Letters not exposed to public view

A selection of letters from the period December 2019 to February 2020, on a variety of issues, that never quite made it into the press...

11th February 2020

The notable question not asked during the media promotions of the government’s latest — HS2, 40 thousand more buses — spending plans was ‘how are you going to pay for these proposals’?

There was on the ‘Today’ programme a discussion about B. Johnson’s plans for the future including the prospects of tax rises to pay for things.

Raising taxes to ‘pay for things’ is not needed as Johnson knows that it’s perfectly possible for the government to generate as much money as it likes when it suits them, just as was done when ‘Quantitative Easing’ was used to bail out the banks. That money invariably goes into the private hands of giant building companies, firms of lawyers and consultants.

He doesn’t care about taxation because that’s really used to control behaviour and equalise wealth. He’s definitely not interested in equality, that would hurt his backers, and so the very rich can be fairly sure that taxes will not be going up for them.

February 7th 2020

Over the Christmas period, nothing gave me greater pleasure than seeing Jonathan Freedland’s team lose in the final of the festive version of University Challenge.

Having endured the semi-final which took the team to the final, I can testify that Freedland seems to be just as smug and self-satisfied live on TV as he looks in the picture attached to his opinion column in the Guardian.

He is just one of a rash of ‘commentators/opinion formers/pundits/journalists’ telling us that we are in danger of falling into a ‘post-truth dystopia’ and are heading into a totalitarian state. The reader can take their pick of title for these pseudo intellectuals but, like the other kind of rash, they badly need scratching.

Their view, Freedland very recently warning ‘progressives’ about the need to hold power in order to change things, is a pathetic one coming from people who strenuously undermined the only progressive path on offer in the 2019 General Election based on their own, very, narrow self-interest.

Not only that but there is zero evidence that the idea of ‘Have Power, Make Change’ works. There is, however indisputable evidence from the 1997 election that the middle way – to power – they advocate at the expense of a principled but, to them, extreme way leads to no change at all.

How they manage to churn out their pieces without, seemingly, any insight into their immoral, smug emptiness escapes the writer. It’s easier to explain why they write them – arrogance, money and a wish to keep any real progress away from our people.

February 7th 2020

Readers could be forgiven for thinking that we are still in the throes of a general election. Within the last week the Conservatives have released a mis-named ‘Party’ Political Broadcast, it is certainly political as propaganda usually is. Its central character was one ‘David from Bolton’, who voted Tory for the first time, extolling the virtues of its leader.

Then, on Friday’s BBC ‘Today’ programme, we hear people who voted Tory, also allegedly for the first time, in a former Labour seat telling us how great B Johnson is, in another propaganda piece shamelessly masquerading as an interview.

This is especially worrying from what is supposed to be our independent national public broadcast service but don’t forget that the programme’s editor is Sarah Sands, formerly of The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and the London Evening Standard, every one of them Tory supporting publications.

On top of this there is the Tory Brexit merchandise, notably the striking tea-towel, featuring BJ, the hero of the hour.

One of the most obvious and disturbing characteristics of repressive regimes is an obsession with The Leader featuring statues, giant portraits, empty but rousingly optimistic speeches and, I daresay tea-towels.

January 20th 2020

May I appeal to your newspaper and its readers to explain to me what the BBC is for and why we should pay for it?

This morning on the ‘flagship’ (‘ragship’ more like) Today programme, two items in succession showed the dreadful editorial and journalistic standards the broadcaster has sunk to.

First, Simon Jack, referred to ‘the highest employment figures ever’ to counter a report which says that Britain is second only to Russia when it comes to not trusting the government, corporations and the media. He was referred to a report from the Resolution Foundation pointing out the complete inability of this ‘employment’ to actually allow people to have even a basic standard of living without having more than one job. Surely, this type of knowledge should be basic to the ‘Business Editor’.

Next, Justin Webb, in conversation with two journalists was more interested in how effective the restrictive approach to engaging with the main media embraced by the current PM compared to his promiscuous involvement with social media rather than taking them to task about their failure to subject themselves to scrutiny – even the feeble BBC type.

At £150,000 plus both these people are a waste of citizen’s money.

January 18th 2020

I see people on twitter coming out with stuff like 'nothing learned' when referring to the performance of the LP in the 2019 election. Jeremy Corbyn has led the LP for 4 years and achieved more votes for Labour than Blair(twice), Brown or Kinnock even in defeat, surely the 'nothing learned' should refer to the other 69 years since 1945, when, especially after 1979, the LP was not a socialist party and thus lost the chance, especially from 1997, to destroy the Tories for ever, and change this country into a politically educated, more equal, happier, sustainable, more democratic and generally better place.

‘You’ve got to win if you want to do anything’, that’s another phrase trotted out. It’s fair enough in itself but when New Labour did win it didn’t, ultimately, do anything. Sure, plenty of money was found for the NHS but much of it is still being clawed back through the COMPLETELY capitalist vehicle of PFI contracts and the minimum, but not, please note a living, wage was introduced but, in the end New Labour was a capitalist project. The proof of this is comes in Blair’s backing by grotesque shape of the Dirty Digger media mogul and planet destruction enabler, Murdoch. — Bob, your uncle