Our ancestors were able to make money in trading, because of one secret – everyone is different. Different peoples and regions, had their own food, drink, clothes, art and raw materials. Some were liked and became world famous, some fell out of favour and exist in history books. The whole system worked because of those differences.

In today's corporate homogenised world, the very things that made areas famous has been diluted and prostituted for profit. We now get Cheddar cheese made in Italy, Scotch whisky made in Japan and China. Goods designed here, but made in China because our highly inventive engineers cost too much. For the corporation, cost and profit are all that matters, humanity and difference means nothing without a bottom line. Difference today decides on whether to go skiing or scuba diving, it's geographical not human.

Yet looking at this kind of world, don't you feel like something is missing? People cheapened because they're different, be it colour, religion, sex or disability. Nobody is above anyone else, nobody should have special laws to protect them, why can't we rely on a basic humanity instead?

People are ground down and used up in the name of profit, highly experienced and skilled people worth less than cheap foreign labour. People disabled fighting for their country are worth less than someone who inherits money and has no personal merits, where clique is worth more than custom, and where basic decency is of no value.

That is the England we have today, it's being made worse by a corrupt party politics. Most parties can't be told apart in the House of Commons, politicians are being given money by foreign powers or corporations to buy favour, yet the democratic votes of the English people are cheapened by such corruption. We are told we're all the same, but we'll give other partly autonomous parts of the UK more than you get, based on some spurious claims made over 30 years ago.

Why can't people buy Cheddar cheese from Cheddar? Why can't we buy local produce that hasn't travelled thousands of miles? Why can't skilled people be paid what they're worth? The answer right now is because our politicians have sold out to the corporation lifestyle, they have formed a class of their own based on how you were born, what school tie you wear and how much you inherited. If I didn't know better I'd think I was in 1020 AD not 2010 AD.
Add Comment
 
 
Peter Kay must be quaking in his boots judging by David Cameron's latest “stand up” slot at the Mansion House recently – telling the assembled audience that Britain is still a “world power”. For sheer hilarity, this one liner is up there with: “did you hear the one about the country that built two aircraft carriers, but couldn't afford the planes to go with them?”. And how quaintly predictable that stockbroker's son, and millionaire Old Etonian Cameron should have such a rosy, delusional view of Britain’s place in the world, comfortably coddled as he is in his Cotswolds constituency. 

Down here in the England and Britain where the rest of us live, it seems a much colder, darker, and more dangerous place than the one Cameron resides in – a reality where the British government encourages British companies and utilities to fall into foreign ownership, where either the profits are exported, or the jobs are, to countries where the hourly cost of labour is measured in pence, not pounds.

A Britain that sends poorly equipped soldiers to fight an unwinnable “whack-a-mole” war in Afghanistan, slowly bleeding our troops and our taxpayers dry in the process. 

A Britain that has record crime levels and already faces a chronic shortage of police officers to patrol the streets, but is cutting their numbers still further. A prelude to martial law, perhaps? It happened in Ulster, it's not unthinkable that it could happen on the mainland........

A Britain where the government hacks and slashes at even essential public spending,  but is more than happy to keep subsidising the EU and the Euro – whilst at the same time is unwilling to tackle the real culprits behind Britain's present financial malaise – the Tory sympathisers and globalists in the banking and credit industry.

A Britain where taxpayer's money was used without permission to buy failing banks, but have no say in how they are run, nor receive any profits back from them. What a fantastic business model -  privatised profits and socialised losses! This “generosity” is now being extended to bailing out another country, and another currency, again without the permission of the taxpayer.

A Britain that gives billions more to the EU than it gets back, but also buys twice as much from the EU as it sells back, because of the collapse of our manufacturing base. 

The English Radical Alliance are fed up with posh career politicians like Cameron from adorable picture postcard constituencies “bigging up” Britain on the world stage, whilst ignoring its problems: who even cares if Britain is a world power, when its citizens are too frightened to leave the house after dark for fear of attack by feral teenage gangs, because there are no police within ten miles? Who cares if Britain is “punching above its weight” when the young men doing the punching are coming home in body bags? 

