James Larkin Jones

Somewhere along the line I missed the tributes to Jack Jones from Gordon Brown,Tony Blair,Peter Mandelson,Jacquie Smith and the rest of New Labour.
Obviously somewhere they have paid their tributes to one of the outstanding leafers of the Labour movement in the 20c.-it's just that I missed their comments.
I expect we may have to wait until fledging Labour MP Georgia Gould casts her formidable political intellect in Jack's direction before we get the definitive NuLabour spin on him.

his name gives his history away- born in Liverpool of Irish socialist parentage, a docker on Merseyside,a fighter with the International Brigades in Spai and the most formidable leader of the TGWU in its history.
The T&G has had some fine leaders,Ron Todd,Bill Morris,Moss Evans-but it has also had some stinkers-Arthur Deakin and Ernest Bevin spring immediately to mind!
But Jack had natural courage-he was wounded on the Ebro-and was a natural leafer.But he never compromised and dspite all the offers of wealth and power he never forgot who he was and what he represented.
There are many in New Labour who would call Jack a 'dinosaur' and desmiss his politics and his values as old fashioned and meaningless in the modern world.
Well if the choice is between a man like Jack Jones and a waste of space like Peter Mandelson or Derek Draper I think I know whose side I'm on!
In the same way that the late Jack Jones always knew whose side he was on.

"OK Jerk pork-come out with your rice up!-it's a fair cop!"

Can you believe it?Eight of the Met's finest in stab proof vests alongside a small posse of Council officials entered a Caribbean restaurant and ordered it to be closed immediately because ot was operating within 400 yards of a school.
Thats right, because it was operating 'without planning permission 400 yards from a school AND a park the Council instructed that it be closed to prevent primary school children nipping in at lunchtime for a quick dose of cholesterol building jerk pork, rice and peas.
Now apart from the fact that it had been operating for three years unmolested and had only closed for re-furbishment, that it was not in fact a take-away,that it is surrounded by numerous fast food burgeries ,and the school that was being protected is a primary whose children are not allowed out at lunchtime anyway!

Apart from all that,how does it feel to live in a society where it is possible for a hard pressed Police service to be used to enforce a pointless council by-law in such a heavy handed way?

Presumably the logic is that if the youngsters walk say 410 yeard to the nearest MacDonalds they will have burnt off enough calories to justify the exclusion zone , or maube of course the little tubbies will have to run back to avoid being late for school and that way get fit!

An ingenious bit more of useless legislation invented by the well named Minister Balls.

But what is harder to believe that there is a Council anywhere in the UK who can be arsed to try and enforce such a regulation with a council leader prepared to defend this in public.

So step forward Clyde Loakes-leader of Waltham Forest Council and PPC for Northampton South.

I now understand why Loakes spends so little time in town-he has important legislation to implement down south!

Strange to say the school children that he is protecting so assidiously in Leytonstone from the perils of Caribbean jerk pork are the same ones who cluster around the ice-cream vans after school !
But Loakes is obviously a New Labour drone(sorry clone) prepared to do the bidding of any passing Cabinet Minister.
Could that be how he won the postal ballot in Northampton South so convincingly?

Where do you hide a cabinet minister?

In the olden days when the labour party wanted people to notice what it was doing we invited the press to the opening of a matchbox.
In those far off days when I was a parliamentary candidate the visit of any old back bencher was an opportunity for the press to photograph some unknown old codger sitting outside Charles Street with me,an unknown young codger,mugging to camera!
How times have changed.
A couple of weeks Northampton South Labour Party had a visit from a cabinet minister-the iconic Hazel Blears(memorably described by Ann Treneman in The Times as the 'Duracell bunny') visited to town to support the almost newly selected (well about six months ago) invisible PPC.

Strangely the visit went unreported, no press,no photographs,no radio,no TV- just a deafening silence and an empty Hazel sized space where the cabinet minister should have been.
Why?
There are a number of explanations:
1.The Party are embarrassed by Hazel-that little packet of dynamite.
2.The party are embarrassed by their PPC-maybe he is especially ugly or wants to keep a low profile.
3.The Party are embarrassed that it couldn't afford to use the Labour Club and had to find a cheaper venue.
4.Northampton South has ticked the no publicity box.

Of course it is just possible that the combination of the eccentric cabinet minister and the monklike candidate is a step too far even for Northampton to contemplate.but it does raise the question- what on earth are they afraid of?

We are told that Haze met with a delegation of Post Office workers who were there to raise the issue of why the government wants to destroy the post Office as a public service and if it is true that the secretive PPC arranged that meeting one might have thought that he would have been pleased to publicise his role.
But maybe he's frightened of Trade Unions too!

One has to aeeume that if barack Obama turned up for ameeting in Northampton then Labour's PPC would turn up with a paper bag on his head.
There again its possible that the local party has been duped and they have selected a hologram-the ultimate New Labour creature!

Bye bye New Statesman-hello New Labour!

For years I have subscribed to the New Statesman-through the dreary years of righteousness to the radical days of sort of dissent.
I've tolerated everything, the days when it thought it was the house organ of the now defunct SDP,when it thought it was the vanguard voice of the revolutionary proletariat-even the recent innovations of piles of shadow cabinet members writing about their compassion.
I thought I could cope with everything,until last week.
A special edition with a big glossy cover edited by Alastair Campbell!

Now much as I loathe Mandelson with a passion in all honesty the creepiness of Campbell puts even Mandelson in the shade.If you want to know just how dreadful it really was inside the blair big tent-read Campbell's diaries.They make even Adam Bolton's collection of trivia almost worthwhile.

