“The
UK government has awarded £10 billion
worth of contracts related to the coronavirus crisis to private
companies since March 2020,
mostly without a competitive tender.” The
Financial Times
Cabinet
Office Minister, Julia Lopez, has
responded to criticisms of a chumocracy by assuring us that
‘The government will carry out its own inspection on procurements
during the pandemic.”
Here
is a list of the Chumocrats at work:
BARONESS
DIDO HARDING, Chair of NHS Improvement and NHS Test and Trace is the
wife of Tory MP JOHN PENROSE, who has responsibilities for …..
anti-corruption.
KATE
BINGHAM, head of the government’s vaccine taskforce, is married to
Tory Minister JESSE NORMAN and is a business colleague of DOMINIC
CUMMINGS.
RUPERT
SOAMES, CEO of SERCO, and awarded £57 million in Covid contracts, is
brother of former Tory MP SIR NICHOLAS SOAMES whose wife, CAMILLA
SOAMES, is a Tory party donor.
PAUL
STEPHENSON, director of HANBURY STRATEGY and awarded £900,000 in
Covid contracts, is a friend and business associate of DOMINIC
CUMMINGS.
SEAN
TOPHAM and
BEN GUERIN of TOPHAM GUERIN and
awarded £3 million in Covid contracts, were behind the Tory party
2019 election strategy and worked with DOMINIC CUMMINGS.
JAMES
FRAYNE and RACHEL WOLFF of PUBLIC FIRST and awarded £840,000 in
Covid contracts, are friends of DOMINIC CUMMINGS and MICHAEL GOVE.
THEODORE
AGNEW, responsible
for the government’s
digital technology, is a major shareholder in FACULTY,
awarded £500,000 in Covid contracts. He
is also
a
business associate of DOMINIC
CUMMINGS and worked with him on Vote Leave.
DAVID
MELLER of MELLER DESIGNS, awarded £148 million in Covid-related contracts, is a Tory
donor and friend of
MICHAEL GOVE.
STEVE
DECHAN, director of P14 MEDICAL, awarded £120 million in Covid
contracts, is a former Tory councillor.
SIR
MERRICK COCKELL, employed by PA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LTD who were awarded £156
million in Covid-related contracts, is a former Tory leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council
STEVE
PARKIN, Chairman
of CLIPPER LOGISTICS, and awarded £1 million in Covid-related
contracts, is a major Tory Party donor.
ANTHONY
PAGE of PPE MEDPRO Ltd, who were awarded £203 million in
Covid-related contracts, was secretary of the firm that provides
branding services to Tory peer Baroness Mone’s company.
Daniel
Bruce, the chief executive of anti-corruption campaigners
Transparency International UK, warned the government should not use
the crisis like a “blank cheque to get rid of controls around
transparency and accountability ….The alarming number of contracts
seemingly awarded without any competition risks setting a dangerous
precedent.”
I
leave you with this one. Controversy and mystery
surrounds a £32m Covid-related
contract
handed to a rodent
infestation
control company called PestFix to source surgical gowns. It
has listed net assets of only £18,000.
The Pavarotti Centre in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, opened in 1997 after the bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia. The objective was to try to bring a divided people together through music. So I was I very happy to see that the PMC has had a facelift and opened a new social area at the front of the building –
Klub 27. I am honoured that my Bob Marley quote greets
visitors as they come in the door.
A brief aside. I helped smuggle in a Marley photo/music exhibition into Mostar in 1995 in the war because, as he says, “When music hits you, you feel no pain”. Twenty five years
later, that remains true of this centre, of the people who work here
and the young people who take part in its actvities. Good luck
to Klub 27. I will be there as soon as I can. Rock on. And here's the link to Marley's "One Love".
NB: I wanted to include this excerpt from the 'Music & War' chapter in my memoir, Left Field. The whole book can now be read free online here.
"The
Centre allowed the healing power of music to enter this community.
The young were particularly affected by the war and, from the day the
PMC opened its doors, they flooded in. Some of them used music to
escape their darkest memories. They would tell me that only when they
played, or heard music, could they escape their nightmares. Children
and young people were brought together to make and listen to music:
to sing, to beat drums, to strum guitars, to act and react together
through music."
photos
Every
single House Democrat who endorsed Medicare for all won reelection.
