The Barnsby Blog

CELEBRATING THE BEST OF OUR BUSINESSES - WE HAVE A PROBLEM.
This was the classic remark made by Greg Dyke, the best
director-general the BBC ever had when he entered the board room to find
himself surrounded by a sea of white faces. We have the same problem. Look
at the double spread pictures on pp 16-17 in Friday’s Express and Star. Not
a black face to be seen. But it isn’t a true reflection of business in
Wolverhampton. Simon Penfold of the Express and Star tells us that the pride
and fashion of the Black Country was on display for all to see at a
glittering awards event at Walsall’s Bank’s Stadium celebrated the best
businesses in the area. The only identifiable ethnic minority award went to
Bal Dhanoa and the company she founded Progress Children’s Services which
won The Best Small Business Award, but did not appear in the Express and
Star feature. But Blacks Veterinary Group of Dudley which has the only
clearly defined picture of a black man took a Customer Service Award. Not
mentioned as being present at the ceremony, was Business Link West Midlands
which has a Women’s Business section where at their annual awards ceremonies
black businesses figure largely. Then there is Wilson Govern a firm set up
to promote Wolverhampton as the best Cultural, Educational, Sporting and
Business Centre in Britain and is presided over by Bhanu Dhir who is clearly
an ethnic minority person and is friendly towards my Working Class Library
and Free Communist Bookshop which advertises every day its aim of making
Wolverhampton the City of Culture for 2009 based on its Cultural,
Educational, Sporting and Business superiority thus competing with
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Brighton and any other city with
such pretensions. The Express and Star promises a four page colour special
featuring all the winners from last night’s awards, so we shall have to see
whether the Express and Star makes greater use of Wolverhampton’s
multiculturalism.
Although all is not doom because the Outstanding Business Achievement
of the Year went to Ian Walden, the Director of the Black Country Living
Museum which makes every effort to reflect the multiculturalism of the area
which dates from Roman times through to the present day.

THE OTHER SIDE OF WOLVERHAMPTON.
Meanwhile in the depths of a Great Depression as bad as the nineteen
thirties, jobs continue to be lost, banks continue to close, homes of
people and private homes caring for the aged continue to close. Plans to cut
an unprecedented ?41 millions from services when only a month or so before
councillors and officials fell for the idea that there was a crock of gold
at the end of the rainbow when in fact Gordon Brown and his New Labour
cohorts were promising to provide hundreds of millions to ‘regenerate’
Wolverhampton and of course now promise even more by printing money and
promising the earth.
But these plans have now been thrown into chaos by the five Lib-Dems
who control the fortunes of the council by holding the balance between 27
Labour Councillors and 27 Tories. They complain that they were not
consulted on the cuts which the Tories proposed which include scaling down
five libraries, increasing the costs of using leisure centres and closing a
day centre in Whitmore Reans, thirty cuts in all. Lib-Dem Group spokesman,
Richard Whitehouse said that they put the Tories into power, but were not
consulted on the cuts and if they think we are going to support them they
are much mistaken. Lib-Dems are finalising their own plans which will be
discussed next Tuesday and the Cabinet meet the following day to finalise
the plan. The problem is that the Conservatives have more councillors who
oppose the war in Iraq than Labour, only one of whom states publicly that he
is against the war in Iraq. Yet this is the determining factor. If the war
in Iraq ended today there would be enough money saved to finance decent
social services in Britain and, no doubt, enough left over to cut income
tax. If plans fail after a vote by the full council the Express & Star
continues Richard Carr, the chief executive will have to draw up new
options. But why the chief executive? Joint talks should be held with
Labour and Conservative; and Richard Carr is the man who deliberately and
arrogantly refuses to explain to me and other council tax papers in
Wolverhampton who runs and controls the City. Unless Carr comes to his
senses he should be sacked.

WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS FACING CRISIS.
The capitalist crisis bites in many ways but in none so peculiarly as
the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. to which we believe that Blair and
Gordon Brown should be committed and we in Wolverhampton have used it to
demand that our Lance Dunkley and I have already demanded that the Court
should arrest Blair by dint of the powers granted to us under a Citizen’s
Arrest. It seems that contracts of staff at the Tribunal are terminating
while the number of cases being brought before it are increasing. This is
not likely to cause a sigh of relief on the part of Rob Marris, because as a
lawyer himself he will have plenty of opportunities to defend himself. But
there are many cases to be heard just at the time that high profile cases
are becoming due to be heard. One of the most important is the trial of the
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. But the contracts of lawyers and other
specialists are running out and it is becoming difficult to recruit people
of a similar status.
Another problem is that many people believe that the Tribunals are
biased and many believe that it was not only the Serbs who committed
atrocities, but also the Croats and Albanians committed atrocities which
the Tribunal has been loathe to arrest as the former Communist Yugoslavia
which had managed to arrange that different nationalities should live
peacefully side by side since the second world war was broken apart by
reactionary nationalists who ply this evil trade to this very day when
Polish and Hungarian nationalists join the USA in supporting nuclear bases
on their territories to the ultimate impoverishment of their working class
and peasant farmers. So let’s go even further than yesterday when we have
three matter of concern to end our BLOG and for which we seek your support:

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES : DIANE ABBOTT FOR PRIME MINISTER : BENJAMIN
ZECHARIAH FOR POET LAUREATE : A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

BY WHICH BY COMPUTERS AND BOGS WE DISCUSS THESE ISSUES : ARREST
BROWN AND HIS NEW LABOUR CABINET FOR CRIMES AGAINST

HUMANITY : FOR PEACE AND A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY.

MISCONDUCT IN PUBLIC OFFICE.
Damian Green the Conservative shadow Home Ofice official has been
arrested for
passing information on to the police that he has obtained in his capacity as
an MP and I agree with Tony Benn, a specialist on constitutional law who
condemns the action as a threat not only to MPs but to all of us since
Parliament is the lynch pin of all our freedoms.
But I have emailed Tony asking if this does not apply to Dennis Turner
our former SE Wolverhampton MP who kept his safe seat warm for a total
stranger, Pat McFadden now Minister for Business Enterprise in the Gordon
Brown New Labour Party. This highlights the fact that Turner then took a
seat in the House of Lords with the ridiculous title of Lord Bilston without
observing the Labour Party rules of the conduct of elections which require
that opportunities must be given for people anywhere in Britain to apply for
the seat after which all members of the local Parliamentary Labour vote on
who their next candidate should be. If these laws are ignored it is surely
misconduct and corruption in public office.
This I conveyed to Rob Marris, my MP who is obliged to reply to me,
and to give his due, he usually does and is so diligent in constituency
matters that he proudly boasts on his note paper heading that he has been,
‘Voted by MPs as Back Bencher of the Year 2008′.
While I was writing to him I asked him how he was getting on with my
case that he had taken up with the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who will not
take up a complaint unless it is taken up by an MP. This Rob kindly agreed
some months ago to take up. It concerns my complaint that Mark Thompson,
head of BBC and Lord Grade of ITV failed to discipline their employees the
newscasters Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark, Martha Kearney and Jon
Snow, who I accuse of failing to question Tony Blair when they interviewed
him before the Iraq war began on the war and thus made it easier for Blair
to hang on the coat tails of George W.Bush and support that illegal, racist
and unwinnable war. This is a matter of some urgency for Rob Marris.

A TALE OF TWO PAIRS OF BOOTS AT THE BEGINNING AND END OF MY LIFE.
When I was just beginning to notice things, say after the age of
eight, I became aware that my Aunt Amy was giving me a pair of boots for
Xmas. Her logic was impeccable. My brother Sidney and I were orphan children
of a single parent family and although my mother had a military pension,
just a bit more than a widow’s pension, we were all members of the
‘respectable poor’ and it was much more important that I was given a useful
present rather than a frivolous one such as toys or sweets. I couldn’t agree
with her at the time and the fact rankled.
Amy was my late father’s sister and she worked for JAY who lived alone
in a big house in Belgravia, London. JAY, as she was invariably called, was
the sister of General Younghusband the colonial conqueror of Tibet. I was
reluctantly dragged into JAY’s imperious presence only a couple of times,
but my Mother had worked there as a daily before I had been born and she
continued to do a one day a week to supplement her pension as soon as I was
capable, not of being minded as would be the case these days, but of
looking after myself, which would be about the age of ten when the events to
be related occurred.
By this time I was about 10 and JAY was ancient and in particular
rather deaf and short sighted. JAY’s day began by calling the whole
household together, mistress and servants, for daily prayers. Amy, who had
been up at least three hours before JAY, had the habit of crouching down and
making a bee line for the kitchen where the important activities of the day
were carried out until after JAY had gone to bed.
On this particular day JAY offended me almost mortally. Not only did
she not take any notice of me, but she called my mother ‘Hale’ which was her
maiden name but it was uttered with the superciliousness that was the usual
mode of address of master and servant. I never saw JAY again, but no doubt
she soon after died and we proletarians were left to clear up the more
important event that the ruling and military class left, namely the Second
World War to which I was called up a month after it started in September
1939 and which was an imperialist war during the ‘phoney war’ period when
Neville Chamberlain. Lord Halifax and other Appeasers had tried to twin us
with Germany to destroy Communism in the Soviet Union, and continued to be
even when Churchill, Halifax and the body of Appeasers had been turfed out
and remained so for us Communists until by the edict of Stalin Hitler’s
attack on Russia in June 1941 turned it into a People’s War. So much for
the first pair of boots.
The second pair of books have been delivered to me by my number two
son William only this week. He intended them to be a Xmas present, but
winter has come so early this year that the family has decided that I should
have this stout pair of boots with the most complicated apparatus of metal
links and straps which it is decreed I wear on my daily (weather permitting)
perambulations from one end of Henwood Road to the other. Today I fell down
at the end of my walk in the porch of my house containing the Free
Communist Bookshop, but I cannot blame the new boots because I was wearing
an older pair of shoes. But I seem to have come to no serious harm, as
witness my ability tonight to write this BLOG. I end it today with three
slogans:

DIANE ABBOTT FOR PRIME
MINISTER

BENJAMIN ZECHARIAH FOR POET LAUREATE

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

THE 90TH BIRTHDAY PARTY.
This evening we went down to Wolves to further discuss plans for the
29th January 2009 Birthday Party. We have booked the Sir Jack Hayward
Executive suite which
caters for 200 people and began to talk about numbers. We think we will
cater for about 200 people who will come and go, especially as a goodly
number will be elderly people who will want to come, stay a short while and
then depart. In view of the time of the year there might be six-feet of snow
and people might not be able to come, or we might all be dead, killed by
Gordon Brown and his Nuclear Maniacs or by holocausts caused be Somali
Pirates, so we will settle for 200 and we will explain if more turn up that
there may not be any birthday cake or wine left for them,
but that is no reason not to come and join in the activities.
With regard to food, we are determined that the buffet meal will be
multicultural and discussing whether Wolves or an outside caterer can
provide it.
As far as entertainment is concerned we are not running
a gig or concert, but a certain amount of music would be desirable. Perhaps
a couple of numbers from Ivor Pearce, the Birmingham folk singer, or perhaps
The Clarion Singers or Attila the Stockbroker; or local talent such
as Laurence Patton at one end of Henwood Road with his keyboard or Joe
Davies at the other end of Henwood Rd. with his fair organ.. Unfortunately
we will not be able to have Don Rendell our relation who pioneered Modern
Jazz with his saxophone, but I’m sure he will send a message to his fellow
Jehovah’s Witness in Wolverhampton who calls at my door occasionally..
Certainly entertainment at the party needs much more discussion.
So you now know what has been discussed and since we are a democratic
organisation we would welcome comments on both the progress of negotiations
so far and what else you might suggest for the evening to be both hilarious
and multicultural.

MY SPACE TRIDENT COMEDY AWARDS
We all know of situations in which you never know whether to laugh or
to cry. Trident fits the pattern well. If we stopped buying these American
implements of death , we could save enough money to rescue our social
services from their current state of ruin. But My Space has gone one better
and turned tragedy into ridicule and organised the Trident Comedy Awards
2008. I haven’t yet had time to do what I want to do and that is contact My
Space, sign the Trident Comedy Awards Petition and ask other people to sign
up. In the meantime all who have entered the awards have their entries
displayed on http://uk.myspacetridentcomedyaward. Give yourself a good laugh
and pass your entries back to me. to share the fun.

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE.
We end tonight with two slogans:

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.

