Greek cops…. defending the super-rich

SOOOOOO obvious what’s happening in Greece and Spain. Until Soviet Communism collapsed Western rulers thought it prudent to operate big welfare states and soak-the-rich tax regimes to discourage Western workers from leaping into the arms of the Big Red Bear.

Now the USSR’s gone what’s the point? Let them eat cake! Let the rich stuff their pockets and serve the bill on the poor. Let the West enforce a slave labour system like China. It’s taken a generation for this political seismic shift to work through the system.

The same applies to Western civil liberties. When the USSR ran Gulags in Siberia and shot dissidents in the back of the neck at Lubyanka, NO WAY would Western governments bang up Western dissidents without trial.

They wanted strict, loudly proclaimed “Western Freedoms” with which to beat the Soviets in the propaganda war. Again, that’s no longer necessary now the Big Red Bear is dead. Hence control orders, secret trials, rendition, Guantanamo, British cops strutting about with guns in the name of “security” and the rest of the New Authoritarian box of tricks.

Funny how dependent the West was on the policies of the Soviet Communist Party. Funny how Western workers, when they enjoyed generous welfare provision and embedded civil rights, relied on the suffering of the Soviet peoples.

Remember when British university students elected gerbils as local NUS Presidents? It was a bit of a joke, a comment on the futility of student politics.

But then Londoners, when they elected Boris Johnson Mayor, followed suit. Labour was tired, Ken Livingstone tarnished by various scandals, Boris had a TV platform on Have I Got News for You (where the editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop, fawned over him on a weekly basis). So Labour voters stayed at home, the Tory suburbs came out in force, and Boris ended up in charge of London.

While Boris was shuffling paper in City Hall and making fatuous remarks about the phone hacking scandal – ‘A load of old codswallop’ – it didn’t matter. People ignored him. It was Boris being Boris.

But now it’s serious. London’s fresh from the worst riots since the nineteenth century and it may not be over yet. Magistrate courts have sat all night, throwing the book at seventeen-year-olds for stealing a pair of trainers.

Meanwhile, Boris has called for bankers, hedge fund managers and oil traders to receive a tax cut. On Radio 4′s Today programme he complained about a generation raised with ‘an endless sense of entitlement.’

This is ex-Etonian Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson talking: Bullingdon Boy, restaurant-wrecker, home-wrecker. No sense of entitlement there, eh?

Listen to this young man deal with Boris. Notice the stunned silence from Boris when a fatious remark just isn’t good enough.

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So after an admittedly lengthy absence, Tank the Tories returns to nail its colours firmly to Ken Livingstone’s campaign mast. We have produced two Pro-Ken T shirts, which you can buy via Paypal. £2 from each sale of these shirts goes to Ken’s fighting fund. If they make people laugh while getting the message across, all the better.

Both are also available in white. For more details, click the Tank the Tories Merchandise link in the Navigation menu, above right, or click here.

Watch this space for more designs.

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So there you have it. Three multimillionaires at the top of British politics – Cameron, Osborne and Clegg – have made the poor pay for the bankers venality.

Imagine a junior public servant. He’s not a fat cat. He works hard each day providing a public service, perhaps in a dole office, helping the disabled back to work. He spends most of his income on a little rented flat.

He’s made redundant in 2012. Under new housing benefit rules, announced by George Osborne yesterday, if he’s age 25-35 he must move to shared accommodation. When he puts his milk in the fridge he must write his name on it.

George Osborne has never had a proper job. Unless you count data entry duties for the NHS, folding towels for Selfridges, or policy-wonking at Tory Party HQ. He benefits from a £4 million trust fund, given him by his papa, held offshore to avoid tax.

Nick Clegg, a millionaire banker’s son, is so out of touch he thought the state pension was £30 a week.

David Cameron, worth c. £30 million, mostly from his father, considers his wife “very unconventional” because she went to a day school.

Let’s see if the Brits put up with this. We’re slow to anger but class hatred is never far below the surface.

The Scots, in particular, do not like posh English Tories with their hands in Jock pockets. In fact they like them so little that in May 2010 they elected just one, yes one, Tory MP north of the border.

But Germany still has a large manufacturing base with good management and strong trade unions. The Tories eviscerated British manufacturing in the 1980s, leaving us at the mercy of a service sector infested by greedy bankers led by the likes of Fred Goodwin.

Leading the German recovery is steelmaker ThyssenKrupp. They manufacture high quality carbon steel, machine tools, automotive parts – everything British workers used to make before the Tories branded them ‘the enemy within’ and destroyed their industries, communities, and their pride.

