The Politics of Dancing

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I dislike hyperbole, I particularly dislike the puerile habit by many on the left, acquired in the 1960’s and never dropped, of calling anyone with whom they disagree a ‘fascist.’ Photoshop pictures of Iain Duncan Smith [1] dressed as Himmler are not only in incredible bad taste, they also, and this for me is far more important, damage the argument. Put another way when people see the argument framed in this way they think it over the top, they switch off, and they stop listening. So it was with some caution that I began to think about writing this article, though it in fact follows on from the piece I wrote early in March on the Tories War against the Poor and Voiceless, (see Politics Of Dancing 8/03/13). Language, particularly in the case of English, is an evolving and dynamic element, new words constantly springing up to describe new phenomenon. I thought of this as I tried to think of a term to describe the developments currently taking place with respect to state welfare...

This certainly feels like one of the longest winters I can remember in a very long time; it seems to stretch behind me like an icy wasteland from which I can barely perceive the balmy days of last September. [1] It is beginning to test everyone’s patience, and is certainly testing mine. A year or so back Boris Johnson, our calculating buffoon of a mayor warned that changes to the welfare system threatened inner London with ‘economic cleansing Kosovo style.’ Leaving aside the rather tasteless reference to the Balkan wars this was not hyperbole, the Benefit cap which hits those forced to pay the astronomically high rents in London , the Bedroom Tax and other changes in the welfare system are driving the poor and the low paid out of central London . I have just received a copy of the so called Discretionary Housing Payment Claim form. This is a new system of dealing with poverty and hardship, a finite pot of money to be allocated purely on a discretionary basis, i.e. it is no l...

Over the weekend I watched some of Barrack Obama’s trip to Israel and the occupied territories, -such is the life of the political geek.  Obama is an extraordinarily eloquent speaker, he knows instinctively  how to use his voice to maxim effect, inflection and emphasis, nuance and rhetoric are all there. He is certainly the best presidential speaker in my lifetime, which includes Kennedy. However therein lies the nature of the man, he is a preacher, albeit humane, well mannered, erudite and eloquent, a truly civilized man. Words and good intentions however do not change anything, indeed devoid of action all Obama’s eloquence is simply windy rhetoric. Put another way, Obama is now into his second term, what has he achieved? He has managed to steer a moderate reform of healthcare passed a rabid Republican party. What else has he done? Place his record up against another US President who held office during troubling times. Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was no pr...

In Down and Out In Paris and London George Orwell describes staying in a Salvation Army Shelter. ‘To my eye these Salvation Army shelters, though clean, are far drearier than the worst of the common lodging-houses. There is such a hopelessness about some of the people there--decent, broken-down types who have pawned their collars but are still trying for office jobs. Coming to a Salvation Army shelter, where it is at least clean, is their last clutch at respectability.’ [1] He goes on to describe the tyrannical way in which the place was run and the charging for tea and basic foods, which, as he observes, was probably given to them for free.  He concludes by observing:- ‘They are certainly cheap, but they are too like workhouses for my taste. In some of them there is even a compulsory religious service once or twice a week, which the lodgers must attend or leave the house. The fact is that the Salvation Army are so in the habit of thinking themsel...

' RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — President Barack Obama urged Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday to get back to peace talks but offered no new ideas on how they might do so, essentially abandoning his previous support of the Palestinian demand for Israel to halt settlement activity before negotiations resume. [1] ' President Obama speaking in Ramallah has re-stated his commitment to a two state solution between Israel and Palestine. One rather imagines that the President is committed to this solution rather as I am committed to peace, love and understanding, he thinks it’s a good idea but is not prepared to do bugger all to bring it about. As I watched him deliver his speech, fatuous even by the standards usually applied when speaking about Israel and the occupation, it felt like watching an acrobat demonstrating how to stand on your head, you, wondered why he bothered [1] Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Obama-says-he-s-not-giving-up-on-Mide...

I Churchill was in very many ways a terrible war leader; he constantly interfered in matters outside his competence, particularly respecting the military conduct of the war. He was directly responsible for the fiasco of the Greek and Cretan campaigns. [1] Of course he had form being responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles campaign in the First World War. In between the wars he switched loyalties from the Liberals to the Conservatives, took a vehement position against the striking miners during The General Strike, openly admired Mussolini and championed the most reactionary causes, not least as a virulent opponent of Indian independence. When he became Prime Minister he was deeply distrusted by the Conservatives and only supported by the Labour party as they could not countenance Chamberlain’s continuing occupation of the office, and had no confidence in Halifax . Prone to depression and a heavy drinker, divisive and occasionally petulant he presented as an unlikely n...