DIANE ABBOTT FOR PRIME MINISTER

DISPENSING WITH RICHARD CARR.
This man was appointed chief executive of Wolverhampton, when and by
whom remains a mystery. He is one of a numerous number of competing
”regeneration’ organisations who claim they govern the City but as fast as
they claim this privilege their money runs out, so that we are left with
eyesores such as the ruins of the Wolverhampton Eye Infirmary on the Compton
Road entrance to the town centre and the more important W’ton Low Level
station project which was to be the crown of the Summer Row project which
was set to transform the city centre but has been abandoned to the crows,
because he and many other mugs among councillors and council officials
believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when every sensible
persons knows that not only is the City head over heels in debt but the
country is bankrupt too presided over by Gordon Brown and his New Labour
cabinet who this very minute is printing money on a scale hither known only
to such inflation ridden countries as Zimbabwe and dictators in the Congo.
I have repeatedly asked Carr to explain to me and its rate payers who
runs Wolverhampton and who controls it. This he refuses to do and my
patience is running out. His duty is to reply to all citizens who address
him and in Wolverhampton the City council agrees that any correspondence
must be answered within six days
So I request that this arrogant, thoughtless, perhaps ignorant fellow
explains whether we are ruled by criminals and crooks or , self seekers or
any of the others who have lost the confidence of the electorate and whose
homes, bank balances and futures of their families are threatened by
parasites like Carr who spend their vast salaries without any thought for
the ratepayers they represent.

THE NEXT POET LAUREATE.
I am indebted to my friend Hugh Muir of the Guardian for the latest
intelligence in the search for the next Poet Laureate. Apparently the
Culture Department of the government is consulting widely in the poetry
sector, the bosses, the unions - everybody. However, they have not yet got
round to consulting the George Barnsby Working Class Library and Free
Communist Bookshop which has ever since Andrew Motion announced his
intention of retiring advocated Benjamin Zephaniah, a Rastafarian ethnic
minority poet as the next Laureate who is famed for refusing to accept an
OBE from a government which exploited, tortured and murdered his fellow
black citizens. Too many black women and men have failed to follow Benjy’s
excellent example and become Jim Crows taking the ‘queen’s shilling’ as it
were.
However many of these folk will be welcome at the 90th Birthday Party
of George Barnsby that will take place on Thursday 29th January 2009 at the
Sir Jack Hayward suite at Wolverhampton Wanderers stadium and where I can
guarantee that there will be much stimulating talk on sport and poetry as
well as politics which will be stimulating and controversial.

ARSENAL, ARSENE WENGER AND AMY LAWRENCE.
Every one will be aware that Arsenal after a torrid period when they
lost matches beat the German team Dynamo Kiev in the Champion’s League. I
had received a splendid letter from Amy who I want to nominate as the first
female Sports Writers of the Year and I am waiting for her permission for me
to put it on the BLOG. However Arsenal beat Dynamo Kiev on Tuesday, just in
time for me to record the event on the BLOG.
However Arsenal play Chelsea this coming Sunday and the situation is
that instead of Arsenal being afraid of meeting this expensively assembled
team that the boot is on the other foot and Chelsea must fear for their fate
at the hands of the teenage virtuosos that Arsene Wenger seems to be able to
produce like rabbits out of a hat.

DON’T FORGET DIANE ABBOTT AS PRIME MINISTER.
She has the bottle and the experience and she’s a woman and black. If
you know a better candidate post it on this BLOG and let’s have a democratic
discussion on it.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.

ENOUGH OF THIS FOOLERY
In the Observer today talking of the of the Tory Party crushed
in the Liberal landslide of that year, Geoffrey Wheatcroft quotes Sir Henry
Bannerman in 1906 saying, ‘Enough of this foolery’ and compares it with
David Cameron’s position today. I would also connect the statement with
Gordon Brown (as well as Cameron)) . The statement comes after the day that
I had called Brown a fantasy person allowing his chancellor of the exchequer
to take the brunt of his mistakes by presenting today an unreal budget ,
playing with monopoly money which is quite unreal.
It so happens that I had a letter from Brian Lawley who is one of the
pupils that I taught history to at Etheridge Boys Secondary Modern School
with whom I recently had a jazz reunion session organised by David Holmes
the first
rate drummer who presides over affairs at the Trumpet, Bilston which is the
only jazz club in Britain to present jazz every day of the week.
Brian is a prolific writer of letters to the Express and Star. In his
letter to me he says that the election of Obama in the US is a breath of
fresh air but the
white supremacy group there shoot their presidents if they don’t like them.
He then quotes the persecution of Paul Robeson during the Macarthur
witchhunt period and then he goes on to Blair and tells me that when he came
to power in 1997 he had the law of high treason removed from the statute
book. This BLOG has recommended that Gordon Brown should be removed
either by the legal process of law in parliament, or by a Citizen’s Arrest
which has only been applied in this country by Lance Dunkley and myself who
have accused our MP, Rob Marris of being a war criminal because he supports
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which are illegal, racist and unsinkable.
Now I suggest to the one hundred and more Labour MPs who opposed the
war
from the beginning in 2003, that they can remove Brown by re-enacting the
law of High Treason. But Brian goes on to say that he watched the first
episode of the Devil’s Whore last week which deals with the first part of
Oliver Cromwell’s life, including his part in the regicide of executing
Charles I , and his destruction of the Levellers who were the working class
element of the English Revolution.. I compare Cromwell with Barack Osama who
has won limited power in the USA and needs the working class of USA and
Britain to carry through the radical changes he has promised. Brian tells me
that his mother is 97 years old and one of her favourite sayings is that she
has lived through two World War and was born in Poverty and will die in
Poverty. Brian’s response is - Not while he is alive. The building of a
united front to oppose the Bushes and Blairs and Browns depend on people
like Brian and I welcome him in building the multicultural world of the
future.

