Category Archives: On another planet

There was an old man called Michael…..

“There was an old man called Michael Finnagen, he grew whiskers on his chinnagen, the wind came up and blew them inagen. Poor old Michael Finnagen. Beginagen.”

Education (and other) policies seem an eternal “beginagen” routines when it is announced that “children must learn literacy and numeracy”. The obvious question is why there such large numbers who haven’t achieved after years of schooling when those like Michael Gove and Michael Wilshaw, self appointed know-it-alls, have been left in charge. Now Nicky Morgan, supposedly Gove’s successor, wants kids to know the 12 times table, it is reported. Why the 12 time table? Are we about to go back to pounds, shillings and pence?

How is it that education is equated with rote learning of specific items, apparently picked out of the air by those with no educational training. Of course this has nothing to do with education, it’s just another panic measure trotted out after another spate of bad publicity. Supposedly it is to tell the Sun and Daily Mail reader that what they are thought to regard as education is also a concern to, in this case, the Tories. (Since a number of the guys have been “educated” at Eton just what are they talking about? What exactly is it they think that the masses need?

It doesn’t look like something to do with being able to think for themselves. (Is that what Eton et al are about?) The problem is that whenever someone else takes over education we seem to go back to the beginning or basics so nothing seemingly progresses. “Education” starts earlier and earlier in the UK – whereas elsewhere in the developed world children might start formal learning at 7. When, they ask, will children learn to play? In Britain play isn’t popularly seen to be learning. Stress laden classes must begin as soon as possible after leaving the womb. Counterproductive? Well the experiments with the private sector leading hasn’t been exactly promising with academies and free schools showing no advance over state run schools. In process accountability has been lost and this year even the league tables have fallen apart so no one has a clue how schools are performing, even in the narrow world the UK education is being made by the ignorant and privatisation-driven political elite.

Nuclear mushrooms. Kept in the dark and fed on sh… don’t tell

It’s not presumed enemies we need to be fearful of. As those who live in Ukraine or Japan found out to their cost it’s their own nuclear stock which is the danger. These events hit the headlines because the consequences were all too visible with radiation being scattered far and wide across the planet. The drip feed of stories of nuclear incidents both civil and military ought to frighten us all into action. Stop this madness. Presently the world is seemingly in control of those with other ideas of individuals divorced from reality in for short term personal agendas. Individualism, which in particular the American Dream is about and sold to all of us, allows the few to impose their wishes. The truth about actual nuclear near catastrophe has been withheld. Eventually the truth will dawn.
A recent revelation was about a bomb dropping on North Carolina. These weapons, many times more powerful than those seen at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were routinely flown around. On this occasion something went wrong with the aircraft resulting in the bomb being dropped and only narrowly, we are now told, failing to detonate. Have lessons been learned or is the catastrophe the accident waiting to happen?

Venezuelanaysis, April 1st 2013

On 1st April Venezuelanalysis reported on Venezuela adopting “US style democracy” and a whole lot of measures that were being taken to this end. Media would be flogged off to Rupert Murdoch so that they “wouldn’t talk to real people on the ground” but read off news from auto-cues. The big corporations that “know people’s needs better than they do” like McDonalds would be bought in along with Monsanto to advise on food reform. Donald Trump would be sold a golf course on the people’s land.
If that looks like a sick joke take a look at life around you. We’re living just like that!!!

Hillary doesn’t get it. The hypocrisy of Western leaders

Western leaders bleat on about democracy, or lack of it around the world, while right under their noses the state clamps down on demonstrations even when they are peaceful. An ex CIA agent, now fed up with US foreign policy stood up while Hillary Clinton intoned about how protesters elsewhere were treated with brutality. He turned his back in silent protest and was immediately pounced on by heavyweight thugs, supposedly security officers. He was subsequently interviewed as you can see here.
David Cameron too was intentionally or unintentionally ironic as he went on a visit to Cairo among a number of Middle Eastern countries. The sub-text was trade, but most evident in his entourage were representatives of the arms industry. What fantastic timing as the Middle East rises up how could such an opportunity to sell to opposing sides and ensure that blood baths are well and truly sustained. Did he know that the crowds that had returned to Tahrir Square were chanting about marching on Jerusalem in support of the beleaguered Gazans? Was he with them with the wish to stop the bombing of Gaza which is continuing as we speak?

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As EDL invade Luton, Cameron rubbishes “multiculturalism”

Did anyone spot David Cameron in Luton as the fascist English Defence League fielded 3000 thugs to intimidate Muslim Britain? Sorry David, “multiculturalism: is a long and well established fact, not an argument, but if you’re intent on creating division then you’re doing an even better job than the EDL. Who needs them with you leading the country?
Cameron not only follows on from the Thatcher “swamping” rhetoric, the late New Labour rabble made their own contribution with the opinionated Jack Straw first attacking women for not conforming to his preferred dress code. More recently he has had a go a Muslim men for harassing white girls who were not so demurely clad. Seems to me a bit of irony here. Muslim friends of mine used to think of themselves unquestioningly as “British”. The likes of Straw, Cameron and the EDL have pushed them away, in some cases fodder for the “extremism” that they say the fear most. Worse still they put their lackey, Trevor Phillips, in charge of the Equalities Commission declaring war on multiculturalism.

