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?

 
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THE 300 06/23/2010
 
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As the 300th British serviceman to die in Afghanistan is laid to rest this week, David Cameron tells us it is “desperately sad”, but “essential for British security” that we are there. I’m sure the English Radicals are not the only ones who find this “security” angle impossible to swallow. On the contrary, the British presence in Afghanistan is endangering the safety and security of the British public, by inflaming the anger of British Muslims – as can be seen from the Islamic “rent a mob” presence every time a regiment returns from a tour of duty. Lest we forget, the 7/7 bombers were almost to a man, British born Muslims, protesting against the British presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

And unless the Taliban are planning direct action by driving across Asia and Europe in Toyota 4x4’s to spray us all with semi-automatic gunfire, the security angle doesn’t really bear scrutiny, does it, Dave? 

You can’t invite people with strong links to other countries to live here, and then expect them to keep quiet when you start a war in that country. So in fact, the British presence in these Islamic countries is undermining British life, by dividing its citizens.

The British state wants its cake and to eat it: an idyllic “multi-culti” Britain, with all colours and faiths holding hands and skipping joyfully through the meadow together, while it occupies a land many of those British citizens hold dear, to prop up a corrupt regime on behalf of a bigger corrupt regime. And there lies the real reason Britain is in Afghanistan: to legitimise the American presence there. Why are the Americans there? Because of its strategic importance, oil pipelines, opium (production is up since the invasion, strangely) and mineral wealth recently estimated at one trillion dollars. 

If you look at the operation from an American viewpoint, it’s been a fantastic success: through warfare, thousands of miles from your own borders, you have destabilised a country with incredible resources and strategic value which you are now the ruler of, your local puppets are in place and doing your bidding, all that remains is to strip it of its value, and when that’s achieved you can pull out, job done. What’s a few thousand NATO dead, or a hundred thousand Afghan dead, when there’s big money to be made?

So in effect, the “300” that the title refers to – the dead British servicemen who lost their lives in Afghanistan – did not die to bring democracy to the Afghan people, or to safeguard women’s rights as we are sometimes told, but to promote and safeguard the commercial interests of global capitalism for our “special relationship” partner, America. We really should be more choosy who our friends are.

For the love of Allah, Dave, grow a pair, stand up to “hopey-changey” Obama, and pull our troops out of Afghanistan, before another “300” die in vain. British Muslims will thank you for it (could be votes in it, Davey boy!) and the wider British public will thank you for it. As you are fond of telling us, sometimes difficult choices have to be made: you make one for a change, and see how you like it. The English Radicals would do it in a heartbeat.


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The visit you have been dreading for months is taking place. Big Sam, from the farm across the water, is striding up the path towards your front door. He stops, and knocks roughly with his boot. With a heavy heart, you open the door to see what he wants. As if you didn't know. “Now see here, Brumville, I'm a-wanting to buy your ranch, and kick your family out, and I mean to have it. Trouble is, I ain't got no money. Know where I can borrow me some?”, he laughs. .

“Why, yeah!” comes a reply from your barn – the voice of your ranch hand. “You know the bank in the town – the one Mayor McJudas saved from collapse last year with our money? They're rolling in the stuff now, and they ain't proud who they lend to, either!”

Big Sam's face twists into a cheesy grin on hearing this news. He tips his hat to you, and says: “Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you suh, but I gotta go now, and talk to a man about money – be seein' ya! Hey, ranch hand! Let me buy you a beer when you get finished here!”

The above is a work of fiction. However..............

If there were any lingering doubt that the lunatics are running the asylum that is England, there can be none now, with the news that the British government is allowing American multinational Kraft to buy out Cadbury – a profitable English company with 6,000 employees in this country – with money borrowed from RBS, the Scottish bank rescued by Gordon Brown's Labour government with our taxes. In effect, the neighbours we helped in their time of need, are now happily stabbing us in the back by lending money to our competitors, who will use it to buy our confectionery industry, sack the English workers and outsource those jobs abroad.

Manchester United and Liverpool are also classic examples of global capitalism gone crazy – profitable English clubs with no debt to talk of, that were bought out by American businessmen with borrowed money, now in debt to the tune of hundreds of millions.

These examples illustrate everything that is wrong with our weak government and the system of global capitalism, that we in England are told is such a great thing. Great for whom? The bankers and deal makers stand to gain financially. Cadbury shareholders will gain financially, as will T-Rex lookalike Todd Stitzer, the American (what a coincidence!) CEO of Cadbury, who it is estimated will be paid off to the tune of £7 million and a fat pension pot. The 6,000 English Cadbury workers almost certainly face redundancy, their families and communities financial hardship.