We all knew the Labour party was in trouble when they invited mandelson back into the cabinet,not so much a big beast but a dainty dinosaur, and then the NS invite Campbell as guest editor.

Forget about rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic-now we're playing deck quoits.


It was really like Private Eye with no jokes(actually that's just like Private Eye).All that was missing was the word balloons on the glossy cover,but then Alex Ferguson and Allie himself gave ample opportunity to invent your own caption.
Inside the Private Eye theme continued.The jokey interview between Fergie and Allie,leaden in the extreme, then a diary from Sarah Brown with all the quotes from Gordon(just like the Supreme Leaders page in the Eye, and finally there was the Vicar of St Albion prating on about God!

You couldn't make it up if you tried.So who edits the next edition? Lord Gould's 22 year old daughter about to be parachuted into a safe Labour seat!

Clive Loakes has got it all wrong, if he wants to win a seat he should have got Philip Gould to adopt him,and became Alastairs love child by way of a focus group.

A deep feeling of unease

I watched the 9/12 Lancers parade through Northampton Town Centre over a coffee and with a growing sense of unease.

it was abeautiful sunny day and the parade was a grand spectacular and the crowds were enormous but one had to ask -why?

Apart from the fact that the soldiers were not really local in any accepted sense, if you wanted a 'local' regiment then the Anglians or more appropriately the Pioneers were better bets.

Then again why at this time? I don't remember local parades when they came back from tours of duty in Ulster,or the Falklands for that matter.
Why did I get the feeling that it was all about instructions from on high to get a bit of gung ho patriotism for'our boys and girls' and the wonderful job they were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Best way to defuse unpopular wars is to run up the flag and see who salutes!

The demonstrations of patriotic zeal being re-enacted all over the country has really nothing to do with our returning heroes but cynically an attempt by the government to legitimise two useless wars under the guise of patriotism-the last refuge of the coward!

So if you don't support our heroes then somehow you are unpatriotic and are insulting the men and women who risk their lives 'protecting our freedom'

What utter balderdash, I have no doubt that our young men and women are brave and loyal,but in the end that is what they are paid to do and they act under orders.
it's a fair bet that most of them had never heard of Iraq or Afghanistan until they were sent there-and for what?

To prop up American oil interests in the middle east and reactionary war lords in the east!

Both wars are unecessary and meaningless in terms of 'protecting our freedom'.
It is not the fault of those young men and women that they had to go, it was the orders of the politicians-who should be ashamed that they ever got troops involved in the first place.

The old east India Company had it about right two hundred years ago.To protect their financial interests they raised their own mercenary army .it seems to me that if Exxon or Mobil or Esso want to protect their oil interests in the Middle east they should perhaps buy a company army-I wonder then if we would be so keen to rally round the flag!

Milk not for everyone

Sean Penn won an academy award for his portrayal of the San Franciscan gay activist Harvey Milk in the movie'Milk'
You might have thought that a film that won the Best Actor award this year might have featured in the programmes of one or both of the town's main multi-plexes.

Not a bit of it! If you wanted to see Milk you had only three or four days up at Lings Forum.

It was a magnificent film, full of hope and optimism-something that we are all in short supply of at the moment,so anything that cheers the spirit is worth shouting about.
But what do we get,a short run,poorly advertised in a remote small local cinema.

Fair play to the managers at the Forum and indeed to NBC for keeping this last little bastion of cultural values alive in the Philistine Borough of Nothinghampton!

But why were the mainstream houses afraid to show Milk ?
They were williing to show the fairly routine and uninspirational Frost/Nixon and yet unwilling to show Milk-now it can hardly be because Sean Penn is not box office can it? Especially as the film got rave reviews and Penn a very well deserved oscar.
And further the film well reflected the Obama mood of hope- so what held the moguls back?
Homophobia perhaps ? A reluctance to show a gay man in a heroic role ?

A great sadness, for when the 'twinky bar' defence was put forward for Dan White's murderous action-the whole shallowness of US justice was exposed- and in the current climate a timely reminder.

What's the point of Peter Mandelson ?

We all know that he is the grandson of Herbert Morrison.
Frankly if that old fraud was in any way related to me I would take strenuous efforts to keep quiet about that.
It is also said that he was once in the Young Communist League,but that must have been a passing nanosecond for there is little evidence of his connection.

Peter Mandelson is the perfect metaphor for the modern Labour Party-shallow,aimless and hopelessly authoritarian.
it takes some doing however in 48 hours or so to deliver three blows to the party that he is supposed to be committed to that will end ots electoral chances for a couple of decades.
Firstly we are told on the sunday press that he intends to halt the few progressive items left in the Queens speech of two months ago.Out goes extendended maternity leave,out goes protection for agency workers and out goes tougher equality legislation.
He has friends you understand in the 'business' world.
One of them is the Russian oligarch who owns LDV vans in the West Midlands.Mandelson has decided to stand aside and watch his billionaire chum close the van plant and lose about 6,000 jobs.
Well the only silver lining in that particular cloud is that Jacqui Smith will lose her matginal seat!

Thirdly he is determined to privatise a chunk of the Post Office,ensuring that again there will be massive job losses,the Labour Party will lose £1million from the CWU-and probably most of its activists too!
Yet the smirking bastard continues unhindered to wreak havoc.

To those old friends still in the Party and suffering from a vicious and unrelenting attack from the regional party hacks remember this-

They are the spawn of Mandelson not the children of the Labour party.
If you want to save the party the only thing you can do is to leave it and start building again from the ground up,
leave Lord Mandelson and his apperachniks the empty vessel they have so richly created.