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Theresa May & Conservative Party squabbling let us all down.

We have to work together across Europe and multinationaly to overcome the great problems of our time. War, economic hardship, terrorism, environmental damage and catastrophe, organised crime, social breakdown. Brexit is the greatest threat to working together, the greatest surrender to isolation and hate, the greatest abdication of leadership by our political leaders and representatives in generations. It is a direct threat to peace, social and economic and political cooperation in Europe, that puts us all at risk. Theresa May is unprincipled, valueless and lacking in vision, in it as a politician just for being in it. A hypocrite. Someone who sells weapons to Saudi Arabia to slaughter civilians cannot be a Christian. Someone whose Government seems oblivious to the obscene gap between the super rich and poorest workers cannot be a Christian. I am not religious but too many people falsely claim to follow caring peaceful religious values when their actions do not reflect that.

Theresa May is unprincipled & hypocritical but these Tory MPs who are queuing up to stroke the tail of the reactionary DUP dog are just horrible. Historical dead ends. The Democratic Unionist Party play the historical envy and division game – they actively resist and hinder improvements in Northern Ireland, blind to the huge benefits there have been over the last twenty years. Sinn Fein also play envy and historical untruth and blame but they are not holding a British Government to ransom.

Yet what of the UK’s ‘Official Opposition’ Labour Party in this time of need. The Labour Party, Britain’s ‘Official Opposition’? They prefer tribal party advantage to statesmanship. The Labour Party, its Leader Jeremy Corbyn, most of its Shadow Cabinet & MPs, and heartland activists put party and sectional interest before that of tackling the greatest political challenges of our age. They prefer to score tactical victories over the Conservatives, to keep their ideological and tribal purity. Britain suffers because in part they make the mistake that Liberal Democrats used to make – of refusing to say anything controversial in case they lost votes. Unlike the Lib Dems, Labour does put forward its policies – it’s just that many of its policies are highly sectarian and divisive and do not include telling anti-EU voters that they were lied to for thirty years and voted in a referendum based on lies and not knowing what they were voting for. The whole of Europe suffers while most of Britain’s political representatives refuse to play a leading role in Europe. The SNP, Greens, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru, along with a few principled and brave Labour and handful of Conservative MPs have been exceptions.

The British media don’t report that the DUP represent only 36% of the voters of Northern Ireland. The clear majority do not support them. For UK totals – only just over half the vote of the Green Party, less than one third of the Scottish National Party, less than twice Plaid vote for 2.5 times the seats, only 12% of the Lib Dems vote. 10 extreme reactionaries leading Tory Government & Labour policy. All the while while they refuse to do their jobs in Northern Ireland by them and Sinn Fein failing to run the Assembly. Endangering all the improvements since the 1990s and blaming everyone else but themselves for their failures to sustain and increase improvements for all.

Those people who honestly supported leaving the European Union on legal, economic and political grounds have been misled and sold a fairytale by fraudsters and dangerous ideologues. There are some people with genuine reasons for opposing the European Union as it was, or usually as it became. These are not the Brit nihilist anti-EU extremists who dominate social media, the ones who don’t mind which nasties they are in bed with. I hope the thinking Leavers will reconsider and join a campaign so that we can stay in a reformed streamlined EU on better terms – something British Prime Ministers should have lead a coalition of other countries to achieve. If you are on the side of Jacob Rees-Mogg, extremist Conservatives, reckless wreckers like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, ideologues like Len McCluskey, Mick Cash, nasty populists Kate Hoey, Frank Field, Aaron Banks, tax exile billions & the haters of the Mail, Express & Sun. & Vladimir Putin & Trump, then you are are on the wrong side. A minority of extremists, oligarchs & profiteers are trying to force our country away from values of tolerance and fairness. All of us have to try and stop them before we lose what has made Britain the great country that it is.

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How many British citizens have applied for passports of other EU countries because of the Brexit vote and how many have moved to other EU countries?

I asked “What monitoring is the UK Government doing to find out how many UK citizens have applied for passports of other EU countries since the referendum .. how many UK citizens have .. moved to other EU member states”
“The Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) does not hold information in the scope of your request” Our Govt really is clueless about the effect on British people. This from a Government that bangs on about immigration but UK Government has no records of UK migrants.
National Statistics, the official UK Government statistics body, do not keep any record of British citizens leaving the UK. I travel abroad between one and six times a year and never once, ONCE, have I ever been asked whether I am leaving and coming back.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/how_many_british_citizens_have_a#incoming-1238373

Another request via whatdotheyknow.com

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Policies for dealing with buddleia.