JOHN P.MELLOR OBE, QSM, VK AND RACIST.
John Mellor is a racist who supports Enoch Powell; was one of the
racists and bigots who closed Bilston Community College; resigned before he
was pushed from the police before he was dismissed; holds awards from
neo-fascist governments and played an important role in the closure of
Bilston Community College, the first multicultural college in Britain.
Mellor said that George Barnsby at age 89 was not capable of producing a
daily BLOG and it must therefore be written by one of the afore mentioned
contributors to this conversation.This was quite flattering to the person
involved. But let me assure Mr.Mellor that I am perfectly capable of
producing my own BLOGS and will continue to indict all racists and bigots
who hold up the transformation of Wolverhampton to the Cultural,
Educational, Sporting and Business Capital of Britain in 2009. Meanwhile:

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.

BACK TO OUR ROOTS.
It beggars belief that Gordon Brown looks forward to many years of
normal life when he is a war criminal responsible for the daily deaths of
Iraqiis, Afghanistanis Arabs and Africans when he should be arrested for
crimes against humanity and imprisoned together with George.WE.Bush and Tony
Blair NOW before any one else, including our own troops are slaughtered. Or
that there are Somali Pirates about who will sooner or later hijack nuclear
weapons and blow the world to pieces. These are the realities of life, not
the meaningless exercise in number crunching engaged in by the chancellor of
the exchequer this afternoon.
Nor can much trust be given to our Parliamentary representatives who
refuse to act to remove Brown and replace him with an alternative who
opposes the war in Iraq and elsewhere. The most suitable candidate is Diane
Abbott who needs to be persuaded that she should stand. And this requires
the freedom to discuss the matter on the internet. And this is the crucial
freedom that the New Labourites have denied us in their headlong drive to
join the Americans in unilaterally ruling the world. Unfortunately for them
the election of Barak Obama has deprived them of this option and all they
are left with is the undemocratic, US dominated organisation NATO. And
they’re not likely to have that for long as Obama clips its wings. So there
is no reality programme open to them , phantasy is their only option.
The Labour Party was brought into existence by the trade unions. The
Labour Party is financed by the trade unions then and still and the trade
unions are democratic organisations having their annual conferences at which
resolutions are put, discussed and resolved by the membership. Most of this
is now gone. I remember with what glee Blair removed Clause 4 which stated
that the aim of the Labour Party was Socialism. Just as New Labour destroyed
our local government democracy by bringing in Cabinets, so that local
councillors have been reduced to by- slanders, so NEW labour has been led
into illegalities as they try to raise money from rich donors who have no
more to do with Socialism than does Peter Mandelsohn and other wealthy donor
crooks looking for backhanders for their filthy lucre. .
The key question for all progressives is to restore the Labour Party
to its origin policy and structures and remove it from New Labour which has
hijacked it. The state to which the trade unions have been reduced is shown
by the case of Andy Goodall who has worked as a nurse for many years and has
since 2003 been a Senior Nurse in the Cardio-Thoracic Care Unit at New Cross
Hospital. Since July 2008 Andy has been suspended from work and not allowed
on the Trust premises unless accompanied with a union representative.
UNISON has advised the Trust that it will vigorously defend Andy against
these allegations and that the actions taken by the Trust are seen as an
attempt to stop the union raising matters of concern to its members and
conducting legitimate union actions. The action involves working overtime
for basic pay instead of overtime rates as negotiated nationally between
UNISON and the NHS.

