight, freedom, sky.
Focus instead upon
the dead jay found in a pond.

Entangled with weed,
and wire mesh,
to keep the herons away,
it found itself surprised
by the weight of the water.
In terror it beat its wings
against the strands that clung,
until the fight was gone
and only the slowness of time
and suffering mocked the bird to its end.

I dug a hole and with the shovel
lifted the dead thing dripping.
Stiffly it slid from the spade
into its peaty nest.
The blues and auburns were faded –
the way colours of aquarium fish
dull when interest in them has gone.
The tank all furred;
through a green scum you peer,
to eventually find the creatures
stiff upon their sides.

Your hands are bleeding from
pulling at the wire.
My head is…

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One day in the life of a blogger

Worrying …

Politics and Insights

Recently I wrote an article about Green ideology, and in particular, I explored the tension between environmentalism, human rights, equality and social justice. This is an important issue, because how ideologies are translated into policy often has profound and far-reaching social consequences.

I discussed the environmentalism and “blood and soil” philosophy underpinning the Volk and Nazi movements, the Nazis being an exemplar of the issues raised. I also discussed Malthus, and his ideas on population growth and the finite nature of resources. I linked some of the Green philosophy  and policies with Malthus’s ideas. My point was that it is not the ideas in themselves that are problematic: it is the context, the application, the way those ideas are translated via policy and the consequences that need some discussion.

Malthus’s ideas both informed and were informed by a context of Social Darwinism, eugenics, laissez faire capitalism, competitive individualism, all…

View original post 2,101 more words

It’s Legitimate to Hate the Working Class

Chavs” is an interesting corrective for those who have bought in to the New Labour/Tory view that society is now divided into a large ambitious middle class and a rump of council estate dwelling sub-humans we call chavs. Jones shows how unpleasant middle class journo’s from Melanie Phillips to Toby Young have created a class portrait of a group of beasts who live immoral lives, spawning children left right and centre as soon as they hit puberty and living on benefits WE pay. He also shows , how like all stereotypes this is mostly untrue. Labour has neglected its own people, Labour have let manufacturing industry decline and encouraged the City of London, let council housing become under-built and under-funded: concentrating on the ‘aspirational’ middle class. In common with much of left radical thinking in the Labour Party today he feels that the Tories have had the class war all their own way ably supported by the Labour Party.

It was a generation ago that Harold Wilson ( no radical) could speak of ‘an irreversible shift in wealth and power to working people’ instead the reverse has happened and the rich are now richer than ever before. Jones points the way back to a society where people have decent schools, houses, jobs and environment. Yes, it can be paid for by those who have and consume too much and either patronise or despise the rest of us. It is vastly encouraging that a young man of Jones’ intellect and integrity should write a book about Britain’s forgotten poor.

hand and brain

The blog is, of course, about socialism. It has always puzzled me how many people who are neither rich or selfish support political parties which are. In Britain, or rather England, we have the Conservative Party which since its birth into modernity after 1832 has been all about preserving the wealth and privilege of the upper and upper middle class. There is a fiction in modern England that we live in a ‘classless’ society , a fiction which is supported by both the Labour and Conservative parties. In fact the last thirty years , since 1980, has seen a massive increase in the disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor. The share of national income going to wages has declined from almost two thirds in the early 1970’s to just over 50% today. Profits are just under 25% of national income – none of which is shared with wage earners. Many people like myself are outraged at a selfish government of upper class Conservatives preaching to the rest of us while they live on vastly increased profits, frequently from inherited wealth. It’s now time to Strike back !

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