For some time I’ve been very concerned about the damage caused by the pretty, bee friendly but highly invasive plant, buddleia. I was going to ask my City Council if they had policies on this topic but decided to start with the national authorities I thought might be responsible.
Here are links to my questions and answers. The Environment Agency does not deal with these plants unless they are causing a blockage within a watercourse.
“Invasive and injurious plants are not reportable to the Environment
Agency.
Only if weeds are causing a blockage within a watercourse and flooding is
imminent would be reportable to our incident communication service on 0800 807060.”
They then posted useful information on harmful weeds and invasive non-native plants.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/policies_for_dealing_with_buddle_2#incoming-1221226

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) does not have the information at present because “Defra is currently developing a rapid risk assessment for Buddleia which will assess the associated risks and impacts of the species to GB.” So it looks like they are taking this problem seriously, which is good.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/policies_for_dealing_with_buddle#incoming-1252253 (a couple of the initial acknowledgements were obviously meant for someone else and attached to my request by mistake).

Thanks to the WhatDoTheyKnow site for making it easy to submit public Freedom of Information requests.

Buddleia-DEFRA-FOI2018-18546-Response.pdf (2410 downloads )

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The real test for Corbyn and the Labour Left is applying the same standard to dodgy regimes that they like.

Surely the test for Corbyn and the Labour ‘Left’ is not whether they compare Israel the same as South Africa, the UK, USA, France, China or Saudi Arabia, but whether Corbyn and the Labour ‘Left’ compare Israel to Putin’s Russia, Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi’s Libya, Assad’s Syria, Zimbabwe, Serbia (under Milosevic), Iran, the IRA terrorists and other ideological regimes and groups that they appear to condemn less than any brutal state policies that are White capitalist State or Arab Monarchy led. Despite the Israeli State’s brutal, violent, racist, land stealing policies comparisons with Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, are simply ridiculous – those regimes and their Leaders and minions are off the scale for evil. But Jeremy Corbyn and many on the Labour authoritarian Left seem unwilling to compare their favourite repressive leaders, dictators and violent groups to the same standards that they rightly apply to the Israeli government and its actions.

I disagree that this is anti-semitism:
“• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” I agree with the right of the State of Israel to exist but it can be a valid political position to disagree with a Jewish State established by force in Palestine (just as it is historically fair to point out that the United States of America stole Texas from Mexico after a colonial war). I disagree in general with changing international borders by force because of all the problems that that brings, even though usually arbitrary borders as accidents of history bring themselves many problems. I am not a great fan of the nation state, however denying a right for people who want to be Israelis a state in Israel (excluding the settlements, occupied territories and East Jerusalem) when that state has existed for seventy years is ridiculous.

To my mind it is these points from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and examples that the British political far Left have a problem with
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
The latter often by language and tone if not directly or even deliberately.

Ironically on the latter they are in company – along a spectrum of extremism – with so-called ‘Islamic’ extremists, and so-called ‘Christian’ far right racists in the US and Europe, and Russia. One thing that separates many US far right from the Russian state backed racist Eastern and Western European far right is that the US ‘evangelical’ ‘Christian’ far right is often very pro the brutal Israeli government. The Russian backed narrative is the same as the racist blame messages rife in the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union and across much of Eastern Europe “Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.” A view shared by many ‘Muslim’ racists. Just as the people of different neighbouring countries with political or popular antagonism often have very much in common, authoritarian, religious and ideological extremists do too. It is a reminder to the peace loving, friendly, tolerant majority to stand up to them all the time.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism found here
https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/press_release_document_antisemitism.pdf via this page
https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/stories/working-definition-antisemitism

As at 7 September 2018.

 

It is worth Jewish fanatics, those who steal and occupy land with settlements, those who defend the brutal reaction of the Israeli military to peaceful protests & their use of extreme lethal force against peaceful and non-lethal assaults alike, to remember that it was a Jewish fanatic who destroyed the best chance of peace that existed with the two State initiative supported by President Yitzhak Rabin. Here was a genuine Israeli hero, a soldier and a brave politician, a Statesman, murdered by a cowardly extremist. One of the worst political crimes of our era and one that has held Israelis and Palestinians alike in hostage to violence. We should remember the courage of Yitzhak Rabin and the ability of politicians and leaders to talk to enemies and make compromises for the sake of peace.