SOCIALIST HISTORY SOCIETY OR COMMUNIST PARTY OF BRITAIN.
My loyalties are divided. The CPB tends to remain loyal to the ideals
of the vanguard party of the working class. I say ‘tends’ because this is
not entirely true and Graham Stevenson in particular with his eclectic
collection of several hundred working class leaders is one of the greatest
collections of radical leaders that we have. On the other hand my Marxist
sympathies are with the Socialist History Society with which I have been
associated since the earliest days of its existence. A particular Marxist
attitude to me was of Marx stating that the class struggle would either
lead to the defeat of one (the capitalist class) of the contending classes
or end with the mutual destruction of the contending parties. This is a very
real possibility as Gordon Brown and the New Labourites gamble with the
future of the world with nuclear weapons and Somali pirates. This is the
greatest of his generation’s philosophers at his most prescient. But also I
consider Engel’s statement just as important when he says that Communism
will not be decided by y politicians who by then will have been swept into
the dustbin of history and society organised by self-acting community
groups. This separates me from the groups such as the Socialist Campaign
Group and Labour Briefing who believe that the Road to Socialism will be
led by the Labour Party purged of the Tory elements who have hijacked it,
but I am not so sure. The signs today are that political parties will be
only a small part of the alliance of progressive people who will overthrow
capitalism in this technological age of the computer, which is why I
maintain contacts with such Tories as Simon Heffer, biographer of Enoch
Powell and now anti-Iraq qar writer in the Daily Mail as well
as the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who like his party leader, David
Cameron both of whom now foolishly support the war in Iraq, but both were at
one time against it and we live in hopes that they will return to their
civilised and anti-racist opinions of former years.

THE MUGS WHO THINK THERE IS A POT OF GOLD AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW ARE WITH
US STILL.
It almost beggars belief that that another generation of councillors
and City officials should believe that Gordon Brown has hundreds of millions
of pounds to dispense, when in fact he has no money at all, has proven an
economist who sold Britain’s financial reserves for a song and now finds
himself with an enormous borrowing requirement which he will allow muggins
his chancellor of the exchequer to unveil tomorrow. And that apart from
being a Nuclear Maniac willing to risk another Holocaust which will send us
all to Timbuktu.
Today’s fairy tale concerns a ?10 million scheme to transform our
primary
schools as part of a Primary Capital Programme linked to the hoary old
scheme of a ?350million Building Schools for the Future which will tear
down our secondary schools and replace them with Educational Academies at
some point in the unknown future, if you are lucky. As part of this
investment every primary school child will be given a hand hold computer.
Computer technology will be at the heart of the plan. Tell that to those who
have had to stop the scheme of computerising the computer and telephone
services in the Civic Centre which have gone awry from incompetence and
lack of resources.
The education programme is part of the New Labour Plan to privatise
all our social services and deliver them to private interests. Education
Academies remove all responsibility from the local authorities to private
interests whose intentions range from controlling the syllabus of schools to
the intention of running them as private companies intent on creating a
theological state, with the local authorities only role to provide cash.
That people like Tim Westwood W’ton’s Chief Children’s Service Office, Roy
Lockwood, in fact the chief education officer in Wolverhampton, although he
goes under a fancy name these days can even contemplate supporting these
wild cat schemes warrants their sackings for incompetence. While the failure
of the schemes of competing ‘regeneration organisations in the City to
fulfil their aims has left scars on the city such as the Eye Infirmary in
Compton Road and the less intrusive but much more damaging scar of the Low
Level Station once the alleged pride and joy of the Summer Row ?100 million
scheme which councillors are now reduced to begging for some one to take up
the scheme. Behind all this is the economic slump, as bad as the 1930s in
which we find ourselves.

MORE ABOUT GUANTANAMA.
Spreading the news about Guantanama and the Somali Pirates and Brown
and his New Labour Cabinet’s flirting not only with their own deaths, but
with those of all of us, is proving a full time job so that I’m not keeping
up with incoming news. It could be that this BLOG might not go out tonight,
or on the other hand it might. With Arsenal losing and Chelsea and Man
United only drawing and a late night session to see whether Aston Villa can
knock Arsenal of their perch of being in the first four in the Premiership
we shall have to wait and see.

WILL CHRISTINE MILLS, WOLVERHAMPTON’S MAYOR, JOIN THE 200 US MAYORS WHO
OPPOSE THE WAR IN IRAQ?
This proposition was put to the Mayor several weeks ago and a reply
was promised, but it has not yet materialised. How about it, Christine?

