Why Labour is Literally the Party of the Future

Only the Labour party has the determination to unlock the potential of every child in the land thereby securing not only their future but the future of the country too.

Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party promise to transform the lives of every family for the better. They will do this be reopening the 1,000 Sure Start centres that the Conservative party so spitefully closed when entering a needlessly austerity driven power nine years ago. That's a Sure Start centre in every community and a radical expansion of child care in the UK.

Labour will also be putting an end to child poverty ensuring that every child of primary school age is given a free hot meal each day to aid their concentration and learning.

Compare this to Boris Johnson's Conservatives. If returned to power next month, they will ensure that 515 constituencies will receive less funding per pupil than in 2015. Only 17 constituencies will actually get a raise, and they are the ones held by the Conservatives.  Because the Tory party are only considered with looking after themselves and providing for their own future. They don't even want to acknowledge the child poverty issue that the UN recently highlighted. They prefer pretending that it isn't even happening, because it's not happening to their children is it?

But Labour aren't just looking to secure your children's future, they are also pledging that mothers will receive not nine months, but twelve months paid maternity. This will ensure that mothers can spend longer with their newborn babies and they will also have the opportunity to choose working hours that suit them.

You may have heard the Tories bleating this weekend about Labour's figures, that they believe (based purely on assumption - remember that the Labour manifesto hasn't actually been published yet) that the spending plans for such pledges are astronomical. But, after his consultation with the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation amongst others, Oxford University economist Professor Simon Wren-Lewis argues that it is the Tories spending plans that are truly unsustainable...thanks to the needless black hole that is Brexit. Labour's spending plans are actually far more sustainable because they will increase taxes on high earners and the Corporation Tax, something that the Tories do not want to do, because that's hitting their elite friends. 

If you find it disgraceful that the Tories are essentially saying we cannot afford to achieve even the basic level of dignity that we all deserve, but they're still happy to fund, protect and bail out their friends, then vote Labour.

If you want your children to have the very best start in life, vote Labour.

If you want the UK to prosper in the future, vote Labour.

Please, please, please, vote Labour at the polls next month.

Do The Tories Think We Have Short Memories, Or Do They Just Think We're Stupid?

Theresa May took to the comfy sofa of Philip and Holly's This Morning today (and people say she's afraid of tough interviewers?) to express her concern at student tuition fees and to assure us that her government will do something about it. What they plan to do is look into it for a year. Hmm... 

But what really irks me about this whole thing is that Theresa May clearly thinks we either have very short memories or we are completely stupid. She's counting on us forgetting that one of her first acts as PM was to abolish the maintenance grants for the poorest of students. She's hoping we're stupid enough not to realise that in 2009 she voted in favour of the of tripling tuition fees to the £9,000 per annum figure she now expresses concern over, along with her vote to approve the rip off inflation measure of +3% on any subsequent debt incurred. 

Don't be fooled. This Tory 12 month review into tuition fees is nothing but a sop in the face of the forthcoming local elections and an attempt to try and wrestle a popular manifesto pledge from Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party.

LSE Cleaners Strike

Fed up of being treated like the dirt they clean and second class citizens, the BME and migrant cleaning workforce at the LSE have courageously voted to strike on the 15th and 16th of this month, making history by becoming the first incident industrial action by outsourced staff in the LSE's 126 year history. They are asking that their cleaning contractor Noonan bring their basic terms and conditions in line with the rest of the LSE community.

You can stand shoulder to shoulder with them by doing any and all of the following;

Donating to the strike fund

Emailing Julia Black, the interim director of the LSE, to ask her to meet the cleaners demands and start treating them equally and fairly, by allowing them the same conditions and terms of employment as other LSE staff. Email: j.black@lse.ac.uk

Supporting the strike on the day itself

For more information go to the Facebook page

What Has Become Of Us?

The news that UKIP's leader Diane James is to stand down from her role after just eighteen days ought to be the kind of news that sparks celebration - the thought of UKIP, those dangerous right wing racists, imploding is excellent news.

However, what mars this welcome prospect is the fact that the present Tory government have out UKIPPED the most deranged UKIPPERS.

