Sue Townsend on "The Blair Years"

Please read here.  A little more:-

"Dear Diary,

I read A Journey all night and into the early hours. At 5.10am I had a revelation. Mr Blair surrounded himself with Alpha Males: Alastair Campbell, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, Philip Gould, Jonathan Powell and Peter Mandelson, yet he was not an Alpha Male himself. He was a receptacle and a conduit of their wishes and opinions. Mr Blair had as much self-belief as a chameleon.

I remembered that when he returned to London after a long period in the United States he had an American accent, much like that of his fellow Christian and friend, Sir Cliff Richard.

I am not a trained psychologist but I am wise beyond my 40 years and think that I have discovered why Mr Blair was so keen to become a war leader and to swagger alongside George Bush. He thought it would give him another pair of testicles and would promote him to Alpha Maleness."

  Is he now supporting alpha male Trump ot Bomber Clinton?  Tough call Tony.

Forever Yeung - get it Inkyblue?

 I have failed so far to find what I have always considered to be the definitive version of this Bob Dylan standard recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, which I have on a vinyl long player. There are truly so many appalling covers of this song on Youtube, many of which have been viewed by millions and seems to be a perennial standard for winners of naff programmes like The X Factor - most of whom are never heard of again. If anyone can find a video of the PPM version then please let me know.
 This is the classiest version that I could find.

The Zionists deliberate attack to smear Labour Party leader Corbyn as anti-Semitic.

The Likud Party led by Benjamin Netanyahu wins a narrow victory in the Israeli general election (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Any attacks on any race is deplorable including attacks on Jews or anti Semitic remarks. However this blogger accuses the state of Israel of being a terrorist and racist country which commits war crimes against the Palestinian people.  The State of Israel runs an apartheid system by discriminating against Arabs.  It is also breaking a number of U.N. resolutions regarding its seizure of Palestinian territory. So why is Benjamin Netanyahu not being accused of war crimes by the western governments and their servile media? I also accuse the Jewish establishment in the U.K. of trying to poison and smear Jeremy Corbyn as anti Semitic. So why do we rightly see the West accusing Assad of war crimes whilst nothing is said about the terrorist State of Israel?
 However to be anti-Zionist is not to be anti-Semitic. Zionism is a political movement.Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people residing as minorities in a variety of nations to their ancestral homeland. Critics of Zionism view it as a colonialist,racist and exceptionalist ideology that led advocates to violence during Mandatory Palestine, followed by the forced exodus of Palestinians, and the subsequent denial of their human rights.
 My honest belief, as someone who served in British Intelligence for  over twenty years, is that at some stage during the creation of the State of Israel there was a secret agreement signed, guaranteeing the preservation of the Israeli state. The agreement, I can divulge, included  the supply of arms and the sharing of top secret intelligence, by organisations such as Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) with them, and the guarantee of  military intervention to support them, if it looked as if they were about to be over run. The original parties to the agreement would most definitely have included Israel itself 
the United Kingdom, and France and, at a later stage, crucially the USA.

 One early indication of  this occurred in 1956 when France and the UK , under the cover of protecting the Suez Canal from nationalisation under Nasser, launched a military operation against Egypt including a secretly agreed invasion by Israel to coincide with this. Although Britain and France withdrew because of American and Russian opposition and enormous domestic pressure the Israelis  continued the war and achieved their territorial objectives. Excluding the initial Israeli overthrow of  the state of Palestine this was to be the first Arab Israeli war.  The American objection to the French and British action does not nullify the assurances that they have given that I was suggesting earlier. Nor,  at any time , have these rhree members of the UN Security Council raised objections to Israels development of a nuclear bomb.

 I have come to this conclusion as the only possible explanation for the unconditional support that, "The West" has given to the Israelis since the formation of that state  and the deafening sound of silence to the war crimes committed by Israel over many years and more recently in Gaza whilst these same hypocrites have condemned Russian action in The Ukraine and other actions sadly currently occurring in the middle-east. This western support for Israel  and the gun runners and torturers of Saudi Arabia is all part of a wider policy of military and political action in Libya, Iraq  and elsewhere which have been a disaster for mankind and may yet result in unforeseen consequences which could dwarf  9/11.  
 When, after the first world war, the British and the French carved up the middle east by drawing straight lines on a map and ignored the history of the Arab peoples over many, many centuries they laid the seeds that have grown into the disaster that is today the worlds biggest crises area. As for today's Foreign Office it continues, like its predecessors,  to regard "The Dirty Arab" with contempt. Shame on them and shame on us.