WOLVERHAMPTON’S UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE A COALITION COUNCIL OF ALL
PARTIES OPPOSED TO THE WAR IN IRAQ.
The elections on May first last put Wolverhampton in a unique position.
It removed a fairly substantial Labour majority and replaced it with a
coalition council of Tories and five Lib Dems. This afforded it the option
of forming the first local council In England and Wales composed entirely of
those who oppose the war in Iraq consisting of Tory Councillors opposed to
the war of which there are some, Lib-Dems who have been opposed to the war
from its inception in 2003 and Labour Councillors opposed to the war of
which we know at least one, although the other Labour councillors reluctance
to discuss their attitude to the war had landed them in the pickle of losing
their majority because the electorate were fed up with councillors who will
not be open and honest about their opinions. Whether the coalition
considered such an option ultimately depended on the new leader of the
Council the Tory, Neville Patten, being more open than his predecessors and
stating his own opinion on the war in Iraq and putting the proposition to
his fellow Tory Councillors. Unfortunately, however, the cat seems to have
got his tongue, he has caught the same disease as his opponents and I am
still waiting a reply from him.

DAVID CAMERON.
But if local figures are not talking what is to be made of David
Cameron who quietly preening himself, waits for Gordon Brown’s job to drop
in his lap. But Cameron has already committed hari-kari by supporting the
war in Iraq. This was not always so. When it became clear that New Labour
was likely to lose the next parliamentary election, Cameron accepted that he
could only become Prime Minister in a coalition with the Lib-Dems who would
only be king makers if Cameron repudiated the war in Iraq. So Cameron did
this and was also willing to contact me and say so.
However, in what is perhaps the most important unsolved problem of the
Tories he did an about-turn and supported the war when every other sensible
and clear thinking person knew that the war was illegal, racist and
unwinnable. So even though he might have a majority without Lib-Dem support,
he has just two choices if by any chance we were still all here and not
blown up. He could either clear out or be chucked out. Why did he change his
mind? And why does he now act like the other arrogant and racist figures
such as Sir Trevor Phillips, the Learning and Skills Council, David
Blunkett, the newscasters Paxman, Marr, Wark, Kearney , Jon Snow and the
chair of the BBC and Channel 4 who all support the war in Iraq and who
squander our democratic liberties by not replying to correspondence
addressed to them and which they are constitutionally obliged to do?

DIANE ABBOTT FOR PRIME MINISTER.
No wonder the feeling grows that we need a democratic fillip as great
or greater than that of the Americans and their new black President, Osama.
We have our revolutionary ready made, DIANE ABBOTT. You know it makes
sense - support her nomination for Prime Minister.

CLOSING GUANTANAMA.
Hot on the heels of Lord Bingham’s onslaught of the illegality, racism
and unwinabilty of the war in Iraq and the corollary that anyone who
supports that war are war criminals who should be charged with crimes
against humanity comes another legal judgement which blows out of the water
US Neo-cons and British New Labourites as surely as would a
Somali pirate. This is the ruling by US District Court Judge Richard Leon
that there is no legal basis to keep the five Algerians seized in Bosnia in
the Cuban camp and they must be set free. The judge, known for his
conservative views, says that the US government should not appeal. This has
far reaching implications for all other prisoners at the camp It is the
first verdict in more than 200 habeas corpus petitions being brought before
the US Courts. This decision by judge Leon lays bare the flimsy basis on
which Guantanamo has been founded said Zachary Katznelson, legal dire
of Reprieve whose lawyers represent 33 Guantanamo prisoners. President Obama
has promised to close down the prison camp as soon as he takes officer, but
his team is considering what to do with the detainees. This suggests that
Obama’s promises are not all that they seem, for the obvious solution is to
close the camp down, which he says has done so much to besmirch the
reputation of the USA, and pay up the innocent prisoners who are certain to
sue for wrongful arrest and end the matter. But if Obama is not prepared to
do this, then he faces limitless trouble in disposing of the prisoners.
including six British prisoners as well as the released Britisher, Moazzema
Begg who was released a couple of years ago. Already lawyers acting for
Binyan Mohamad are demanding the release of this British citizen who says
that he was tortured at the camp. And no doubt that lawyers
acting for Begg, who I think lives in the Midlands, but if not, midlands
people played a large part in campaigning for his release and Begg is
repaying that debt by campaigning for the release of those still imprisoned.

AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.
This is the body campaigning for true and objective news from its centre
in the Middle East. Looking at its content of today it gives a left-wing
slant to most of the stories covered by the British press such as the DR
Congo appeals, Somali fighters hunting pirate crew as well as items which do
not appear to be covered in the British press today. These include Iraqis
protesting at US pact as supporters of Muqtada al Sadr protest in Baghdad as
parliament debates a security deal with the Americans.
Al Jazeera English is available to more people that American agencies
such as Fox and Murdoch, but is not available to Britons. Does this mean
that our news is censored? and if so what can we do about it. These are
matters that Media Lens and Freedom of Information have taken up but our
press and newscastings continue in the hands of monopoly capitalists and we
are entitled to something better.

