Category - News

I have always been a Labour voter – by which, I mean that there is no one else I would ever vote for. However, there is still no guarantee I would always actually vote Labour if I disagreed with their policies. I’d just not bother – like I did (or rather, didn’t) between about 1980 and the late 1990s.

I almost didn’t vote again in the last election This was as a direct result of the incompetence of a certain Portfolio Holder for Housing and Planning (a Labour councillor) over the tram, road works, and 20mph speed limits in Nottingham. I was concerned that by supporting Labour on a national level I would be supporting this woman at the local level.

It’s worth pointing out that people like me don’t win elections for political parties. That responsibility lies with the floating voters – people who change the way they vote based on the phases of the moon,  which way the wind is blowing, or some minor event in their lives which occurred shortly before they needed to make their political choice. There’s nothing I hate more than to hear the statement “I’m voting [insert name] because it’s time we had a change”. But like it or not, these people make up the majority of the electorate, and they therefore collectively hold the cards which decide the outcome of any election.

And Jeremy Corbyn has managed – singlehandedly, and in less than a week since he was elected leader of the Party – to ensure that almost none of these floaters will vote Labour in the 2020 election. He did this by not singing the National Anthem at a Battle of Britain memorial service.

Corbyn is a man who went to work for trade unions almost immediately after leaving school in the late 60s. He was elected on to Haringey Council (synonymous with the “loony left” tag throughout the late 70s, 80s, and 90s) in 1974. He supports unilateral nuclear disarmament, and:

…is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and is the National Chair of the Stop the War Coalition.

(Source: Wikipedia)

In short, his politics (not him as a person) were part of the reason I stopped voting. I started again when it became clear that Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband after him, had realised that extreme left wing views were never going to win over the voters moving into the 21st Century. Such leftist ideas might have positively influenced elections 80 years ago, when most of the downtrodden voting population worked underground, but since the late 70s left wing fanaticism has become steadily more risible. These days. it is as distasteful as the stuff dogs leave behind, and which you have to scrape off your shoes.

You could argue that Ed Milliband lost the last general election (only just, I might add) because of a bacon sandwich. More specifically, it was because the likes of The Sun and The Daily Mail ran the photo – and other distasteful material – on an almost daily basis for the entire duration of their election coverage.This is how the right-wing tabloid press operates.

The point is that you can be absolutely sure that come 2020, The Sun and The Mail will be at it again. The problem for Labour this time, though, will be that whereas Ed Milliband didn’t have many skeletons in the closet – and they had to make do with the unfortunate sandwich – Jeremy Corbyn has got a truck load of the things as far as stirring up the emotions of the floating voter goes. The National Anthem affair is the cherry on top, which will appeal to the emotions of the vast majority of floaters. And that’s assuming that Corbyn isn’t clumsy enough to add to his portfolio in the next four years.

I notice that a local ex-footballer has just won the lottery jackpot. Terry Bradbury has won a cool £5.5m. Good luck to the guy, who is now in his 70s – he has as much right to win as anyone else.

The BBC, though, managed to dumb things down by declaring:

A former Chelsea midfielder – who made £25 a week as a professional footballer in the 1950s – has scooped a £5.5m Lotto jackpot.

Someone at the Beeb needs a lesson in maths and history if they’re going to imply things that are simply incorrect. Someone earning £25 a week in 1955 is not the same as someone earning £25 a week in 2015. That £25 would have bought as much then as around £600 does now, so Mr Bradbury was on a wage equivalent to more than £35,000 per annum. Admittedly, this is nothing like what modern footballers get, but it’s well above the average UK household 2015 income of £26,500.

But as I said at the start, good luck to him – he is as deserving as anyone else who wins the lottery.

Most people will have seen the news this week, where a supply teacher in Bradford was stabbed by a 14-year old thug.

Well, the little animal who did it was in court today and he’s obviously been remanded in custody. In fact, the minutes leading up to the stabbing were most likely the last he will ever see from the outside of a prison – certainly if there is any justice in this world. People like him are soulless and are best kept away from society permanently. Quite frankly, the same goes for whoever dares to claim responsibility for bringing the little dickhead up to be like this in the first place (and any siblings who share his, shall we say, “radical” views).

What was amusing (if you can find any sort of humour in something like this) was that he cannot be named “for legal reasons”.

Someone should tell that to The Sun. They have a front page and a double spread with photos of the thug as he was being arrested. They have printed everything they can about him, including his name and probably – if I look closely enough – his inside leg measurement. There’s enough information to carry out identity theft!

The problem is that their actions could easily be used by the little scumbag’s defence team as having prejudiced the case, making prosecution either more difficult or more costly (perhaps both).