Generational unemployment followed – for those who failed to find work in a call centre – and the Tories now blame them for their unemployment, describe their children as ‘feral’, and attack their daughters’ sexual morality.

Britain’s Tories – the most unpatriotic ruling class in the world.

During the economic crisis of 2008-09, the Conservatives tried repeatedly to pin the blame for a global situation on the Labour government. It was an astonishing display of gall in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The Conservatives indulged in the worst sort of politicking, not just lying but bellowing their lies over and over in the hope that if they lied loud enough and long enough, some of it might stick. Perhaps it did, though not enough to secure the widely mistrusted David Cameron an overall majority.

No sane person could truthfully argue that the global economic crisis was the fault of Britain’s Labour goverment. By contrast, the recession we now face in the UK is entirely the fault of the Conservative-LibDem coalition, which has trampled the green shoots of recovery in a desperate bid to punish the British people for having had 15 years of comfort and prosperity.

David Cameron does not believe you deserved to have 15 years of decent wages and working standards, greater financial security and better healthcare. He not only wants to take it away from you, he wants to punish you for ever having had it in the first place.

This time it’s nothing to do with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac – or even Fred Goodwin. This time the blame lies entirely with David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

FOOTNOTE
Rather than sitting at home, frothing in a helpless rage, we’ll be joining the Coalition of Resistance alongside Tony Benn, Caroline Lucas, Bob Crow, Mark Serwotka and many other fine people. We hope you will too. See http://coalitionofresistance.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/call-for-a-coalition-of-resistance-against-cuts-and-privatisation for details.

• blamed the victim
• libelled the dead
• planted evidence
• set up a whitewash inquiry
• promoted those responsible
• made the Queen decorate the officers
• gave the killers hefty state pensions

Before Bloody Sunday the IRA was a moribund organisation. After Bloody Sunday it couldn’t sign up recruits fast enough. IRA quartermasters scratched their heads as a mass of new weapons arrived and had cash coming out of their ears, much of it from the US.

Years of death and heartache followed. In other words, the idiot British state acted as the IRA’s recruiting sergeant, fund raiser, and international advertising agent.

It’s markedly similar to the situation in Israel now, with the Israeli state acting as Bin Laden’s enthusiastic recruiter-in-chief: killing Palestinians, lying about it, putting silver-tongued spokesmen on TV to spin the lies, blaming the victim, libelling the dead, organising whitewash inquiries, appointing people like Tony Blair to “investigate.”

Total madness. Israel’s behaviour led directly to planes hitting the Twin Towers and bombs on the London transport system. You can’t treat people that way and not expect blow-back.

To acknowledge the amazingly stupidity of the British and Israeli states isn’t to be soft on terrorism. Quite the reverse. It’s a simple acknowledgement that you can’t be vile to people and expect to get away with it. They may decide to respond. You may not like their response. It may not be morally pure.

But whose fault is that?

It didn’t take long for the news, and a boycott, to spread on Twitter (see #bigotbar and #greencoatboy).

If you feel as strongly about this as a huge number of people clearly do, please email the chain that owns the pub, Punch Taverns:

guestservice[at]punchtaverns.com

Punch Taverns chief executive: giles.thorley[at]punchtaverns.com

You can also register your disgust with Caroline Nodder, editor of industry newspaper The Publican:

carolinen[at]thepublican.com

Here is our letter to Punch Taverns:

Dear Sir/Madam

I am extremely shocked to hear from friends that they have been refused service in one of your pubs, the Greencoat Boy in SW1, on account of being gay. They had booked a room for an LGBT Labour (as in the political party) function and were told by the manager that he would not have taken the booking if he had known they were gay; he then refused to serve them.

This is absolutely atrocious behaviour, for which there is no excuse. This kind of bigotry is totally unacceptable anywhere but in central London it is
astonishing.

You should be aware that a vigorous boycott campaign is already spreading rapidly via Twitter. This boycott will not just be carried out by the gay community but by all reasonable people.

Unless you sack the bigot responsible and make a full apology to the victims, I fear the boycott will spread from one pub to your entire retail operation.

Faces in the crowd

Young anarchist

Hyde Park Corner

Ladies in the crowd

Atatürk

Kensington Squaddies

Face in the crowd

Faces in the crowd

Further images at Politics Worldwide. HiRes un-watermarked images available from webmaster at tankthetories dot com