‘Car Crash Brexit’ – The New ‘Millenium Bug’
On 6th January 2000, after the turn of the millennium had come and gone without mishap, the Economist magazine reported that ‘Y2K’ had turned out to be ‘Y2OK’. Only weeks beforehand however, and for some years, there had been dire warnings of computer crashes, aircraft falling out of the sky, power stations exploding and a veritable apocalypse, so much so that Labour minister Margaret Beckett was appointed ‘Minister for the Millenium’ and so important was…
Royal Baby to be named after Stephen Lawrence?
A wave of relief swept the nation earlier this week when Prime Minister Theresa May announced that in future, celebration of the life of murdered Black teenager Stephen Lawrence and the mourning of his death would be centred around just one day a year — the 22nd April each year. As the 25th anniversary of his death passed, it had been feared that government ministers, Royalty and other establishment toadies, already knelt in fawning genuflection were planning to atone…
Betrayal, Spies, Lies & Chemical Weapons!
One would have assumed at any other time in our nation’s history that the British public would have automatically been four-square behind our prime minister and the British security services in their condemnation of a foreign power apparently committing a terrorist attack on British soil. Yet the current controversy surrounding the apparent attempted murder of ex-Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which is polarising international opinion as one would expect, is also polarising political…
Sixty Five Point Three Per Cent
By Frederick Dixon: If you were lucky – because it received little coverage – you will have caught that news item the other day; that the percentage of White British births in England and Wales fell in 2014 to its lowest level ever of 65.3%. Well, of course it was the lowest level ever (so far) because until not so long ago, and well within living memory, nearly everyone in the country was White British and so, naturally,…
Some Thoughts on the Corbyn Phenomenon
By Max Musson: Most people from all political persuasions are both surprised and bemused by the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party, not knowing quite what to think. There are those members of the public who are of a more radical left-wing persuasion who will no doubt be rather pleased by Corbyn’s success and the prospect of being able to vote for a decidedly left-wing prime ministerial candidate at the next…
Mind Control and the Election
By Dafydd Ellis: They have used the same template for all elections where their chosen party and leader are promoted as strong and united, while the opposition party and leadership were being exposed as weak and indecisive. Labour in the seventies (weak and indecisive), made way for Thatcher and ‘strong’ leadership in the eighties. With growing public exasperation with the Conservatives, in the nineties it was “time for change” with Tony Blair and New Labour being promoted…
The Corruption & Debasement of our Electoral System
By Max Musson: Yesterday I wrote about some of the shortcomings of our political system here in the UK and in doing so, I referred to “the inadequacies of our electoral system, … the mendacity of our media moguls and the corruption of our politicians”, and today I would like to focus attention on the ‘inadequacies’, or perhaps I should have said the ‘iniquities’ of our electoral system. Political pundits will often blame anomalies within…
British Democracy In Decline
By Max Musson: As the day of the General Election draws near, falling party memberships, falling voter turnout and diminishing respect for those in public life are all factors signalling a widening gulf between those in government and the people they are meant to represent. In recent decades voter turnout at general elections had been gradually falling, dropping from 83.9 % in 1950 to 77.7% in 1992 and following which there was a marked drop of over six percentage points to…