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81 years since the battle of Jarama.

 

Last year the New European newspaper published a feature by me on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Jarama, the first major engagement in the Spanish Civil War for the British and Irish International Brigades. That feature, edited and made more readable by Jasper Copping, was an extract from this long essay. Attached to this post.

The battle of Jarama K Reid 2018 web

For the published article there is a link to the .pdf file at the end of this page: https://kironreid.co.uk/2017/02/18/recent-writing/

 

The photographs here relate to Britain, Ireland and the Spanish Civil War but are not illustrations to the essay.

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Welcoming the Polish, 2006 and 2017.

A motion to Liverpool City Council that I wrote in April 2006, encouraging the city authorities to welcome new Polish residents. See end.

Draft Motions to Council 26 April 2006.

Welcoming the Polish community.

Council notes the recent horrific racist murder of a new Polish resident in Southport.

Council notes that Liverpool still needs to increase its population and have more people come to live and work here and we welcome all new residents including those from new EU members in Eastern Europe.

Council notes in particular that both Liverpool and Polish cities suffered greatly during the war and that Polish airmen were the largest non-British contingent in the RAF in the Battle of Britain, making up more than five percent of all RAF pilots. The Air Minister Sir Archibald Sinclair stated that without the Poles “our shortage of trained pilots would have made it impossible to defeat the German air force and so win the Battle”. Many of those pilots and their families stayed in the North West to contribute to long established Polish communities. Newer residents are welcome as well.

Council resolves to encourage all members, officers and partners to think of ways that they can help new residents integrate and enjoy the famously generous welcome of Liverpool people.

Proposed by:

Written 4 April 2006 for City Council meeting 26 April 2006.

A month later I was fortunate with my sister and friends to hear Lech Walesa, former Solidarity Trade Union leader, speak at a Liverpool John Moores University Roscoe lecture. 15 May. Three years ago I visited the shipyard at Gdansk which was a central point in the struggle for freedom in Eastern Europe. It was reading Neal Ascherson’s writing about Poland in the Observer (later the Independent) in my late teens that crystallised my interest in Eastern Europe and I’m privileged in the last ten years to have had the chance to work there.

Now many of the Polish residents have gone back to Poland, there are fewer Polish shops in our local streets but Polish beers and some foodstuffs have become staples in our supermarkets. There are some community events and groups, such as Liverpool Polonia, that have encouraged interaction and integration but I think it is a real shame – on both sides – that there has been little actual social and cultural interaction between many of the Polish and other Eastern European working migrants and existing residents. At least that is my experience. I hear negatives as well but think interaction and increased understanding can only be good for us and them. Plus always remembering our cultural links and great war time debt we owe.

I like Poland and have visited several times. I’ve also worked with Polish colleagues in both Ukraine and Georgia. I’ve visited Ukraine more often and recently but only more recently learnt that there are many (not just a few) long established Ukrainian communities in the UK. A reminder that our country is both more mixed and has always had immigrants who have over time integrated while retaining elements of their heritage and culture.

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Welcoming the Polish residents (& other migrants) to Liverpool

Next I post a motion to Liverpool City Council that I wrote in April 2006, encouraging the city authorities to welcome new Polish residents.

I am disappointed that, when I was a city councillor, Liverpool did little or nothing official to welcome new residents from the new EU members states of Eastern Europe, it didn’t even mark this occasion, unlike much smaller Caernarfon Council in its waterfront regeneration. At that time, and in the ten years since, Liverpool has also done nothing or very little to celebrate its links with twin and friendship cities and encourage residents to do so. When I visit other countries in Europe (and some other cities in the UK – usually smaller ones) they do much more. Liverpool is an international city, a famous World city, but it should still make an effort to encourage these links. In the interests of broadening horizons, history, peace, cultural exchange and education. I’ve made repeated efforts to encourage this though welcome any ideas for how to practically help.

I post the Polish motion from 2006 partly in response to the hostile and unfriendly atmosphere that has prevailed in England and Wales since the deceitful tragic referendum vote by a minority of the voters to leave the European Union. Recently I was heartened that a former student from Vietnam visiting with his family encountered friendly helpful people across England – as since the Referendum I’ve heard many direct stories of talented students, graduates and their families being abused. These are usually Asian students (abused as ‘Muslims’ whether they are or not). They still love Britain but they can’t understand why the country they and their parents or grandparents loved is leaving the EU and they are bemused at hostility by ignorant people. Foreign students are usually temporary residents, not migrants. There are pros and cons to migration itself, including from Eastern Europe (and non EU middle east and refugee countries), but I urge people to reflect on who is doing the jobs that provide their cheap goods and services and to remember just how poor much customer service was in England before Eastern Europeans (especially Romanians) and other immigrants (Turks / Kurds / Albanians / Arabs / Afghans even, South Americans, many Africans in London to add to the longstanding Irish, New Zealand, Australian) started doing those jobs much better.

