Fw: GEORGE BARNSBY BLOG NO.856 FRIDAY 13TH JULY 2009 INCPORPORATING COPAM (COMMITTEE OF PEACE AND MULTICULTURALISM) barnsby@blueyonder.co.uk
—– Original Message —–
From: “George Barnsby”
To:
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 1:06 AM
Subject: GEORGE BARNSBY BLOG NO.856 FRIDAY 13TH JULY 2009 INCPORPORATING
COPAM (COMMITTEE OF PEACE AND MULTICULTURALISM) barnsby@blueyonder.co.uk
NAILING THE SCALLYWAGS.
It was with the greatest pleasure in the world that I emailed my
friend and MP, Rob Marris, reminding him that he was neglecting his duty in
allowing Gordon Brown to escape his fate as a mass murderer and the local
rapscallion Richard Carr of failing to reply to my correspondence just at a
time when I was learning of additional authorities to whom I can appeal
such as a Standards Committee presided over by a Mr.Paul Tadstone and an
even higher authority a Standards Board for England.presumably operating
from Parliament . This information I also sent to Gordon Brown and Richard
Carr.
It has been suggested that I lay myself open to charges of libel from
both these characters, but I reply that it would be foolish of either of
these people to attempt to sue a 90 year old like me because I would play
them at their own game and not reply to them. Secondly that you can only be
found guilty of libel if you didn’t believe the charges you were making, and
boy, do I not believe in the charges I bring about these scoundrels. And
thirdly I would appeal for support from lawyers who specialise in defending
labour movment figures from such charges and these include my local friend
and lawyer Warinder Juss and the firm who employ him, Thompsons, and the
great
Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers.
NEWS OF SAM SPITTLE.
Sam Spittle is an old friend of mine. I taught him at Etheridge
Secondary Modern Boys’ School in Bilston. He was in the lowest form and
deemed ‘backward’ and he was the only boy I recruited into the Communist
Party from the school. Later we lost touch. He became a social worker in
Sandwell and when I could not contact him there I assumed that he had lost
interest in me and the Communist Party. I
Imagine my surprise therefore when I received
an email from him this week and another when I asked him what he had been
doing for the last 50 years. His story was surprising to say the least for a
‘backward’ pupil.. He said he worked for Sandwell for 20 years finishing as
the manager of the Youth Service/Children’s Play/ Neighbourhood Services and
Special Needs unit providing services to children with special needs. He
took early retirement 15 years ago and worked for himself as a consultant on
social intervention programmes. He then left England for France where he has
built himself a house.
He is on his third marriage and his present wife is called Mary. He has
four children (now adults) from his first two marriages. The eldest girl,
Melanie, lives in Southampton and has three children. The second girl lives
in Australia and works in the oil industry starting as a geologist she is
now managing equipment accounts with other oil producers on the best tools
to use to do the job. The youngest girl Sophie lives and works in New
Zealand. She’s the adventurous one. She was in Thailand during the military
take-over and finished up in New Zealand working in a parachute school (she
is into sky diving). The boy (Sam) still lives at home and is unemployed. So
much for his family.
He goes on to say that he still carries a Marxist banner in his heart
but finds it difficult to make sense of what appears to be the politics of
the madhouse. He asks what our two sons are doing. He knew them well when
they were young and built a bunk bed for them in the second bedroom at 141
Henwood Rd. which is at present Esme’s bedroom as well as the second
bedroom devoted to the GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop.
He will be back in the UK in mid-August and would love to chew the cud with
us, This we have said we would love to do.
But then he talks of archaeology and the digs I did with the pupils of
Etheridge School on the Roman Road which branches off Watling Street and
made
its way towards what was to become Wolverhampton and which I excavated with
pupils including
so-called backward pupils, hence Sam’s participation. Of this he says he
still has a copy of the Anvil which contains an account of the dig. Now this
is truly extraordinary because I have unfortunately lost all my records,
photos, drawings etc. of that dig and to have a copy of it would be
wonderful to me and would be the second offfer of a record, the other coming
from an ex-Etheridge pupil who has lived in the USA for the last fifty
years! What a present that will be for me in my 90th year!
THE NEW YORK TIMES.
The issue last Sunday which came with the Sunday Observer was a
splendid edition. Its central story was of a Nuclear Free Vision and had
turned up material that Barack Obama had printed as a student at Columbia
University back in the Cold War days of 1983 in the student journal Sundial
clarifying his own thoughts on a Nuclear Free World. He railed against
discussion of first versus second strikes that ’suit the military-industrial
interests ‘ with their ‘billion dollar erector sets’ and argued for the
elimination of ‘billion dollar erector sets’ and denounced the, ‘twisted
logic’ of which we are a part today. But his article entitled Breaking
the War Mentality was short of ideas of how this could be done. Many years
later he is the most powerful man in the world and has begutn pressing for
new global rules, treaties and alliances that he insists can esablish a
nuclear free world. On Monday on his first visit to Russia he signed an
agreement to cut US and Russian strategic nuclear
arsenals by a quarter as first step to their spread to unstable regions of
the world. halting nuclear programmes in N.Korea and Iran. This suggests
that Obama has not sold out to the neo-con military industrial complex and
the hopes of hundreds of millions of people throught the world that he
stands for radical change can be achieved.
This was not the only remarable article in that issue of the NYT. There
was also an article on Australian Aborigines facing the crisis of the Fight
against the scourge of Alcoholism and another article on
Afghainstan where they claim Weary of War and Losing Hope Afghans are Paying
to get out to Europe and the United States.
I wrote to the New York Times congratulaing it on its stand against
war and nuclear extermination and asking them to support COPAM the biggest
organisation in the world opposed to the war in Iraq whose influence
continues to grow. I also believed that the paper was on my list to have a
BLOG every day, but I found they were not. This I have corrected
as I have also done for all the other great newspaper of the US such as the
Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times etc. who will now receive my daily BLOG.
VIRUSES AND BUGS.
My friend Bob Hazzlehurst who together with Martin Georg keep my
computer going sent me a horrifying warning of a virus likely to infect all
computers and that national computer authorities were frightened and would
take action to fight it. So I suggested that I would put it on my BLOG.
Since I’ve been plagued by work I have spent hours writing being wipd off
the face of the earth I am naturally concerned that all those in my
extensive Address Book should be notified. But the dread word Bob tells me
is PAINT and if that appears in your Inbox then do not under any
circumstances Open it. A bit like the new swine flu perhaps which might
strike any one anywhere. Anyway, you have now been warned.
HAVING THE STICHES OUT.
I have now been the (proud - as my wife Esme says) possessor of a brand
new heart pace maker the size of a matchbox insterted into my shoulder and
the necessary checks and balances having been made, a nice, youngish woman
arrived today to take my stiches out. She was as good as her words when she
said that she would take each stitch and pull it and all I would feel would
be a slight irritation as she pulled each stitch out. Her procedure went
entirely to plan and I was able to view the exact state of my shoulder which
had hitherto been covered by the very efficient plaster which had covered it
for the last 11 days. I will not say that it is a pleasant sight because it
isn’t. A three inch gash right acrosss my shoulder, but it didn’t hurt and
leaves me fighting fit to tackle all those who refuse to reply to me -
particulary Gordon Brown and the local idiot Richard Carr,
FIGHTING FIT FOR THE FRAY - IDIOTS LOOK OUT.