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Posts Tagged ‘gordon brown’

Something to be really worried about

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

I listened to Radio 4 this morning, to Austin Mitchell after his fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference yesterday. Eight people turned up at his meeting, and one of those was his wife.

I saw the empty seats, the closed off areas at Brighton

I saw the photographs of half dead, half asleep Lib Dem supporters whilst Cleggy gave his all at the Lib Dem Conference.

UKIP and BNP are in dire straits financially; the LPUK is examining the pointlessness of contesting seats at Westminster in favour of building a grass roots local authority base.

Next week I am going to be watching the glassy eyed adoration of no policies Cameron and the Conservatives.

Basically Party Politics has collapsed in this Country, dwindling party memberships, over centralisation into Westminster, the recession, the expenses scandal etc has traduced democratic politics that has taken four hundred years to build up in less than twenty years.

The Public know it’s a fix, the Public want Radical Change and a New settlement, that was evident at the Forum on Modern Liberty, but that clamour for real progress has been stymied by the big three parties, and the growth of smaller Parties and pressure groups will never have a voice under this Electoral system. The British just don’t do the ‘Summer of Rage’

The Public has withdrawn from even voting, because ‘the Government’ always gets in. This has produced the bizarre situation where corrupt faux aristocrats lead the Labour Party. Has it really got to the point where Mandelson is the saviour of the Socialist Left? Is there nobody left in the Labour Party that can see what a travesty this is. We have now got a situation were Esther Ranzten and a baggage handler from Glasgow, are now seen as the authentic voice of politics. Don’t get me wrong anybody who takes on somebody who is trying to explode a car bomb has physical courage, but I am not sure that I want my politics to be along the lines of ‘fisticuff’ Prescott. A man who can barely string a coherent sentence together.

Politics is dead, the only option on offer is Mandelson’s ‘post democratic’ age. This is just an Oligarchy by another name with the rest of us condemned to the role of exploited serfs.

Read article: http://lpuk.blogspot.com/2009/09/something-to-be-really-worried-about.html

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How many more will die in vain before we withdraw?

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

All week politicians, media and the military have strained every nerve to turn public sympathy over the deaths of British squaddies into support for the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. After a year of parades, a new Armed Forces Day and a stream of censored reports of derring-do from the frontline, the killing of 15 soldiers in 10 days has triggered a barrage of war propaganda. Having all but ignored the same number who died in Helmand province last month, every tabloid and Whitehall stop has been pulled out to capitalise on the emotions unleashed by the continuing sacrifice of British teenagers in an endless war.

From the Ministry of Defence-orchestrated processions of coffins through the Wiltshire village of Wootton Bassett to the black ties worn by Sky TV presenters as they address generals as “sir”, the message is clear: this war is a “patriotic duty”, in the prime minister’s words. The only argument in parliament yesterday was whether the government had provided enough helicopters and boots on the ground to do the job.

Read article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/15/afghanistan-propaganda-soldiers-deaths-bbc

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Friday, July 3rd, 2009

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Mandelson did deal with Brown in bid to protect war criminal Blair

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Lord Mandelson stitched up a deal with Gordon Brown for a tame Iraq inquiry to protect Tony Blair, it is claimed today. The Business Secretary persuaded the Premier to pick a panel of establishment figures who would probe the conflict in secret – in exchange for his support heading off a Cabinet coup against Mr Brown. But with the original plans blown out of the water following a public outcry, the Government yesterday engineered yet another U-turn.


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Foreign Secretary David Miliband said for the first time that the panel chaired by Sir John Chilcot will be able to name, shame and blame those involved in the worst foreign policy disaster in half a century. He also said it would be possible for witnesses to give evidence on oath – another reversal of the original plans. The concessions were made in a bid to stave off a revolt by Labour backbenchers during a Commons debate on the inquiry. The Government’s majority was still slashed by almost half, to 39, on a Tory motion calling for MPs to vote on its terms of reference. An authoritative report in The Spectator magazine today lays bare how the Prime Minister and Lord Mandelson tried to protect the reputation of Mr Blair, and, by association, their own.

Read article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195366/Mandelson-did-deal-Brown-neuter-Iraq-inquiry-bid-protect-Blairs-name.html

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Tony Blair pushed Gordon Brown to hold Iraq war inquiry in private

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Tony Blair urged Gordon Brown to hold the independent inquiry into the Iraq war in secret because he feared that he would be subjected to a “show trial” if it were opened to the public, the Observer can reveal.

The revelation that the former prime minister – who led Britain to war in March 2003 – had intervened will fuel the anger of MPs, peers, military leaders and former civil servants, who were appalled by Brown’s decision last week to order the investigation to be conducted behind closed doors.

Blair, who resisted pressure for a full public inquiry while he was prime minister, appears to have taken a deliberate decision not to express his view in person to Brown because he feared it might leak out.

Instead, messages on the issue were relayed through others to Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, who conveyed them to the prime minister in the days leading up to the announcement of the inquiry last week.


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A Downing Street spokesman last night said: “We have always been clear that we consulted a number of people before announcing the commencement of the inquiry, including former government figures. We are not going to get into the nature of those discussions.”

Blair is believed to have been alarmed by the prospect of giving evidence in public and under oath about the use of intelligence and about his numerous private discussions with US President George Bush over plans for war. A spokesman for the former Labour leader would only say last night: “This was a decision for the current prime minister, not for Tony Blair.”

Read article:

http://uruknet.info/?p=m55340&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Britain: the depth of corruption

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

The theft of public money by members of parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege. It is rare because not one political reporter or commentator, those who fill tombstones of column inches and dominate broadcast journalism, revealed a shred of this scandal. It was left to a public relations man to sell the “leak”. Why?

 

The answer lies in a deeper corruption, which tales of tax evasion and phantom mortgages touch upon but also conceal. Since Margaret Thatcher, British parliamentary democracy has been progressively destroyed as the two main parties have converged into a single-ideology business state, each with almost identical social, economic and foreign policies. This “project” was completed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, inspired by the political monoculture of the United States. That so many Labour and Tory politicians are now revealed as personally crooked is no more than a metaphor for the anti-democratic system they have forged together.

 

Their accomplices have been those journalists who report Parliament as “lobby correspondents” and their editors, who have “played the game” wilfully, and have deluded the public (and sometimes themselves) that vital, democratic differences exist between the parties. Media-designed opinion polls based on absurdly small samplings, along with a tsunami of comment on personalities and their specious crises, have reduced the “national conversation” to a series of media events, in which the withdrawal of popular consent – as the historically low electoral turnouts under Blair demonstrated – has been abused as apathy.

 

Read article:

http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=534

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MPs quit – and blame the voters

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

MPs caught up in the expenses scandal blamed the anger of their constituents and the public backlash for their decision to quit Parliament.

 

Ben Chapman, Labour, and Anthony Steen, a Conservative, said that they would stand down at the next election while maintaining that they had done nothing wrong.

 

Last night the Labour MP Ian Gibson also offered to stand down if the voters asked him to, amid claims that he sold a taxpayer-subsidised property to a member of his family. He insisted that he had acted within the rules.

 

Such is the pressure on MPs that party whips have told The Times that they fear it could result in suicides.

 

In an astonishing outburst Mr Steen, who spent £90,000 on his second home, including big sums for lopping trees in its grounds, said that his critics were jealous because he lived in a large house. He blamed the Freedom of Information Act for his plight and asked what right the public had to interfere with his private life.

 

Read article:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6338174.ece

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