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M H Baylis ‘Black Day at the Bosphorus Café’. Old Street, 2015.

I don’t read a lot of crime fiction just as I don’t watch much crime drama because it is always about murder. This annoys me as murder is a very infrequent crime, so the dramas are always very misleading about crime in society, and because they are not very sophisticated or interesting as they are always about murder.* Of course Agatha Christie, Morse, Endeavour, Foyle’s War (often filmed in Liverpool), occasional Taggart and Hot Fuzz are exceptions. I made an exception for Black Day at the Bosphorus Café for two reasons. Firstly because I liked the brightly colourful cover, second because the author is my old school friend Matthew Baylis. I’d bought and never quite read his first two books so thought I’d better read this one. And it helps traffic in my local library, the wonderful Sefton Park, a Carnegie on Aigburth Road in Liverpool. I then bought a copy. It is the best book involving crime, north London, and planning law I have read since former Python, Terry Jones’ Trouble on the Heath (an excellent ‘Quick Reads’).

Baylis’ hero, Rex Tracey (nice homage there?) is a Okocim Polish beer drinking (don’t try it) cynical local newspaper reporter who also solve crime. Set in the fictional borough of ‘Harringay and Tottenham’, amid the very real multicultural and frequently changing north London, the backdrop is the death of a Kurdish girl, Mina, and murky goings on at the Council. In step with the mid-2010’s the Council is run by a charismatic former Lib Dem lay preacher turned independent. The book is a bit hard on the Council (it makes the Mayor of Liverpool look like a good public image), illuminates Kurdish and Yazidi identity, puts thought into the atrocities of the partition of Cyprus in 1974 and implications for communities today, and gives real insight into the challenges for local journalism amid rapidly changing technological and consumer times. It does this while Baylis weaves a colourful picture of the districts covered by Tracey. I have three minor criticisms. A map would be useful for those of us who don’t know these parts of north London, the real Haringey and Tottenham. Some of the political narrative is a bit jammed in. And it will be nice if some of these characters that the author spends so much time introducing us to survive into the future novels. The ambitious young female Labour candidate, Eve Reilly, perhaps or the now disgraced Council leader. Of the nicer characters, at least the local paper’s art reviewer Lawrence isn’t killed off. He’s quite like the old Daily Post arts reviewer.

* It is ironic, because as a Lecturer in Criminal Law we always teach the law largely through the rules about murder – because they are the most serious cases, the leading authorities and just a lot more interesting than the actual real crime, minor theft, assault, sex and criminal damage. Despite being a liberal cosmopolitan to his bones, Matt is tv critic for the Daily Express. This has often made me ponder the question posed by Professor Clive Walker in an article on directing terrorist organisations that I assisted him with “Does the IRA’s cleaning lady direct the cleaning for the IRA and therefore is she guilty of directing a terrorist organisation?” The answer is not clear. When I occasionally see his columns they are not overtly political, but maybe like Al Murray he subverts prejudice and intolerance (ignorance / fear of difference) through intellect and humour.

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Al Murray’s ‘Watching War Films with my Dad’ Century 2013. Review.

Watching War Films with my Dad is much more than a memoir or the book on war films and growing up in the 1970s. Yes it covers each of those aspects. It is much more interesting than being a memoir (where it is in the Where did it all go right upbeat category) and it does include a lot of anecdotes, career history, tour highlights and some introspection. The latter mostly to reinforce points in the narrative. Yes it is a book about war films and war toys of every type, and with Al Murray being an enthusiast for World War Two history he of course delves into the facts, the errors and inaccuracies in the movies and toys. Told while he is flying a Spitfire at RAF Museum Duxford or filming a documentary about Arnhem. Anyone of our post war generation who grew up in the 1970s watching war movies will find the book interesting (he covers much more recent too). It is a book with anecdotes about modern Britain – in the comic incisive style of the Pub Landlord. What you can’t tell from the ‘A Memoir’, endearing title or comic Al Murray at D Day picture, is this is a book about history. Mostly about World War 2 and also World War 1. But Murray covers many other historical examples and periods as well. He tells you a lot that you didn’t know that you thought you knew about (how close the German victory on Crete was), unless probably you are another war history buff like my mate Dr. Clarkson. I didn’t know that writer Ben Elton was the nephew of Tudor history scholar Geoffrey Elton, which might explain why the first Blackadder, my favourite (co-written by Elton) seems to have some great attention to detail. Murray clearly loves France and Germany and likes to explain about these countries to his British and wider audience. He loves Europe but as a patriotic kid of the ’70s he loves Britain – the good Britain of values and being on the right side. Obviously he isn’t uncritical. His chapter on the history of history is excellent and very educational.