DIANE ABBOTT FOR PRIME MINISTER.
It does not seem that this campaign is making much progress despite
Diana appearing to be the only candidate capable of representing Britain
after Gordon Brown has been dumped as a supporter of the war in Iraq and
thus a warmonger responsible for the deaths of up to a million Iraqi men,
women and children. Brown should be arrested NOW and arraigned before the
Court of Human Rights at the Hague charged with Crimes against Humanity.
Neither Michael Portillo or Andrew Neil who appear with Diane in The Week
seem prepared to support their colleague, nor do the progressives in
Parliament seem to want to do the proper thing which is to vote Brown out of
office and replace him with a suitable personage which can only be Diane.
Come on, comrades, do your patriotic duty.

BACK TO BASICS
The great divide between those who oppose the war in Iraq and the war
criminals who continue to justify the slaughter and mayhem of a war which
is illegal, racist and unwinnable continues to grow. Today is the 7th
anniversary of the war in Afghanistan but no one would know it from the
coverage of the so-called premier press or the news casts of Kirsty Wark and
others today. We shall have to wait for tomorrow’s Morning Star to find out
what happened, certainly not the Guardian which boasts of being the paper of
the year.
John Pilger was a lone voice in 1997 warning that Blair was a dangerous
fraud, a neocon in sheep’s clothing. Blair’s Vichy like devotion to
Washington was well-known. His devotion to Rupert Murdock, who flew him and
Cherie around the world first class was known. His devotion to an extreme
neoliberal Thatcherite economics was known. As Pilger pointed out the media
could hardly plead ignorance.
Then there was the evidence of Media Lens on the reception of Barak
Obama. Perhaps Matthew Parris a conservative figure who wrote in The Times.
‘Here we have a handsome, dashing, intelligent man with generous instincts
and a silver tongue; but a man with no distinctive plan of government that
he has seen fit to share with us; a daring opportunist; somebody who might
some day be judged as a Tony Blair with brains. And here we go again hook,
line and sinker. Calm down, he’s not president of the world.

DEMONSTRATE AT NATO’S 60TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE - NO TO NATO. NO TO WAR.
NATO has become the main vehicle for the US to pursue its wars and it is
responsible for the devastating occupation of Afghanistan where the carnage
and destruction are escalating daily. Anti-war and peace movements across
Europe have called for mass protests at NATO’s 60th Anniversary conference
in Strasbourg .But Sunday 5th April will be the main day of the
counter-summit which will be addressed by Noam Chomsky among many others.
Stop the War Campaign is supporting the protests and details of transport
and other information can be found on its Website at stopthewar.org.uk

JOHN SERGEANT AND STRICTLY COME DANCING.
The general public has found a way to cock a snook at officialdom, by
consistently voting John Sergeant, the journalist, and his partner Kristina
Rihanoff top dancers, until there was a real reason to think he would win
the contest. At this point John called a halt and announced at a press
conference that he was quitting which created a storm. Jay Hunt BBC1
controller sat next to the 64 year old Sergeant to see that no accusation
was made of bullying or ageism by the BBC. Jeremy Paxman (who won’t reply
to me of charges that he and other newscaster failed to challenge Blair when
interviewing him in 2003 on the war in Iraq) was also at the press
conference accusing Sergeant of cowardice in quitting. But as one who enjoys
Strictly Come Dancing for its competence and glitter and who himself has a
silver medal for competence on the dance floor, I think John was right to
retire. A lesson in democracy for the bureaucrats is one thing,, but when
the BNP encourages him it is time to quit with his integrity intact.

THE BLOG WILL GO TONIGHT.
Much more ought to be said on the arrest of Brown, and we have not
found time to deal with the contents of the New Statesman, Searchlight
International as well as Stop the War, Respect and other anti-war
organisations. Brown must be arrested and charged with Crimes against
Humanity and Diane Abbot persuaded to stand for Prime Minister. Until then,
none of us can sleep safely in our beds because of the danger of a nuclear
holocaust or Pirates decimating us. For Brown’s supporters to be discussing
whether Brown should call an election in the spring or soldier on until
1910 is piffle and bilge. Brown must go NOW.