NEWS!

(imagine it being shouted by a drunken Johnny Vegas for full effect. Yes, I've been watching Attention Scum! too much recently)

Since people neither I nor anyone who reads this blog will ever meet* are getting married, completely understandably nothing else appears to be happening today.

But just in case you were under the delusion that EVENTS can still happen even when the NEW MARIE DIANA is GOING TO UNDERGO AN ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE before the Earth has next rolled around to its current position in its orbit of a ball of flaming hydrogen 1.4 million kilometres across and 150 million kilometres away, here are some illusory gobbets of THINGS.

• Despite compensation being offered to the Gitmo detainees, Shaker Aamer has been held without charge for more than 9 years now. Cage Prisoners will be holding a rally about his case in London on 11th December.
• Sussex University is under occupation by students calling for no rise in tuition fees.
• Cameron has stopped paying his photograher from general taxation.
• Viktor Bout, arms dealer and scumbag extraordinaire, has been extradited to face trial in New York.
• Francis Maude is ConDemNation's Mephistopheles (and a mysterious organisation run from a private house near Stratford on Avon has direct access to the whips' office). OK, I was a little slow on that one.
• The President of the European Council thinks Ireland could destroy Europe. Go, you priest-infested backwater you! Honestly I have no idea whether this is a serious possibility or pointless hyperbole. My instinct is the latter, but who knows? We all remember the damage Father Dougal Maguire could cause with a poorly placed comment, and I assume the republic is basically just like a sitcom about priests.
• There's probably loads more STUFF too. But I can't process more than however many news stories this was in a single day or it all goes out of my ... thing. You know, with the hair and the eyes. Inside that.
• Yeah, that.
  

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*Although to be strictly honest, I did used to work for his dad. He is the one who's dad is Charles, right? He's not the other one? I get confused.

BBC Invites Arseholes to Spout Bullshit

Anyone who follows spEak You're bRanes on a regular basis will know that the BBC's Have Your Say site is a refuge for the reality-challenged at the best of times.

The Beeb appear to have decided that it isn't mental enough however, and have posted this invitation beneath their coverage of the BNP's victory:

Did you vote for the BNP? Is this the first time you voted for them? What influenced your decision to vote for the BNP? Tell us your thoughts by filling in the form below.

Stand by to repel wankers, captain!

I can just see the BNP's hardcore voters now, staring at the magic screen in wonder that the Zionist BBC has let them free to bash TEH TROOF ABOUT JOOS N ISLAMS into one of the more prestigious intertubes, trembling with excitement as they hesitantly begin negotiating the seemingly tiny keys on their keyboards* with their fists.

Cheers, Aunty.

*probably made by Marksist gayz to keep out the poor downtrodden whites of this ONCE GRATE CONTRIE

Update: I appear to have been hoist by my own petard, as I've been uploading the vids I make to You Tube so they'll sit properly in the blog column and not spill over the sides like they do if I embed them straight from xtranormal. However, this means that for the first time I've come into contact with YouTube commenters, who if anything make HYS look normal. I can only assume that YouTube is largely comprised of not very bright teenage boys.

Hope Not Hate

...Have got a 'not in my name' petition up to protest against Griffin and Brons. Sign it here.

Vacancy: New Party Needed

Given the disastrous victory for the Nazis last night, I think we can safely say that anti-fascist action wasn't enough.

Everywhere on the web in the run up to these elections we've seen anti-fascists win the arguments and humiliating the lying racist bastards. There's been fairly vigorous anti-fascist action on the streets too, especially in the NW where the fuhrer is setting up shop. But it wasn't enough.

I think it's pretty obvious that the fractured, fragmented left vote is responsible here. Low turnout and the lack of a single left alternative has made these elections the most right-wing I've ever seen in this country. I even found myself counting a victory for the Greens as somehow 'left' just to keep snatching at straws.

We have to do something. I suppose that the three main parties are centre-right themselves is something that it's almost easy to overlook, precisely because it is so prevalent, but when you take the victories of UKIP and Nazis into account it is clear that a right-wing narrative underpins most of the vote in the UK. The left have virtually no space left in public.

Wiser heads than mine will no doubt be providing a fuller analysis as the day goes on, but surely it shows just how desperately we on the left need to form a broad front electoral coalition that unites us.

The problem is that I genuinely can't see where the momentum for a new coalition can come from. My party has something of an image problem amongst parts of the left, although I've never really been sure why. Labour clearly can't tear itself away from The Project and most people I speak to have never even heard of John McDonnell. No2EU never really stood a chance at the Euro elections and nor did the SLP - polling made that pretty clear.

We are stuck. We can't tear down our existing organisations in favour of a new one - to take my party as an example, if we restricted ourselves to an electoral position we would destroy the very point of the party - so we need a coalition. I always thought RESPECT was perceived as too single-issue to make it very far as a permanent electoral entity, and the same with No2EU this time. We need to have a party which can put forward a genuine socialist alternative at the ballot box.

Of course, that gives us a hugely difficult problem in itself - agreeing on a programme. How far will the various groups go to compromise? I don't think any such programme should be overly calculated on concerns of 'electability' oddly enough. I think that left-wing ideas are perfectly electable, if they're put across with conviction and given the space to be explained - and besides, putting 'electability' ahead of ideology will only break apart any coalition worthy of the name before it gets started, or mean that it isn't a left-wing organisation if it does get somewhere.