I borrowed Al’s book from Liverpool City Council’s Sefton Park library, Aigburth Road, Liverpool.

Note. I neglected to declare an interest. Al Murray was the drummer in my brother, Pat’s, band at and after Oxford, they’ve appeared in short films together by Martin Pickles, and I once had my hair cut in Al Murray’s kitchen.

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What is the European Commission really like?

Former NW England MEP Chris Davies writes.

The European Commission is both the EU’s executive (government) and its civil service. It has the job of coming up with the ideas and the legislation to put into practice the principles agreed in the EU Treaties and the wishes of the 28 EU governments. It also has the job of trying to enforce the agreed rules and ensure that there is a level playing field.

The Commission does not have a police force at its disposal, nor an army. To enforce the rules it calls in the ‘bureaucrats’ to write letters to governments, and when that fails it brings in the lawyers. The EU is not so much an independent body, more a set of legal agreements between independent countries. Enforcing the rules is often a slow business done mostly by persuasion because the Courts are even slower!

There are 28 Commissioners, one for each EU country, and they serve for a period of 5 years. These are the real ‘Brussels Bureaucrats, but most of them are former elected ministers with an impressive track record in their own countries. They are nominated by the governments of their respective countries, but have to undergo a three-hour interview by MEPs and be endorsed by the European Parliament. MEPs like to find a reason for rejecting at least one candidate just to keep the governments on their toes.

By the way, next time you hear UKIP complain about ‘unelected officials’ in Europe why not ask who elects the government of the USA? We know that the President is elected but all the other U.S. ministers are appointed, very like European Commissioners.

The current Commission likes to think of itself as a reforming one that is tackling the big issues and cutting down on the small ones. It is also big on communication. In the first year of its 5-year term the various Commissioners answered questions from the world’s media in Brussels on 138 occasions; they addressed the European Parliament 58 times and answered 14,467 parliamentary questions from MEPs; they also took part in 45 public meetings/town hall debates.

The big boast of the present Commission is that it is working to curb over-regulation. It says that during the period 2010-14 an average of 130 items of new legislation were proposed annually, whereas last year the number was down to 23. It also points to the fact that 80 proposals already in the legislative pipeline were withdrawn.

This is not a European bureaucracy that ploughs on regardless of public opinion. It’s a political body of people with strong democratic traditions, and they are listening and responding to the mood across Europe.

Liberal Democrats North West Notes & News 3 November 2015.

News from the North West Lib Dems, 19 January 2016.

The European Commission has ordered the Belgian government to collect €700 million of taxes from 35 multinational companies trading in that country.

The EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, says that the Belgian government has been doing illegal ‘sweetheart’ deals to attract business from large companies. But these deals are unfair to small companies that don’t get the same benefits, are unfair to other European countries, and break EU state aid rules.

So here we have the European Commission, the so-called ‘Brussels bureaucrats’ so loathed by the Europhobes, playing the role of umpire, doing the job of enforcing the rules intended to guarantee fair play, and protecting British interests from unfair competition.

What would we do without them? If the UK pulls out of the EU there will be no rules to say that competition must be fair.

Incidentally, Margrethe Vestager (47), who is a bit of a star in the Commission, is a former parliamentary group leader of the Danish Social Liberal Party, Radikale Venstre, which is very much a sister party to the British Lib Dems. She was deputy prime minister of Denmark before being nominated as Denmark’s commissioner.

Her husband is a maths teacher. They have three daughters. And she served as an inspiration for the main character in the Danish TV series ‘Borgen’ who has to juggle family life with a thoroughly honourable but intensely time-consuming life in politics. (Highly recommended and utterly absorbing if you haven’t seen it).

Maybe the ‘faceless’ European Commissioners aren’t so bad after all!

Chris Davies