Oh dear

May 2009 - feeling abandoned by the Labour Party, swathes of its traditional working class support vote for the BNP and England elects fascists to the European parliament.

29th September 2009 - Gordon Brown sets out his stall for a last desperate bid to remain in power - fighting on behalf of the 'squeezed middle classes'.

June 2010 - Britain elects Nazi MPS?

I know Europe was proportional representation and the election is first past the post - making it harder for minority parties to be heard - but seriously. Brown has learned nothing. He's prioritising people worrying about their house prices over people who will never have a house, or a job; over child poverty and appalling living conditions for the poorest in society. Labour has abandoned the people it was supposed to represent, and now the only politicians who will even talk to those people are the fascists. Can we be surprised if they get in?

Brown learned nothing from the shame of the euro elections.

So now lets all look forward to a generation of Tory rule with nasty racists as the only real dissenting voice.

Cheers.

Ashamed to be British. Ashamed to be from Barnsley

The Hitler-Loving Nazi elected to represent Yorkshire in Europe.  I want to die.

We used to call it the People's Republic of South Yorkshire.  It was so Labour, so socialist, there was hardly any point anyone else campaigning.

And now we see for ourselves, in our lifetimes, how fascism can take hold.  Even with twenty-first century communications, we see how lies and distortion can be allowed to stand, if faced by total incompetence and a sense that voters are being ignored by those in power.

16% of voters in Barnsley voted BNP.  

One in six of the people I grew up with, had a pint with, went to school with, voted for a fucking Nazi.  

This cunt used to be the leader of the British National Front.  He's an 'academic' who has attempted to develop a 'scientific' rationale for racism.  He led marches where people shouted "we've got to get the blacks out" and was once arrested and convicted of behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace after being heard chanting "death to jews".  

If you call your party the National Front, it kind of suggests you agree with everything Hitler said and did.  If there's any doubt, the party was founded on Hitler's birthday, for fuck's sake. 

And this is who the former socialists of Yorkshire have elected as their ambassador to Europe, while Hitler's actions are still well within living memory. 

Shame on the people of Barnsley.  Shame on a supposedly Labour government - this happened not because of "mass immigration", which doesn't exist, but because you've spent so fucking long licking the arse of Daily Mail-reading 'middle England' you've completely forgotten about the people who were once the backbone of your support.  Hang your head in shame Brown - and you Blair.  I want to throw up.

Oh no. The shadow culture secretary is called Jeremy Hunt

Even a blind man at the bottom of a mineshaft at 3am can see the Labour Government is screwed, and I've come to accept with great sadness that the best thing that can possibly happen to Labour now is a period in opposition, where they can spend time trying to rediscover their morals, common sense, humility and political beliefs.

Yes, it means we'll get the Tories back, but that's OK because at least we'll know where we stand, and we won't need to feel confused and conflicted about hating the government again.

But one thing that distresses me is that I just found out the Shadow Culture Secretary is called Jeremy Hunt.  This is disastrous.  

The current culture secretary, Andy Burnham, is the most convincing of Labour ministers.  He tries to get people to call him Andy which shows he's down with the kids, and by pretending to like 'the footie' and having once been the drummer in Shed Seven, he shows he is more in touch with the culture of mainstream Britain than any other MP. 

One of these men is currently the MP for Leigh.  OK, I made that bit up.

But a culture secretary called Jeremy will be disastrous.  You can imagine the cabinet meeting.

"OK chaps, now Jeremy's going to update us on the latest in our - ahem - extracurricular activities."

"Thanks Dave.  OK, yeah, so as of tonight the Light Programme will play back-to-back albums by Sky, cos they were bloody good, yeah, they played classical music but with rock instruments and they were a proper band no matter what the oiks who used to flush my satchel down the toilet say.  And we're introducing mandatory after-school stamp clubs, and I've set up a sub-committee, chaired by Miles and co-opting Animal - heh! - to look into rolling that out to a choice between stamps and chess by 2013.  The ban in all physical sports comes in to affect in November, and we'll be using the stadia as playgrounds where people can play tig, and Knock Knock Ginger Run Away.  And Mr Murdoch has bought the televised rights for the national Dungeons and Dragons tournament till 2015." 

New Labour Breaks My Heart

How can we ever vote for them again?

News today that in the light of the dreadful, cynical abuse of expenses, rather than apologise or hang their heads in shame, they are instead calling in the police and trying to work out how to sue the Torygraph for printing the details.  I used to imagine that the Tories used to abuse power because they were Tories.  Now it seems you abuse power simply because you have  it, whoever you are.

The double irony is that this has happened in the same week they've announced the introduction of ID cards in Manchester.  What makes me laugh is that the party line on the threat posed to civil liberties by ID cards is, "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear".  The antics over expenses show that cabinet ministers are seemingly exempt from this argument.

It's such a facile concept anyway - it ignores the whole concept of privacy.  There may be things I"m not scared about, but I'd rather people didn't know.

So next time a cabinet minister trots out "If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear," I suggest we all write to them asking questions from the following list:

• What was the last thing you claimed for on expenses?
• Have you ever told a lie to your children?
• Have you ever picked your nose and eaten it?
• What colour underwear are you wearing today?
• Do you have any birthmarks on your private parts?
• Have you had a shit yet today?
• When was the last time you masturbated?
• In your view, what's your partner's biggest fault?
• And what do they think yours is?

If you asked me any of these questions I'd be offended, and I'd tell you to fuck off and mind your own business.  But none of them touch on anything illegal - if you truly believe "nothing to hide, nothing to fear", you won't mind answering them.

Who'd be Gordon Brown?

So to seems the dispute over hiring foreign contractors in the midst of rising unemployment will reach a resolution today.  The whole thing shone a fascinating light on the depressing nature of political discourse in Britain.

Apart from allowing Xenophobes to raise their racist heads above the parapet with less fear of condemnation than usual, it showed just how little people understand about the way things work, and the knee-jerk reactions on which people base their decisions.

I'm hardly Gordon Brown's biggest fan - I believe he and Blair have betrayed 80% of what Labour ever stood for and their kowtowing to big business makes me want to vomit.  

But you've got to feel for the guy.  He makes a speech about British jobs for British people, and when a private corporation hires foreign labour, he gets the blame.  Sure, it's embarrassing for him, but to read both tabloid news coverage and pubic reaction alike, millions of people seem to think Gordon himself interviewed and hired each one of these greasy foreigners personally.  

The Lindsey refinery is owned by Total UK, part of a giant French oil company.  Gordon Brown is not the HR director or even the CEO of this company.  He's the Prime Minister.  He had nothing to so with hiring these people.  In fact, it was Peter Mandelson's intervention which helped solved the dispute.  

It's hilarious that the kind of people who believe government should stay out of business and let it do what it wants are the ones most outraged at the government when big business did what the hell it wanted, and will give the government no credit whatsoever for stepping in to help solve a problem they didn't create.

My favourite part of the whole thing though has to be the daily headlines in the Mail and the Express showing complete solidarity with the trades union movement - something they've spent decades trying to destroy.  "We might hate proletarian leftie scum, but not as much as we hate dagos and wops.  How dare they come over here and destroy the livelihoods, hopes and dreams of the unskilled British working class?  That's OUR job!"   

Fancy apologising to hundreds of thousands of former miners, steel workers and shipbuilders now, Mr Dacre?

Thought not.