They included “The Squad”, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar,
Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. As women of colour
they championed climate action, healthcare for all Americans, the
creation of well paid jobs and support for unions.
Other
progressives who won re-election include Pramila Jayapal of
Washington and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. And they are joined by new
winners, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, Marie
Newman of Illinois and Iman Jodeh of Colorado.
Ilhan
Omar tweeted: “We are building a movement that sees my struggle as
inherently tied to your struggle, and sees a world where all workers
can be uplifted. Together. The results of this election are not the
end. This is just the beginning.”
Marie
Newman tweeted, "As we begin to rebuild we're going to work
together to lower health care costs, fight climate change, create new
good-paying jobs, revitalize our transportation infrastructure system
and continue to make a strong economy no matter who you are or where
you are."
Ayanna
Pressley added: “Together, we have fought for our shared humanity.
We have organized. We have mobilized. I believe in the power of us.
And we’re just getting started.”
They
will be continuing the fight to pull the Democrat Party to the left,
a fight which started with their victories over right-wing
incumbents. Bowman did this in New York by knocking off 16-term
Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel, while Newman ousted Illinois
Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski, one of the last remaining
pro-life Democrats in the chamber.
Perhaps
Bernie Sanders didn’t lose the Democrat Party leadership after all.
His place has been taken by a new younger leadership and led by
women.
In
his congratulatory message to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris he said
this:
"This
election result was brought about by millions of grassroots
activists, black and white, Latino, Asian American, and Native
American … But our work is not done … Now a whole new chapter of
hard work begins. We cannot go back to business as usual. We cannot
go back to a situation in which the corporate elite and their
lobbyists dominate the economic and political life of this country.
We need to create a People’s Agenda, of, by and for working
families, a powerful movement that demands that agenda be
implemented.”
I
am writing this from the UK. The US election result has lessons for
us here.
This
morning I received an email from Edwin Maynard, a poet/photographer friend
of mine, who visited me when I was living in Mostar in the 90s. Today
he lives in California. He wrote this:
“We
have a neighbour who has been flying a large TRUMP 2020 KEEP AMERICA
GREAT flag near our driveway and another neighbour on an adjacent
driveway who was toting an assault rifle the other day to deter a
small (mostly White) unarmed Black Lives Matter demonstration that
passed by along a nearby street. The demo consisted of around 30
people tailed by four police cars. And this is regarded as a
‘progressive’ Democrat-voting state!”
He
included a pdf of his recently published, ‘Squaring the Circle’,
a book of photos and poems. It opens with a great poem about Mostar,
but this one caught my attention.
Traumerica
Forty
days of toxic rain
and
the madman in the White House
is
set lose again
as
his evangelical henchmen
lie
low and exonerate themselves
wth
vacant words in the Senate
The
streets are empty at this hour
apart
from the circling pickup trucks
flying
confederate flags
and
the lone SUV with the license-tag sting
MN8
JOY.
The
populace is silenced
and
sealed away behind screens
or
plague masks.
Fear
and hatred are the entrails
served
in the tyrant’s
blasphemous
orations
while
'Sympathy for the Devil'
plays
at the rallying call
to
the festval of lies.
Poisoned
words from the bully pulpit,
positioned
above the law,
trumpet
walls, wars, disinformation, ostracisms,
a
eucharist of dominion
over
the Earth,
and
the sodden ashes
of
tomorrow’s Rapture.'
As
I write this we don’t yet know if this tyrant will be removed from
his ‘bully pulpit’, but am I alone in thinking that there are
parallels between the bully and the Bullingon? Yes, I know. Boris
Johnson has been to Eton and can speak in Latin .
I
am reading a lot of tweets and blogs extolling the superiority of us
Brits in our scorn for the illiterate and humourless President, but
is the ability of our leader to say, ‘rideat non possum’ a cause
for smiling relief?
