Monthly Archives: November 2010

Ken Capstick speaks at SLP meeting in Wrexham

The Welsh Region of the Socialist Labour Party organised an important meeting of the Socialist Labour Party in Wrexham on 10th November which I had the pleasure of attending. Ken Capstick spoke on the economic crisis and spoke of the real scroungers, those who are defrauding the country of billions in unpaid taxes encouraged by their union, the CBI, to do just that.

This country (GB) is rich, but more and more is going into the pockets of the likes of Goldman Sachs

Since New Labour went a long way down the line, it’s relatively easy for the ConDems to continue the process of privatising public services without much opposition, politically that is. The beginnings of unrest and opposition are now beginning to show starting with students and some of the unions. The class war is continuing apace.
As I’ve said repeatedly even Thatcher didn’t say much about privatisation of prisons. even though the march to privatisation of public services was marked out under her witch-like hold on power. Now we see the first NHS hospital surrender to the private sector with, yes, a former banker at the helm. And from Goldman Sachs, so often a name behind financial chaos as adviser to governments, including notably Greece and Britain. (Gordon Brown referred to them as “wicked”, but didn’t acknowledge this fact!)
So in the health service, in education with the so-called “free” schools we see taxpayers money disappearing at an ever increasing rate into corporate coffers swelling profits. At the same time social measures designed to support the most needy are being slashed without mercy. The “them and us” rhetoric keeps emerging although the Tory Toff who leads the ConDem coalition wishes it didn’t. It’s just too revealing, but it’s his nominees, close mates in the Lords, who won’t keep their traps closed.

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On the Wilder side of Hebron

In the most remote areas of a land which should be labelled Palestine under the terms of a so-called :peace agreement you can hear New York accents being spoken. Aliens from the US have arrived to push the people off the land. Surrounded by Palestinians they claim don’t exist and supported by the Israeli army with one soldier for every two people they are here to stay. Funding? Well that comes courtesy of US citizens who raise funds and make donations to their cause of dispossessing Palestinian people.
i have met such a person. I was taken to a place outside Jerusalem overlooking “the “Little Town”, Bethlehem to see the handiwork this American citizen was wishing on the Palestinian people. I met young Palestinians who saw themselves imprisoned by the checkpoints, electric fences and huge concrete walls built on and annexing their land. In Hebron check points are being set up at the entrances to the illegal settlements and homes of the indigenous are constantly raided. (In Bil’in young people are frequently kidnapped and disappear).

Will Birmingham now get public transport that’s worth the name?

Blimey someone has spoken. It’s 6 years since I had any say in Birmingham’s transport system, or lack of it. I spent my year trying to bring on the tram. Is the announcement of ‘a bus that thinks it’s a tram” mean the end of the a belief in the tram. For some maybe but not for Geoff Inskip of Centro. He see’s it a way of getting there.