But any such coalition needs resources as well as a programme. If we build one, we can expect significant party time will be taken away from other issues, like anti-fascist activity. And to get any media time at all it needs to be able to bring into it the union bureaucracy and as much of the Labour left as can be torn away from the party, which still, even now, seems like a Sysephean effort. And we'd need to be able to incorporate what electoral socialist organisations do exist into any coalition - which I can't imagine will be popular with the SLP or the SPGB.

Frankly I'm not in a great position to do anything about this myself. I'm just a humble party hack who gives up what time I can, when I can, to go to meetings and sell papers - and I've not always been terribly good at that. But something does need to be done to bring the left into some kind of unified electoral party that can make significant efforts to recapture the elected parts of our governmental machinery. Now that the fascists have got £2m to spend I think we can assume that they will become an ever greater threat, especially at a general election next year.

Update: Check out Anton Vowl - he's excellent today. But I'd avoid Socialist Unity, unless you want to be dragged into the very factionalism and infighting that got us into this mess in the first place.*

*Although it has also got some very handy background info on former NF leader and now MEP Andrew Brons.

Update:


Update: A productive/constructive discussion about the way to respond to this clusterfuck is currently ongoing over at Len's place. So if you've got tuppennyworth to add to this, why not go somewhere frequented by slightly more than 3 people? (Although I love you all, of course.)

Although of course, if you annoy Lenin he'll probably kick you out so you'll end up back here anyway...

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to vote with your conscience and suffer a BNP MEP, or to take the compromise choice and by opposing end them?

There's a lot of worry about the BNP getting seats at the Euro elections next month. Here in the North East there's 3 seats up for grabs, and it has been suggested that, with the BNP getting 5th place 5 years ago, they could get a seat this time round (although not everyone takes this too seriously and if you look at the actual difference in percentages between 3rd and 4th place it's still fairly unlikely).

Still, what better time to ponder the options open to the discerning voter?

There's the usuals of course, Con, Lab, Lib - I suppose I'd consider voting for Clegg's men if I had to, but let's see if we can't do a little better.

Hmm. Bit of a mixed bag, as it happens.
BNP, Greens, UKIP, No2EU, Jury Team, English Democrats, Socialist Labour, some random god-botherers, and Libertas. So a total of 12 parties, 3 of whom I'd never even heard of. How do we narrow it down? Well, first off let's find out who the 3 randoms are.

Jury Team. Who they?
Esther Rantzen's backing this lot apparently, so already things aren't looking good for Jury Team.
Then there's the name - sounds like a really shit mid-afternoon crime-solving drama involving 12 people with minor superpowers, like the ability to induce migraines or grow aubergines quicker than you might expect. GO, JURY TEAM! GO!
What do they stand for? According to their website they stand for assonance, and plenty of it:

'Politics for the People Politics without Parties Politics with Principles'

is their battle cry.
What does this mean? Well, their actual demands seem fairly reasonable, if limited. More accountability and an end to whips, that sort of thing. But if they mean 'politics without parties' in any kind of literal sense then you can count me out until after the revolution. Anarchism is fine, but let's make sure we've got some kind of equality and production on the basis of need in place first, eh? 'Cos, you know, if there're no parties then there are no united blocs to push for change and everything loses focus.

Christian Party - Christian People's Alliance. Who they?
Self-explanatory really. No. Next!

Libertas. Who they?
They're the 'fresh and exciting new political force sweeping across Europe' apparently. So the party equivalent of a Glade plug-in, then.
Pro and pan-European apparently, which to me sounds like an SNCF breakfast croissant, but what do they stand for? Well, it's 'democracy, accountability and transparency' - much like Jury Team. But they've got a lot more ambition than that: in this set of elections they want to create a brand new bloc, from scratch (they're a brand new outfit). This bloc is pushing for things like an elected commission, which is fine as far as it goes. But for me it's not enough to democratise the institutions, the point is to change them. This all sounds very laudable, but it's not going to devolve power to workers' soviets any time soon or bring action on climate change to the top of the agenda. It's all a bit meh.

So, that's the new ones, who's left?
Well we've got the fascists, so they're out. UKIP, ditto. English Democrats - oddball far-right English Nationalists, they can sod off.

SLP is Scargill, so it's got the nostalgia vote sewn up. Plus their policies seem pretty good - nationalisation, socialism, democracy, the environment. That all sounds like the sort of thing you can get behind. Pity their website's so bloody awful though. Come on guys, we've moved on since the miner's strike, you're not on Teletext now!

Greens are also pretty nice looking though. Fairly left-wing, Caroline Lucas seems decent enough (if you've not heard her on Mark Thomas' podcast, do check it out, there's a dear), and of course this whole saving mankind agenda is hard to disagree with. And their website's nifty. And of course, they're polling pretty well, so could potentially outstrip the BNP this time round.

Bugger, it's going to be them isn't it? I'd better go and get me some sandals and muesli.

Update: Heh, completely forgot to do No2EU. I've been out of the activist loop for some time now, as the course I've been doing has taken up virtually every waking moment, and I've not had much time for news (hence all these posts about books and films, really), so I missed out on No2EU. Still, it's backed by the right people, like the RMT and Tony Benn, its focus is all those things Benn was talking about years and years ago, and which Greg Palast has touched on. They do make a persuasive case, especially on the prospect of enforced 'competitiveness'. I don't know though - the last poll I saw didn't really place them anywhere, and the Greens look to be well placed at the mo. But then... they do make a good video, don't they?

How Euro Elections Work

Found this via Bristling Badger:



It's rather good isn't it? Luckily my region's not so heavily being targeted by the BNP scum, but they're still a presence. I'm still not sure which way to vote, but that's probably for another post.