She Declared War On The Unions, Ripping Apart Whole Communities

The UK Anti-Terrorism Strategy Has Been Undermined By Relentless Tory Cuts.

When I first heard about the tragic events in Manchester, memories of 7/7 flooded back.
Tony Blair was in Scotland for a G8 meeting.
The day before, we had won our bid to host the Olympics and London was a happy place.
I was chairing Cabinet when we heard about an explosion on the London Underground.
We were told it could be a power outrage.
Then a bus exploded off Russell Square and we realised we were under attack by terrorists.

I hosted the first meeting of COBRA, named after the place it meets, Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.
COBRA co-ordinates a response with experts from the emergency and security services and across local and national government.
The first duty of a government is to protect people.
But Manchester highlighted an inconvenient truth for Theresa May.

The reason she has deployed the Army on our streets is because she made sweeping cuts to our emergency services.
The Conservative rhetoric – “We will be resolute in defending the country from terrorism and other security threats” – is not matched by their actions.
The UK anti-terrorism strategy has been undermined by relentless cuts to frontline public services.

Border guards are literally on the front line of combatting terror, but under the Tories more than 1,000 were lost and Border Force budgets cut by 12%.
Police are central to counter-terrorism strategy, but thanks to Mrs May, 20,000 officers went and since 2010 she has cut budgets by more than £2.3billion.
Fire and rescue services are first responders to terrorist incidents.

But 10,000 firefighter jobs have gone since 2010 and budgets have been cut by a third.
Ambulance services are also first responders but cuts have been so severe that response time targets to Category One emergencies have not been met since 2015.

But it’s not just emergency services hit by cuts that could potentially hinder our response.
The Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 imposed an additional statutory duty on partner public agencies to identify those vulnerable to radicalisation.
But these agencies are already struggling to provide core services against a background of Tory cuts.
( John Prescott, 28.05.2017 )

We Now Know There Are 23,000 Jihadists On Britain’s Streets.

There can be no doubt the activities of MI5 must remain top secret.
If we knew what they were doing, terrorists would know too, and that would be disastrous.
But secrecy has an added value to the intelligence community because it allows them to keep their mistakes secret.

We know Manchester bomber Salman Abedi had been on MI5’s radar.
We know that on Monday he walked unhindered into Manchester Arena and killed 22 people.
We do not know what happened in between.
And an inquiry is needed to find out.

We also now know that the number of jihadists on Britain’s streets is not the 3,000 we had been led to believe, but 23,000.
That’s 3,000 “live” cases and 20,000 which have been shut down.
Why, we need to know, was Abedi’s case one of the latter?
We now have a picture of the true scale of the terror threat.
And it is truly terrifying.
( Sunday Mirror, 28.05.2017 )

The Police Do Not Have The Resources To Manage.

The NHS is in financial crisis, facing record levels of patient demand, routinely missing key targets and under unprecedented operational pressure.
Schools and colleges face cuts of around 8%.
Local authorities and social services are at breaking point due to cuts and increased demand for social care.

More than 40% of councils are already cutting frontline services.
We now hear that the community knew the Manchester bomber was a risk and reported him five years ago on the Anti-Terrorist Hotline.

We can’t be sure cuts contributed to the atrocity in Manchester.
But serious questions need to be asked.
As the Police Federation said, the Army has only been deployed because “the police simply do not have the resources to manage an event like this on our own”.
( John Prescott, 28.05.2017 )

She Declared War On The Unions, Ripping Apart Whole Communities.

I remember the night of June 9, 1983 like a slo-mo flashback from a slasher film.
I felt sick to the pit of my stomach knowing that undiluted Thatcherism would now be unleashed.
That with a 144-seat majority she would go after her enemies with a merciless vengeance and the country would be brutally divided between Us (her disciples) and Them (the rest). It was.

She declared war on the unions, ripping apart whole communities.
She privatised key publicly-owned industries, handing the profits to rich pals in the City.
She sucked up so hard to a right-wing U.S. President that Britain became a virtual 51st state.
She dismantled Labour-led local authorities, replacing them with unelected quangos run by hand-picked Tory stooges.

Taxes for the richest were slashed while at the bottom, unemployment rose to 3.4 million.
Inner cities were ravaged as crime soared, drugs were rife, kids’ lives written off and pensioners left to rot in fear.
Our booming North Sea oil revenues were wasted on a welfare bill which spawned a culture of dependence as many families’ only hope of a payslip was a dole cheque.

As Theresa May tries to sell herself as Maggie 11 (replacing Argentine dictator Galtieri with the EU’s Juncker in her woeful 80s Iron Lady tribute act) and as her colleagues and lackeys paint Jeremy Corbyn as a shambolic, unelectable Michael Foot 11, they arrogantly believe another landslide is theirs for the taking.
The Tories have called this election for one reason: they sense domination again.
They want to party like it’s 1983 and crush their enemies.

Why else do you think City backers gave them £3.7million in one week in May, ten times more than Labour received, and the billionaire owners of our overwhelmingly right-wing Press are rabid in their demonisation of Corbyn?
Before that 1983 election, Neil Kinnock correctly predicted the consequences of a decisive Tory victory: “I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.”
( Brian Reade, 03.06.2017 )

The Seven Social Sins.
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.
( Frederick Lewis Donaldson, 20.03.1925 )

The BBC’s Election Coverage Has Been Very Pro-Tory.

I find it funnier than Theresa May’s Lord Lucan act that her party have complained to the BBC about an audience she couldn’t be bothered addressing.
Apparently the crowd invited to Wednesday’s leader’s debate – carefully selected by ComRes – was wildly left-wing, meaning the BBC is run by Corbynistas.

I wonder if the complainants watched the BBC’s 10 O’clock news on Tuesday, which led on Jeremy Corbyn screwing up a radio interview and never mentioned George Osborne calling the Tory manifesto “the most disastrous in living memory”, despite ITV and Sky going big on it?

My reading of this election is that if anything, the BBC’s coverage has been very pro-Tory, possibly because its bosses are desperate to keep those right-wing critics who want the licence fee abolished off their back.
Which is far more of a threat to our democracy than a polling firm not pulling together an audience that satisfies the Daily Mail.
( Brian Reade, 03.06.2017 )

The US Military’s Biggest Classified Leak.
WikiLeaks soldier Chelsea Manning wept as she thanked ex-President Barack Obama for freeing her from prison.
Transgender Manning, 29, speaking for the first time since being released after the U.S. military’s biggest classified leak, said: “I was given a chance, that’s all I wanted.”
Obama commuted her 35-year sentence just before he left office.
She served seven years.
British-raised Manning had been an intelligence analyst in Iraq when she passed 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.
She said on U.S. TV she did it as she felt a “responsibility to the public”.
The ex-US Army private added: “No one told me to do this.”
( Christopher Bucktin, 10.06.2017 )

Don’t Abandon The Party That Has Given So Much To This Country.
Many Labour voters don’t like Jeremy Corbyn because they see him as a turn-off to the wider electorate.
But that shouldn’t mean abandoning the party.
Because voting at a General Election is more than just about a leader.
It’s about what side you’re on.
It’s about your values and whether you want to give up on them.
It’s about defending the party that has given so much to this country.
( Fred O. Wilson )