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1st August, from not so August Austin.
Yippee! Bloggy Days are here again. At last the summer recess of the most exciting session we’ve had since, at least, 2003. Too much blah to blog. Until Tony sent us away to sit on the beech at Cleethorpes in the hope that we’ll forget about Iraq, WMD, Britain as Robin to America’s Batman, University fees, Foundation hospitals, City Academies and other assorted Tony tactics. “Look I have Come Through”, thinks the Great Helmsman. “Now I can get on with devising the meteoritic mish mash I want to foist on the party for the upcoming election. Divide and rule in education and health, Yobbo-bashing as a social strategy, squeezing social security while subsidising fat cats, giving more boozing time but ask people to drink less and holding the unions in check so they don’t frighten the incoming investment we’re hooked on. It looks so awful Austin will have to ask to be excused on grounds of taste. Or perhaps religion.
New Labour life is becoming like Terry Southern’s The Magic Christian. New cruise liner is heavily promoted so the elite scramble to get on board. It has closed circuit television live from the Bridge which gradually reveals that Captain Klaus is insane, doesn’t know where he’s going and between bouts of wrestling with a huge gorilla is steaming into every storm available. Exciting stuff but difficult for the crew to explain to the passengers. We don’t know what’s going on either.
Time for First Mate John Prescott to do the duty he’s shirked for so long. Take Tony gently by the throat in your affectionate way John. Gently explain that shit flows down from the top and Labour’s been deluged in it these seven years. Tony loves playing Tony Blair but now he’s got to play the role of a Labour leader because he leads the Labour Party, not nicer conservatives. Labour isn’t just a party it’s a state of mind and Tony hasn’t got it, though mercifully he holds office only durante our bene placito, as they say in Harrogate, and he’s beginning to run out of use to us.
Just in case John isn’t tough enough to deliver my message, I’m going to stay on in Grimsby to help him. I need more time to master the job. So, if you’re happy about this good news John please tell your face. Smile for Chrissake. You’ve had seven years living on New Pluto. Nice for Tony, miserable for us but now’s the time to drop the “new” rubbish, become real Labour and drive Socialism forward. It’s time. It’s necessary and we now have the opportunity. There’s no threat from the Tories who can’t square the right wing circle of improving public services while cutting taxes, while the Liberals would rather be all things to all men than make hard policy choices. Even Kilroy-Silk is no great threat. Just better looking. And nearer the mark on the EU - that palatial retirement home for out of work Mandies.
Time now to enthuse the Labour Party and please the people by dedicating Labour to the masses not the meritocrats, those who struggle to make ends meet not those who’ve too much already. The Brits, not the Outhouse on gradgrind wages, not those who write their own bonanza pay cheques. The People, Tony, the People, not Celebs and Fat Cats but the ordinary folk. Like the people of Grimsby. Or Hartlepool which is much the same. Without the culture.
The people need economic growth and jobs, cheap money an economy run for production not Finance, expansion not just fighting dead inflation. Let’s Grow with Labour. Only growth gives us betterment and the surplus to redistribute in public spending to improve the lot of the people. We’ve not had enough of it in an economy driven by credit in which we’re all hung down by debt and can’t even pay our way in the world.
It’s shaming to come to the US in the hope of getting a vote on British foreign policy to find that the Democrats at their convention are not ashamed to say that its all about economic gulfs (we call it class) and equality. They’re preaching socialist populism, generous optimism and HOPE where our formerly Social Democratic party (Rtd) offers only a depressing diet of fear, discipline and bashing any available yobs, asylum seekers, young larrikins, fatties, druggies, boozers, truants, denizens of the threatening underclass and anyone David Blunkett happens not to like at the moment.
Socialism was said to have foundered in the US on the shoals of roast beef and apple pie. Britain never got such a bonanza but socialism was sold out by the Blairites, the meritocratic, the elite, the media and those so timorous they dare not stand up for the people because their highest wisdom is to prostrate their country before wealth, foreign investment, multinational capital and a European Union which holds out nothing for Britain. Labour is about EQUALITY EQUALITY EQUALITY EQUALITY and a bit more EQUALITY, plus perhaps some more EQUALITY. Or it’s about NOWT
Tony, it’s time to change. Time for Labour not conservatism with added sweeteners. Time to say “You Know Labour Government works”. So it’s time now to move on and build the fairer more equal society Labour is about. About Time.
If you cant do that. Or don’t want to. Its time to go. Think on’t Lad. For us, it’s Labour or nowt. |