Meanwhile, the English confectionery industry will join all the other English industries that have gone to the wall in recent years, because successive British governments have consistently refused to invoke protectionist measures – steel, coal, fishing, manufacturing – in the name of “Free Markets”. Business, like War, is an arena where playing fair and settling for second place will not get you a silver medal, it will get you destroyed - fighting dirty gets results. If you get cornered by a mugger who's waving a knife at you, are you going to shake his hand and wish him the best of luck, or are you going to pick up that broken bottle and even the odds?

The Free Market is all very well in principle, but when your national interest is threatened and foreign competitors are trying to destroy you, why shouldn't a your government step in and ban the sale of a company - and why shouldn’t you slap extra tax on imported goods?

Can you imagine the French government allowing this to happen? No? Then why are we?

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AFGHANISTAN - WINNING THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE
Why, when there is a world shortage of morphine, do Western forces in Afghanistan say they are destroying opium poppy crops?
Why would you destroy something so valuable?

Would it not make more sense to win the hearts and minds of the local tribesmen by BUYING their poppies off them for a good price, and converting it into morphine (a humanitarian move on two fronts, helping poor farmers AND providing the world's sick with more pain relief), rather than let the Taliban step in and pay growers a pittance, to convert into heroin, to fund their guerrilla war against the West?

Or, as some suspect, are the Western governments simply - er - confiscating, some of the poppy crop and telling the world they are destroying it? Are the Taliban the only ones who are funding their war effort with opium?

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The British government, through its mouthpiece Mike O'Brien (Health Minister – no, I'd never heard of him either) is apologising to the victims of Thalidomide for the pain and suffering caused to them by its prescription to their mothers fifty years ago. This is shortly after the British government apologising for the slave trade of over 200 years ago – what's next? The Bubonic Plague? The Crusades? The Norman conquest?

Quite apart from the lesson that governments and the medical profession are often mistaken in their judgements about the safety of drugs and “terror diseases” like Swine Flu, the English Radicals ask: why apologise for something you HAVEN'T done, when there are a hundred things you SHOULD apologise for? For instance:

The thousands of British, Iraqi and Afghan dead, as a result of our devotion to America and their desire to control Iraqi oil and the Afghan poppy crop?

The thousands of English “A” level students who won't get a University place next year, because the British government would sooner fund war in Afghanistan than education?

Our continued membership of the EU, when the majority of English people want out?

Labour’s refusal to have referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, an election manifesto pledge?
 
The scandalous taxation on private pensions, while the cost of taxpayer-funded public sector pensions is going through the roof?

The 88 year old English war hero Spitfire pilot John Mejor, forced to sell his home and make his elderly wife homeless, to pay for his medical care?

The Mosedale family returning to their Tottenham home to find it full of Romanian “asylum” seekers, who have a “tenancy agreement” from a scam merchant, and so cannot be evicted?

The fishermen of England, who watch European super trawlers steal their catch every day and ship it straight to Europe?
 
The coal miners of England, who, unarmed, were forced to face police cavalry to try and save their industry after Scargill and Thatcher decided to have a class war?

The car makers of England, watching their factories being dismantled and shipped to China?

The steel makers of England, as they watch their Teesside steel mill mothballed?

The people of England are facing the same fate as the American Indian – a proud, brave race forced into reservations (council estates) their buffalo (jobs) all gone, with only “fire water” (coke and smack) to dull the pain of their existence, with little prospect of breaking the cycle of despair. That's why we are radicals: we can see the problems, and we have the answers. 

ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO FOLLOW US? 

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ONE STAR THAT WILL BE SHINING THIS CHRISTMAS
The English Radicals would like to offer their congratulations and best wishes to the new owners of the Star Inn in Broughton, Greater Manchester – the local community who scraped together £80,000 to buy it off the brewery at auction. No mean feat in these difficult times, but they are not the first to do this. That honour goes to the Old Crown pub in Cumbria, which was bought by a consortium of local residents in 2003, and is still thriving today.

This is exactly the type of effort which we, as Distributists, applaud: the Star may have closed for good, like so many others up and down England, but the locals who use it now own it, and it will  presumably be a “free house” – meaning they can buy their beer cheaply from competitive local sources, instead of being forced to buy ale from a “tied” mega brewery, often at inflated prices.

Although pubs are probably ideal for this type of community buyout, we hope to see this practice expand to fund other types of business - because businesses generate employment, which we need desperately now our jobs are being outsourced to the slave labour economies abroad. 

The English Radicals believe that every pub and bar should, by law, be a free house, and we would like nothing better than to see every local pub community owned, and supplied by local breweries, with the global breweries that once owned them forced to compete in the “free” market, instead of running the cosy scam that forces pub managers to buy only their products. 

A toast to the Star Inn, and may they always prosper.

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ALL WE WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT.........