Coat of Arms of Saudi Arabia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Who is the mole in Corbyn's shadow cabinet?

Harold Wilson, UK Labour leader, at a meeting with US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Sandstone cliff, Corbyn Head "The name Corbyn is a corruption of the 12th century corvanesse, 'the carved nose'" http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/herald-express-torquay-uk/mi_8032/is_20071120/torbays-beautiful-red-heads-3/ai_n43857996/ . This (mostly) red Permian sandstone cliff is above a little cove only accessible from the water. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jeremy Corbyn has now announced the full list  of his members for the Labour Party shadow cabinet. Some of them, regrettably, are members who previously resigned in the failed plot to oust him.
 My own, perhaps cynical view, is that Corbyn should not have reached out to these people but surrounded himself with those that he knows he can trust.
 In his quest for the party leadership the usual suspects spoke out against him including the Kinnock dynasty. The patriarchal Neil was chief amongst them although his son Stephen made repeated and orchestrated media appearances to slag off the leader of his party. Let us hope that he is deselected by his constituency party before the next general election.
 I will return to Lord Kinnock in a more detailed post but his hypocritical rantings came from the mouth of a leading left winger during Harold Wilson's  time who constantly rebelled against the then party leadership. He was a disaster for the Labour Party, losing two elections when he had the opportunity to bring the Thatcher administration down. And he will be remembered most of all for his betrayal of the miners during their 1984 strike.

As usual, dear reader, I have diverted from my subject.
I can almost certainly guarantee that some or all of the rejoiners will resign from the shadow cabinet again at a time and place guaranteed to do the maximum damage to Jeremy Corbyn. Sadly, more on this later.

You've made your own bed, now lie in it.

Definition: You made a decision and now must accept its consequences. Note : This expression is commonly used as a response to people who have been complaining about problems they have brought on themselves.

 This is one of an occasional series in which I am trying to revive expressions or words that are dying out such as one of my favourite words "smote".

 Similar expressions to the above are:-

"Reap what you sow"

 "Get a taste of your own medicine"

and, my own particular favourite

"Hoist with his own petard"

I can only assume that ladies do not possess petards, indeed, sadly most of us don't.

Jeremy Corbyn and Winston Churchill

Jeremy Corbyn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 I am not a fan Of Winston Churchill but he was well aware of one of the golden rules of politics. A newly elected Tory MP when entering the House of Commons pointed to the benches opposite and said to him, "So that is the enemy". Churchill replied, " No sir, that is the opposition. The real enemy is behind you".  Sadly Corbyn has been the victim of this effect  since he was elected leader of the Labour Party, by a new and invigorated membership, last year,  many of whom had joined a political party for the first time in their lives.

 These MP's have been determined to undermine him since the first day that he was elected, with the single honourable exception of Andy Burnham. Not only have they failed to support him but attempted an undemocratic coup against him as soon as the first opportunity arose. This act of fratricide had clearly been planned for months.

 I have had much experience of MP's and have found them to be an odd and diverse bunch but what they all have in common is a lust for power. Not the least of these is a new boy to the bunch, Owen Smith. He and his cohorts have used every dirty trick in the book against Corbyn, who, in many ways, is too nice a gentleman to respond to dirt with dirt.
 Not content with throwing insults at Corbyn (more on this later) they have now begun to throw dirt at the recently joined members of the party with sordid and untrue accusations that many of them are militants and Trotskyists.
 Having attended a consultative meeting of Corbyn's finance team under the leadership of John McDonnell (where surprise, surprise they were actually asking party members to feed in their views - how is that for a novelty in politics today) and a rally addressed by Corbyn it is clear that nothing is further from the truth. I am aged 72 and a life long member and foot soldier for the party and I can report, dear reader, that all persons of all ages, faiths and ethnic background were at the meetings but their was not a militant in sight.

 Regular readers of this blog (thanks to all two of you) know that a major concern of mine has been has been the plight of the Palestinian people. Corbyn too has regularly been a supporter of their cause and the dirty spin doctor's in the media, and Owen Smith in particular have used this in an attempt to accuse Corbyn of anti-semitism. Indeed I was saddened to see, on 18 September in the last hustings before the leadership election result is declared, that at a meeting organised by "Jews for Labour" this was the only topic of discussion. I was fortunate enough to have known Sydney Silverman and he would have been appalled, as I was, to see this muck thrown at Corbyn.