In
the USA any chance of a social reformist leadership was put paid to
with the replacement of Sanders with Biden. In this country we have
had the same result with, in the words of conservative commentator, Peter Oborne, the ‘political assassination of Jeremy Corbyn’ and his
replacement with Starmer, In the USA there are attempts to stop votes being counted, Here the
general secretary of the Labour Party has informed party members
imperiously that, 'You will not discuss the suspension of Jeremy
Corbyn.'
The
UK establishment are, in many ways, a lot more secure than their
American partners. This is what Theresa May told Jeremy Corbyn in
Parliament in 2015,“We will never allow you to rule”. That is
perfidious Albion with all its born to rule arrogance.
That
perfidiousness has been spotlighted most clearly by those who have lived
and stuggled against oppressions in its greatest extremities.
They
are former ANC government minister Ronnie Kasrils who is Jewish;
Pallo Jordan who narrowly escaped assassination by the bomb that
killed anti-apartheid academic Ruth First and Mandela advisor
Ismail Ebrahim who served 35 years in prison on Robben Island for his
anti-apartheid activism. Former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein, who lost
family members in the Holocaust, has also added his support.
It
says, “We are aware of the machinations within the Labour Party to
conduct a witch-hunt against Corbyn and those who support him. The
charges of anti-semitism that have been levelled against him are
patently unjust and morally groundless.”
Antonio
Gramsci was correct that now indeed is the time of monsters, but it
is also the time to bring about the birth of a new world.
Anti
Nazi Germans
Enemies
of the Nazi State within the Working Class, Merilyn Moos
German
Volunteers in the French Resistance, Steve Cushion
Book launch - 29th
November 2020, 2pm
This book may come as a surprise to many readers. We are brought up to believe
that the Nazis came to power in Germany with the overwhelming support
of the people and that the French Resistance was like an overlong
episode of “Hello Hello”.
As
Merilyn Moos argues, “It is a commonly held myth ... that there
was little resistance in Germany to the Nazis. In fact, there was a
wide diversity of opposition to the Nazi state: initially from within
the working class movement and, later, from different sections of the
State, judiciary and also the army.”
Close
to one million Leftists were imprisoned in Germany between 1933 and
1945, of whom 200,000 were killed.
Of
those who escaped this fate, around 5,000 German and Austrian exiles
fought against Franco’s fascism in the Spanish Civil War as members
of the Ernst Thälmann and Edgar André Brigades. Many of them were
Jews.
After
escaping from Germany with their lives many were not so lucky and
died at the hands of Francos forces. Those who survived fled north
into France and continued their anti-fascist struggle as part of the
French Resistance.
This
book is a harrowing account of what it meant to be a German
anti-fascist. In Germany imprisonment, torture and death were
the expected fate of resistors, but even so as late as 1943 strikes
took place in the Ruhr mines and sabotage was reported inside
armaments factories.
There
was even an alternative to the Hitler Youth , the Edelweiss
Pirates. Girls and boys managed to hold together as an anti-Nazi
force at a time when resistance had become close to impossible. “They
wore unconventional clothes, sang anti-militaristic songs, assaulted
Hitler Youth patrols, insulted uniformed officers and party
functionaries and even purchased illicit firearms"… Some
of them carried out sabotage, derailed ammunition trains, distributed
anti-Nazi leaflets and hid Jews.
A
1943 Nazi report from Düsseldorf admitted the appearance of "Down
with Hitler’ graffiti and that however often it was removed, it
would quickly reappear, especially during air-raids. The report goes
on to admit these actions negatively affected the morale of some
soldiers, who were even beginning to congregate among the Pirates.
The
book gives detailed accounts of these anti-Nazis and is a powerful acknowledgement of a tradition of German anti-fascism that goes back to
Rosa Luxemburg, the Spartacists and the Bavarian Revolution.
In
post-war Germany anti-Nazis remained criminalised. As one working
class resistor, Gertrud Koch, said "After the war there were
no judges in Germany so the old Nazi judges were used and they upheld
the criminalisation of what we did and who we were".
In
post-war France, Steve
Cushion explains, “Charles
de Gaulle was committed to reconstructing French imperialism and
wanted to stress the part that the French had played in liberating
themselves from German occupation. The
presence of German anti-fascists
contradicted this
account and they were
ignored.’