One rule for me. The rest of you can eff off, and this comes from a New Lab MP!

First our jobs now our pensions. While one group massages their salaries and pensions upwards and onwards into phone book numbers these bastards tell us that ours are unaffordable. We pay to keep them in their rarified existence by having to work longer and increase our payments. It’s the public purse we are reminded. Well who has bailed out the banks and financial institutions that created the economic crisis? Their hard work? That’s what they’ll have us believe and they’ve got the craven media to go along with it.
A Con Dem coalition? Where does Lord ******* Hutton come from? Isn’t he a Labour politician? Didn’t their new leader get a union vote to get there? First thing he did was to tell his electors he doesn’t support strike action. Has he said anything about attacks on their pensions? “Red Ed”? Ha bloody ha. The coalition against the working class is Con Dem LAB, virtually the whole of the Westminster clique. The whole edifice is in the pocket of corporate interests. They alone decide our future, poisoning the planet as they pay themselves fancy sums, feeding us on genetically modified but profitable toxic food, contaminating and withholding water supplies and so on. They want bigger and better wars as they back up the arms and nuclear industry. And there stands Lord Hutton with his boots blacked. He was once voted in by Labour voters but who can get rid of him now? How? The rest of us can rot in hell. Class traitor? What do you mean?

So what excuse has Brown for continuing to sent cannon fodder to Afghanistan

Gordon Brown’s latest speech gave every reason for not continuing to send more and more young people into harms way. It supports a crooked government and each time there are multiple deaths the repeated intonations “we shall remember them” sounds more and more vacuous.
The one reason given for staying “that it makes us all safer” is all decidedly odd. The presence of occupying forces, the death, destruction and general chaos to ordinary people is the greatest recruiting agent imaginable.
All this has been said time and time but the old speeches are dragged out of the drawer. Who do they persuade? Certainly most of the British population are dead against troops remaining in Afghanistan. The only people rubbing their hands are the arms companies and their shareholders. If this and Iraq go away they will look for bigger and better wars. The sad Simon Mann, released from his Congo prison last week after singing like canary at his trial, made millions as an arms trader before his involvement in the Wonga Coup. Presumably he’ll take this up again and carry on where he left off.

Reporting Venezuela

Getting the facts about places like Venezuela, right off the map for the western press unless mocking their attempts to make life better for ordinary people. In this case Michael Moor (Farenheit 9/11) tells a story about meeting with President Hugo Chavez in Venice when he is disturbed by partying on the floor above. Michael says he went upstairs and knocked on the door which was opened by security guard with Chavez right behind. An hour or so and a few bottles of tequila later Moore claims he helped Chavez write his speech. Evidently Chavez doesn’t drink, and security for the President is a little greater than Moore says. Chavez says what he believes and doesn’t use a teleprompter so it seems unlikely he uses speech writers and certainly not Moore. Seems the whole episode was a fabrication. What do you think?

We’ve all lost the will to live under Capitalist Labour

So Alastair Darling has added to the melee in advance of the Labour Party Conference. “The leadership has lost the will to live” he intones. Let me tell you Alastair so have many of the rank and file of the British public who have watched New Labour take over the Tory mantel as champions of Capitalism. Those in the fortunate position to do so still command the ability to negotiate enormous salaries and pensions. Those who don’t lose jobs and pensions. One law for one group another for the rest. Who says the class system is dead as Blair used to claim as he saw to it which side he was going to be on. Clearly he is on the winning side while the rank and file of those that Labour once claimed to champion pay the bill.
I moved out of the Labour Party, away from New Labour, because their policy of privatisation of everything you can think of is so appalling. Of course those remaining in the ranks have lost the will to live. The problem is that people have no alternative among the large parties.
The Socialist Labour Party aims to field a substantial number of candidates at a General Election. Such was its success at the European elections that New Labour is pleading for the SLP not to stand. The answer would be “yes” if New Labour adopted http://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/myweb7/26%20POLICY%20PAGE.htm. The likelihood of that happening at the Labour Party Conference, even the mention of the “S” word, remains extremely remote.

First a billionaire’s yacht, now a villa

Peter (my Lord) Mandelson is running Britain, not from the Houses of Parliament but from Lord Rothschild’s villa in Corfu. Nice job if you can get it! I suppose the response to this would be the same as the Tory MP criticised for his expenses claim retorted that we were all jealous. Maybe.
The sad thing is we’re talking about New Labour, a party hijacked by Mandelson and the likes which came into being to represent working people. At every opportunity Mandelson has very publicly shown his love for an opulent life style. He borrowed rather a lot of money for his London home from a very wealthy fellow MP then he was shown cavorting with wealthy and possibly very corrupt Russian businessmen, people who cashed in on the demise of the socialist state. We learn from the Independent report that it was Nat Rothschild, a friend of Mandy, who introduced him and Osborne to the Russian Deripaska.
During the Blair period questions were continually raised about the close links with the wealthy, people like Bernie Eccleston. Scandal was on the horizon. Mandelson needs to decide whether he wants to take running Britain seriously and stop playing the fool. Regrettably this is just another example of how our political elite demonstrate that self-gratification takes precedence over representing the people.

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