 Anyone who has followed his career knows that he is a deeply principled man and to accuse him of religious or racists slurs is a disgrace and those responsible for this should be ashamed of themselves. Meanwhile, unlike Kinnock (who failed to support the miners in 1984 and whose family have made a good living from the EU) I think that Corbyn is the last hope for the Labour Party, whose decline began under Blair - and his support for illegal wars and the neo liberal economics that have reduced so many to extreme poverty.

 So Mr. Corbyn, thank goodness, wishes to rid us of this outmoded and cruel economic system and invest in the economy and infrastructure of this country. And, instead of attacking the Tories, we now have these treacherous Labour MP's splitting the Party and causing a massive diversion, whilst Ms May continues to inflict further pain on society

Neil Young and James Connolly

 I have brought two books with me to read whilst on holiday here in Fuerteventura (literally and metaphorically translates to, "Strong Winds" and it lives up to its name). In addition it more clearly resembles the surface of the moon than any other place that I have visited on this earth. Nothing grows, no animals, except for the odd scraggy goat herd, are apparent and most of the grass that one sees in the few towns scattered around is made of AstroTurf. Rows of empty villas abound their, "SE VENDE" signs lie dirty and torn and half completed, but abandoned, holiday flats and houses are testament both to the deterioration of the island (a victim of climate change which was once a verdant paradise more than twenty years ago) and the recession that grips Spain. I shall not be returning.
 However, dear reader I deviate from my subject so let's get on with a review of Neil Young's autobiography , "Waging Heavy Peace". I gave up half way through, on the advice of Young himself who, at the end of a chapter wrote that he was not into format in a book and if the reader wasn't content with this then to give the book away, which I will. The book appears to have been written on an iPad or something similar, as and when Young ( whose singing I admire greatly ) had ten minutes to spare. There is no continuity and the book covers Young's musical tastes, his recording sessions, his car and train hobbies and he is open and frank about his personal life but meanders back and forwards, in "Back to the Future" style. If you have little concentration span or like to browse a book for ten minutes or so and then put it down then, this may be for you, but for sitting and reading for an hour or more then it grates.
 Although his undying love for his wife of 36 years, Peggi, is repeated throughout, it is badly in need of an update, as since its publication in 2012 he has filed for divorce against her and according to the press was quick to start a new romance with Darryl Hannah. If I had paid £25 for the book then I would have been very miffed, but fortunately I brought a second hand copy for £2.50 from http://www.abebooks.co.

James Connolly 

"Our aims are modest -

we only want the world."

 Consolation however has come in the form of my second choice, now sadly out of print, but still available, at a price,  from the above bookseller. It is a biography of the towering figure of international socialism James Connolly, shot by firing squad, in Dublin, following the Easter Rising in 1916. The book is, "The Life and Times of James Connolly"  brilliantly written in superb English, something which is sadly lacking today, in 1961 by C. Desmond Greaves.  Connolly was one of the pioneers of the labour movement in Edinburgh, enduring, like today, much discrimination and many hardships as an unskilled labourer because of his political beliefs before moving to Dublin, where he founded the Irish Socialist a Republican Party. Then came a period of seven years in the U.S.A. where he became one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1910 he returned to Ireland and played a leading part in the working class struggles in Belfast and Dublin.
 I was bought up in the years of the Atlee government and remember the pride of my parents in his creation of The National Health Service and the privitasation of the mines and the railways. Despite the dreadful post war economic situation Nye Bevan masterminded not only the creation of the NHS but the building of more houses in the lifetime of a single government than any other since. Most of these were model estates comprising a decent house and garden and green spaces for play and relaxation.
 My socialist leanings were later cemented when I read Jack London's "People of the Abyss" which recounted his period of living amongst the deprived and starving of London in Victorian times, at the height of The British Empire. Those people were forced to live in disgusting conditions within a mile or two of all of the pomp and elegance of Buckingham Palace.
 In 1964 I celebrated the return to power of a proper Labour government under Harold Wilson, who amongst other achievements despite American pressure kept us out of the Vietnam war, introduced equality legislation and equal pay for women, formed The Open University, abolished censorship, introduced  legislation to legalise homosexuality, ended hanging, and  reformed comprehensive education. Andrew Marr showed his bias and lack of historical education in describing Wilson as a squalid man, much  to his everlasting shame.
 I have now , late in my life, discovered the writings and speeches of James Connolly who through his own diligent reading and apprenticeship became one of the greatest contributors to the formation of internationalist socialist ideals and principles which simply put are an end to wars, poverty, exploitation and oppression.