Hidden
too long from history this book is a valuable homage to anti-Nazi
Germans and recognition that Trotsky was right when he said that
‘fascism is capitalism going to the dentist’. But, as with
all dental visits, many refuse to open their mouths.
Zoom
log in details; Topic:
Mary Quaile Club public meeting
Time: Nov 29, 2020 02:00 PM
Join Zoom
Meeting
Meeting
ID: 867 0782 0322 Passcode: 993204
“The
former Labour leader was the victim of a carefully planned and
brutally executed political assassination.” Conservative
commentator Peter Oborne, who joins me in the Jeremy Corbyn cult.
Writing
in The Observer on 1 November 2020 Andrew Rawnsley made these
observations.
“Jeremy
Corbyn’s favourite role is that of the
victim ...
He presided over an antisemitism
scandal
unprecedented in the party’s history … He is refusing to accept
the damning
findings of
the
equality and Human Rights Commission investigation … Contrary
to the narrative being promoted by Mr Corbyn and those still attached
to his
cult,
the former Labour leader is not
a martyr
to his convictions … This is about whether or not the
Labour Party should
be a haven
for racists and
why it did become a magnet for antisemitic
bullies
and abusers when Mr Corbyn
and his acolytes
had charge of the party.”
As
someone attached to Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘cult’ I wish Andrew
Rawnsley had warned me much earlier about the true nature of Jeremy
Corbyn. I had not realised that, as
his
‘acolytes’, we
were
‘racists and antisemitic bullies.’ For the last sixty years I
have been under the misapprehension that racists and antisemites were
part and parcel of right, not left-wing, politics. Thank you Andrew
for, albeit late in the day for me, correcting my political naivety.
What a mug I have been, so here is a pre-Corbyn Labour Party mug. I
do hope the families queueing
up at Islington food bank will tell Jeremy to
stop being a martyr to his convictions.
One
of my all-time favourite films is Adalen 31, Bo Widerberg’s account
of the trade union and social struggles which transformed Sweden. You
can view it in full on YouTube here:
Sweden
used to be a very unequal country until the beginning of the 20th
century. Following a large social mobilization by trade unions and
the Social Democratic party, it became one of the most equal
countries in history.
Commenting
on Sweden, economist Thomas Piketty, writes, “Dominant groups tend
to be conservative and always define the existing inequality
as being natural, coming from some natural scheme or institutions or from rules that cannot be changed. But, in practice,
what you see is something very different: The way inequality is
organized can change very quickly …
It
is impossible to talk about the major issues we face today, whether
it be about privatisation of the NHS, education, social welfare, the
environment, low pay, housing, racism, mental health or the police,
without asking this question – cui bono, who benefits? The answer
is, ‘only a very few’.
In
the UK the six richest people control as much wealth as the poorest
13 million, Six billionaires have a combined fortune of £39.4
billion.
In
2016, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) calculated that the
richest 10% of households hold 44% of all wealth. The poorest 50%, by
contrast, own just 9%.
Meanwhile,
the Equality Trust estimates
that about 14 million
people in Britain live in poverty. Four million of these are more
than 50% below
the poverty line and 1.5
million are destitute. (These
figures are taken from 2017
since when the situation has worsened).
Dr
Wanda Wyporska, of the Equality Trust writes.
“Such a huge gap between the very rich and the vast majority of the
country is dangerous. Such extreme wealth in the hands of so few
people demonstrates just how broken the economic system is.”
If
we look at land ownership we find
that about 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy
and corporations – have control of half of the country. Guy
Shrubsole, author of “Who Owns England” writes that,
“Most people remain unaware of quite how much land is owned by so
few … A few thousand dukes, baronets and country squires own far
more land than all of middle England put together.”
Speaking
at the UN in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn said, “The
growing concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in the hands
of a tiny corporate elite …has sharply increased inequality,
marginalisation, insecurity and anger across the world … It’s
getting worse … If we want to live in a more egalitarian society
and fund our public services we cannot go on creating worse levels of
inequality.”
There
are powerful forces who decided that this man must go and that this
country was not going to become another Sweden. Watch Adalen 31 and
you will understand that, “the
way inequality is organized can change very quickly.”
LINKS:
