I am a rock - Paul Simon 1965.

 My wife bought me theLP/Album on which this track appeared in 1965, two years before we were married, which was recorded in England when Paul Simon had been touring the Folk Clubs over here.

Phil Ochs

   If you feel you have been living in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is because this power structure has refused to listen to reason ... Step outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own rules and your own reality.

The Financial Times on Theresa May.

“Narrow, rigid, unimaginative, sly, secretive and wholly lacking in the political skills necessary to win over voters or build alliances, rarely can a leader have looked less suited to the task before them. This is the consensus view of the British prime minister….”

Robert Shrimsley           

Quote of the Week from Oliver Letwin, Conservative MP

When interviewed on Thursday 28 March, on his proposal to hold another session of indicative votes soon, following the failure the previous day of any of the eight indicative votes to gain a majority in the Commons as alternatives to a Prime Minister May’s Brexit deal, he said "It's very difficult to translate from how people vote the first time, when they don't know how other people are voting, to how they will vote when they can see how other people are voting under new circumstances," 
 If the last few months have proved anything it is that our MPs are not fit for purpose and that our government are an embarrassment and a shambles.

The Corbyn abuse Plan.

 The following is an extract from an article in Counterpunch by Johnathan Cook.

Britain now has within reach of power the first truly progressive politician in living memory, someone seeking to represent the 99 per cent, not the 1 per cent. But Jeremy Corbyn’s experience as the leader of the Labour party – massively swelling the membership’s ranks to make it the largest political party in Europe – has been eye-popping. 

I have documented Corbyn’s travails regularly in this blog over the past four years at the hands of the British political and media establishment. You can find many examples here. 

Corbyn, even more so than the small, new wave of insurgency politicians in the US Congress, has faced a relentless barrage of criticism from across the UK’s similarly narrow political spectrum. He has been attacked by both the rightwing media and the supposedly “liberal” media. He has been savaged by the ruling Conservative party, as was to be expected, and by his own parliamentary Labour party. The UK’s two-party system has been exposed as just as hollow as the US one. 

The ferocity of the attacks has been necessary because, unlike the Democratic party’s success in keeping a progressive leftwinger away from the presidential campaign, the UK system accidentally allowed a socialist to slip past the gatekeepers. All hell has broken out ever since. 

Simple-minded identity politics

 What is so noticeable is that Corbyn is rarely attacked over his policies – mainly because they have wide popular appeal. Instead he has been hounded over fanciful claims that, despite being a life-long and very visible anti-racism campaigner, he suddenly morphed into an outright anti-semite the moment party members elected him leader.

Home in Pasadena

The Temperance Seven

The Anti Semite Mudslinging Caucus.

Urged on by Benjamin Netanyahu this caucus of anti Muslim racists are becoming a pestilential scourge in the UK urged on by a complacent media, some of whom themselves have a track record in this area. It is quite clear that their aim is to destroy Jeremy Corbyn for his consistent support for the Palestinians.

 The following is an extract from an article in Counterpunch by Andrew Levine  who himself is Jewish.

“Rebutting the claim that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism is a tedious and frustrating endeavour – in part because those who think otherwise are willfully obtuse and determined never to change their minds. Engaging with them, even briefly, has given me a newfound respect for those who centuries ago took up the cause of convincing Europeans that, no matter how far they might go, they would not fall off the edge of the earth. It has also made me envious of Sisyphus. He had a similarly impossible task to perform, but at least he got good exercise and worked outdoors.

  Zionists in the UK have been more successful lately at giving Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labour Party, a hard time.

Inasmuch as Corbyn really is a socialist and also an anti-imperialist – and anti-anti-Semite – with an outstanding record going back many years, the opposition to him from the UK bourgeoisie is extreme.

The role UK Zionists have been playing in their smear campaign has been nearly as appalling as the role played by the Tory journalists NPR enlists to keep Americans misinformed and on program about the “institutional anti-Semitism” (whatever that is) in Corbyn’s party.

Not being Jewish, he could hardly be labeled a self-hating Jew; even ace conman Trump couldn’t pull that off. And because his record is so clear, he could hardly be labeled an anti-Semite either.

His opponents therefore had to settle with the claim that he is soft on anti-Semitism, a charge they support first by confounding anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, and then by pursuing a strategy of guilt by association.

To hear them tell it or intimate it, everyone to their left, by which they mean not only everyone whose domestic policies would, if enacted, cause the British bourgeoisie to go ballistic, but also everyone who thinks and acts in solidarity with oppressed peoples, suffers from the same problem. This puts them at odds with the Zionist project and in league with genuine internationalists everywhere.

Is this the kind of invective that Corbyn or Sanders or anyone else who, however mildly, sticks up for justice for Palestinians can expect to encounter?

It is hard to believe, inasmuch as it started from a higher plateau, but in this respect the post-Blair Labor Party is even worse than the post-Clinton Democratic mainstream."

Another person whom seems to share this view is George Gallagher. Say what you want about him but he is a superb showman, even when talking into a phone on a blasted heath somewhere in Scotland.