A few years from now, who will even believe Britain is a world power, when our chronic over reliance on Russian gas and French nuclear energy suppliers allows foreign powers to blackmail us economically, when we could so easily be utilising our tidal energy or paying British miners to dig coal out of the ground?

Seriously, Mr Cameron – most British people don't care if Britain is a world power punching above its weight, or not, but:
They would like to feel safe when they go to the shops, and they would like our servicemen returned from Afghanistan and they would like to be out of the EU.

But none of these things are going to happen on your watch, are they? In our eyes, you are already a failed politician - you care more about Britain's image than Britain's people: you truly are the “heir to Blair”. What a wretched, damning epitaph. But what else can you expect, with these comedians running the country?

 
Add Comment
 
 
In the run up to the General Election, the Tories portrayed themselves as the party of law and order. They claimed they would send a serious unambiguous message that carrying a knife is totally unacceptable. They even went as far as making a pledge that anyone caught carrying a knife could expect a term in jail. This was certainly a message welcomed by those that have been victims or lost friends or family as a result of knife crime. Yet only a few months later, the ‘tough on crime Tories’ have dropped their pledge on a prison sentence for those caught carrying a knife, in favour of a caution.

There is no getting away from the reason behind this decision, and that is reducing the number of inmates in jail and saving money. Or to put it another way, it is more important in the eyes of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and his fellow Tories to cut costs and reduce jail numbers than to tackle knife crime. This is easy for Ken and his wealthy Conservative chums, many of whom live on select estates patrolled by private security companies. It is not so easy for people that live on certain council estates or in no go areas patrolled by gun and knife carrying gangs. Clarke’s decision is one of surrendering the streets of ordinary folk to these gangs and knife wielding thugs. It is typical of a government that is more determined to win control of the Helmand Province than the crime infested streets of some of our inner cities.

When you consider the Tories and their Lib Dem bedfellows’ plans to reduce jail numbers in relation to some of their other policies, anybody with an ounce of common sense can see they just do not add up. There is going to be mass redundancies with a large number of people unable to find work. There is going to be a clamp down on benefits, with no doubt a large number of easy target genuine claimants being hit. A small percentage of these unfortunate people will turn to crime out of sheer desperation, and no doubt some will find their way into the custodial system. Will jail places be found for these people instead of knife wielding thugs?

The Tories alone cannot be held completely responsible for this fiasco. We have known for years the number of prison places has been running low, yet the Labour Government decided two aircraft(less) carriers for international conflict were more important than four prison ships for the nation’s convicts. In other words, they chose to put other people’s houses in order before looking after our own.

It is a simple fact England needs prisons and this cannot be ignored. However we also need to consider a wide range of punishments, including community based hard labour and curfew orders for lesser offenders. We have all read reports of offenders serving longer sentences for minor offences than of someone convicted of brutally beating up a pensioner. This is severely wrong and the English Radicals would ensure those convicted of such violent crimes face the severest penalties.  At the same time we believe people currently in jail for minor offences could easily pay for their crime with firm community based punishments, thus freeing cells for more serious offenders.

Returning to the subject of knife crime, the English Radical Alliance believes nobody should carry a knife without good reason. We feel members of the public should feel confident to report those suspected of carrying knives, knowing their anonymity is guaranteed and the offender faces a severe prison sentence. We believe this sentence should include both hard labour and rehabilitation training before the offender is released. We need to ensure no go areas and gangland housing estates are reclaimed and real communities created in their place. Not everyone is fortunate enough to live in the select private security patrolled streets of some Tories, but we all have the right to live without fear of crime and violence. How many more innocent lives shall have to be lost to knife crime before Ken Clarke and our other senior politicians give us that right? As English Radicals our answer is ‘None’!
Add Comment