Eight years on from their original deployment and the UK’s armed forces in Afghanistan have just been informed that £150 million will be made available to provide extra funding to combat improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Happy Xmas guys, and Gordon Brown is sorry that after all this time as Chancellor and Prime Minister he didn’t realise that you had to defuse a lot of bombs out there! Nor did he realise that you needed helicopters to get about, because the roads were full of IEDs; nor did he realise that the snatch Land Rovers you have were a tad vulnerable to both bombs and bullets. But you are getting proper armoured vehicles now, even if they don’t like the sand too much. Sad really, when you hear how our armed forces are sent to war without the right equipment; pathetic, even, when you hear that UK generals have been cadging lifts from US Army helicopters, but disgusting when you hear that British soldiers are buying their own body armour and other vital equipment on Ebay. So, Mr Brown, where has all the money allocated to fight the war gone? And, lest we forget, this is not a recent event, for one of the very first British casualties in Iraq in 2003 died because he had given somebody else his body armour due to shortages!

How treacherous is it for a government to despatch men and women to war but not provide them with the equipment necessary to fight that war in the safest and most efficient manner? For that is what this is, treachery of the highest order. Politicians and their banker friends rewarding themselves with mega-bonuses, repairing their moats and their clock towers, fiddling whatever cash they can out of the taxpayer and then denying the funds needed to support our services in the face of a vicious and deadly enemy. Moreover, an enemy that this same Establishment has told us it is vital to take on and defeat to make our streets safe. Yet history teaches us that this betrayal of our armed forces is nothing new. In the First World War there were often supply problems and in one famous incident the artillery that should have been sent to the men who had secured a beachhead at Gallipoli ended up in Egypt. So those men were stuck on the beach, under heavy enemy artillery fire and without the means to respond. In more recent times the first soldiers deployed onto the streets of Northern Ireland waited years to get the proper riot equipment and had to resort to using bin lids and shoving copies of ‘National Geographic’ magazine down their trousers to combat stone-throwing youths. Whilst the Task Force that was sent to the Falklands found that the warships melted when struck with missiles, and even the humble army boot disintegrated when it made contact with the Falklands mud, British soldiers ended up robbing the boots of dead Argentinian soldiers in order to finish their forced march across the island.

The English Radical Alliance does not think that our soldiers should be deployed anywhere in the World except in England to defend our streets and our shores, but whilst our troops are on active service, as they are today, they should be provided with the necessary personal and tactical equipment to do the job. To do otherwise is not only undermining the military campaign, it is also a crime!

.............AND A DECENT ROOF OVER OUR HEADS

Having denied the men in the frontline the proper equipment to do their job, the Ministry of Defence is trying to further undermine their morale by delaying improvements to services’ accommodation in order to help the department save money. In a recent letter from the head of the Army, Sir David Richards, it was announced that there will have to be a 10% cut in capital building programmes in order to help plug the £1.5 billion deficit in the MOD budget and this can only be achieved by postponing promised repairs to barracks and married quarters. Thousands of soldiers currently live in damp, poorly maintained barracks that have leaking roofs, broken windows, faulty heating and blocked lavatories. Just what kind of people inhabit the MOD? These are the same people who took disabled soldiers to Court to reduce their compensation for wounds received on active duty and yet who awarded themselves massive bonuses recently, no doubt from the savings on providing body armour and helicopters to soldiers in Afghanistan. No wonder Gordon Brown wants to send even more soldiers to Afghanistan, that’s less who will need a roof over their head in this country. So, when the General Election comes along and you are thinking about where to place your cross, please remember just how the Labour Party and gutless politicians in the other parties treated the people who they sent out to fight its illegal wars.

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MORE JOBS GO TO THE LANDS OF CHEAP LABOUR
England's last remaining piano manufacturer - Kemble, based at Bletchley near Milton Keynes - has now closed with the loss of more than 90 jobs. Its parent company, Yamaha, is moving production to the land of cheap labour in the Far East. The company which has been owned by Yamaha since the mid 1980's claim the marketplace for mid-range pianos has come under increasing pressure, and in order to improve their long term competitiveness, the best solution is to fully utilise their manufacturing capacity in other locations! In simple terms close down the company here in England and relocate abroad where labour is cheap and working conditions much poorer!

In 1986 when Yamaha first became involved with what was then a family owned company, workers felt the Japanese multinational were their saviours. Yet this action has proved that Yamaha and the entire capitalist system cannot be trusted and that Kemble is just one of a long line of companies who are relocating to the lands of cheap labour at the expense of the workforce here in England.

English Radicals have a very dim view of such action and an even dimmer view of the lack of action by the British government. ERA believes when a company relocates to the lands of cheap labour, its workforce should be paid a lump sum equivalent one years wages on top of any redundancy pay. This would give the workforce a real financial cushion and the opportunity to start their own business if they wish. In addition to this ERA believes that the workforce should be given the opportunity to buy the business at a reduced rate and to run it as a co-operative.

Only ERA offer policies that provide greater job security for the workers of England, reducing the fear at cheap foreign labour taking their jobs, and at the same time offering real opportunity.

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