I don’t know what was more nauseating, the smug self congratulatory tone in Parliament over the dangerous and illiberal attack on free expression represented by the tawdry deal done in Ed Miliband’s office in the early hours of Monday morning, or the revolting spectacle of Newspapers like the Sun or Daily Mail quoting Churchill, Orwell and John Stuart Mill. I mean Orwell, John Stuart Mill, do these people have no shame? Sorry, I forgot, of course they don’t. Meanwhile, despite being no part of the Leveson proposals, the establishment, for given the three party consensuses we must now call it that, shiftily inserted a clause to the Royal Charter to embrace [1] the Internet; [2] extending control over  any ‘ news related material,’ that is blogs like this one. Of course the government says don’t worry your pretty little heads, we don’t mean people like you. The Charter of course makes no such distinction. Whenever I hear this kind of reassurance I know I’m in trouble. M...

Since when did being a victim of crime confer sainthood and the Wisdom of Solomon? I ask as this as now it seems to be the received wisdom. Over the weekend I heard from Hugh Grant, from Harriet Harman and Ed balls a reiteration of the prime ministers foolish statement that the test of any post Leveson legislation was whether it met with the approval of the victims. Well, no; the victims of the Tabloid crime machine suffered both grievously and grotesquely and it is extraordinarily difficult to imagine what families like the Dowler’s and the McCann’s have been through. However the perpetrators of the crimes against them are now thankfully being dragged through the courts. I do not think it wise to hand over the framing of future legislation to victims is in any way appropriate in a properly functioning liberal democratic society. [1] I have been a victim, I was mugged. The worst aspect was having my mobile phone stolen, since it contained contacts that I subsequently lost, ...

Trevor Kavanagh, the Political Editor of The Sun has suddenly discovered virtue and like a reformed drunk or petty embezzler he wants to tell the world. Thus over the last two days I have witnessed him haranguing TV interviewers with his demands that ‘the press be kept free.’ All he demands, he says, “is a fair hearing.” That would be the sort of hearing that The Sun gave to the victims of Hillsborough, the Trade Union Movement, Neil Kinnock, East European Immigrants, Liberty, the EU…….I know, I know, enough already this article cannot be that long. Chutzpah can often be funny, bare faced cheek on stilts, however The Sun has caused too much damage in too many people’s lives for far too long to be funny. Strip Mr Kavanagh’s argument of the hyperbole however and there is validity in some of the points he makes. Freedom of the press, something the Sun used, abused and dragged through the gutter as it trawled for salacious gossip, pursued the vendetta’s and petty spite of the Murdoch ...

You might think that Iain Duncan Smith is simply the least successful, and also perhaps the least distinguished, person to ever lead the Conservative Party. But you would be wrong, for Mr Smith affects to be an ‘expert’ on poverty. He bases this expertise on several visits to run-down council estates and his role in setting up a think tank, the grandly, if somewhat erroneously named Centre for Social Justice. Mr Smith’s findings about poverty might be surprising to some. Money is not the solution he explains but is part of the problem; even making provision for basic subsistence creates something he calls ‘a dependency culture.’ Thus restricting any increase in benefits to below the rate of inflation is actually doing the poor an immense favour, educating them in the realities of the world; (though how the three year old child of a single parent can best absorb such education he does not explain). Mr Smith presents as somewhat irritated that the poor are not more vocal in their...

Depardieu attends a celebration in his honour held by Russian Puppet in Chechnya The inquest is about to commence of the murdered Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko. His widow is currently being treated abdominally by the British state whom he assisted. The pathological liar Chris Grayling's Justice Department refusing her legal aid :-  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/10/litvinenko-inquest-british-secret-courts Litvinenko was murdered by agents of the Russian state who poisoned him with radiation leaving him to die a prolonged and agonising death.  The Russian State has never been a stable democracy, in the two brief windows in which democracy might have taken root, February 1917 and after the collapse of The Soviet union in 1991; external forces on both occasions, in the first instance in the shape of war and in the second the imposition of a wholly inappropriate model of free market capitalism, served to strangle the baby at birth....

Paranoia,” said the film critic before a screening of Rosemary’s Baby, “is the most prevalent of all contemporary neurosis and the most understandable. If anything things are far worse.” We will fight them on the estates, we will fight them in the food banks, we will never surrender This is not a good time to be poor, [1] to rely on benefits, to be homeless, on the margins, or require support or care. The Government is currently waging a sustained and systematic attack on the poor and disadvantaged, it has a strategy and is following it through. This sounds like hyperbole, but I recommend you look at the website of any broadsheet newspaper, or the BBC website. If you do not find either resource suitably impartial you could read a copy of Hansard. However just this week we have heard more on:- The Bedroom Tax. This is a measure designed to penalise any one on a low income who consequently requires financial support and who also has any ‘spare’ bedroom...