In conference this week, the Tories have announced the kind of stark hard line on immigration and ethnic minorities usually seen in the most extreme of fascist juntas. Companies are to declare how many foreigners are in their employ, taxi drivers must provide their immigration status, fewer migrants will be allowed to study at our universities and, most damning of all, foreign doctors are to be 'phased out' of the NHS.

Oh, and along with the plans for grammar schools, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has launched a scheme that will see 150 new units of army cadets in British schools.

Um, I don't know about you - but isn't this screaming the policies of Hitler's Nazi Germany?? But if that's your first reaction, don't worry Fallon's got it covered - he's launched the scheme at a Birmingham school where the majority are Muslim pupils, so you see they believe it is for us to criticise them for the anti-immigration fascists they are when they're surrounding themselves with olive skinned faces. 

And, like Hitler, the reason for this anti-immigration stance is seemingly to protect and preserve our 'strong' economy during these difficult times. It always amazes me that the public opinion seems to be that you cannot trust a Labour government with the economy, when the truth is that the Tories have presided over the slowest economic growth since the 1920s. And crucially, the Tories continue to get it wrong over the economy - if mass immigration is a threat to it, then how come America and Germany prosper? The answer is of course that it is not a threat at all. Like UKIP before them, Theresa May's Tory government have decided to use immigration and ethnic diversity as a scapegoat to blame all the ills of society upon. Ills that they and their ridiculous policies are the real perpetrators of.

The only thing that has changed in the hardline right wing Tory party over the years is that they've got significantly better at masking their disgusting, racist views.

We need to be rid of this government at the first available opportunity. We don't want to live in a country that elects to turn its back on the prosperous reality of immigration. We don't want to live in a country that is short sighted enough to turn its back on the skillset and knowledge base inherent in our NHS simply because they're provided by people of a different skin tone or with a different accent to us.

Please, vote and support Labour. Vote and support anyone in fact. Just don't vote and support a party that wishes to do this to our country.

Wordless Wednesday : Exams

Fighting Back : Petitions to Sign/Demo to Attend: NHS Bursary or Bust

While we wait to see how the BMA's 'uphill struggle' to sell the new deal to junior doctors goes, it's worth remembering and acting upon the fact that the government intend to shit on the NHS in other ways.

This petition was set up by nurse Danielle Tiplady to challenge the government's decision to axe the NHS bursary for its students next year. Without that lifeline, syudent nurses, midwives, physios etc will be expected to be lumbered with debts of up to £50,000-£60,000 for their training. The kind of debt that will frankly make it impossible for many to take up their dream careers in the NHS.

The petition currently has over 54,000 signatures. Please, add your name to that list and show your support for the NHS.

You can also show your support by joining the demo outside St Thomas' Hospital which will march to the Dept of Health on the 4th June at 1pm. Y'know, the kind of demo that our completely non-biased BBC news team are bound to cover, right?* Further details of the march can be found on the Bursary or Bust Facebook page


*And yes, that is irony. Of course they won't fucking report on it. If the whole of the country came out in support and brought London to a standstill, the BBC would still ignore it to keep on Cameron's side and Whittingdale at bay.

Made In Britain (1982)

"I'm a success mate, I'm a fucking star...I'm in exactly the right place at the right time. The fact that you're too fucking thick or stupid to see that, that marks you down" 

Made in Britain was just one of four TV plays in the Tales out of School series, a contemporary quartet of films concerning youth and education and the opportunities, or lack of, available for them. But the success and renown of Made in Britain has meant that it has rather dwarfed the other instalments, which is a shame.

But it's understandable, because Made in Britain is so very fucking good.

I remember the first time I ever saw it. I was absolutely blown away by Tim Roth's performance as the young skinhead Trevor and that wonderful scene in the middle with Geoffrey Hutchings cannily calling every move in Trevor's life, past and present, on the blackboard in the assessment centre. 

Trevor is a a teenager whose latest bout of shoplifting has landed him in trouble once more, forced into the care of weary, ineffective key workers. Aged just sixteen, he's already got a record as long as his arm. He's an habitual offender; a violent, racist, anti-social skinhead. But he's also very bright, and extremely articulate and with a streak of stubborness and individuality which means he refuse to cooperate with all attempts at rehabilitation.

Made in Britain was written by David Leland and directed by his long time collaborator, Alan Clarke. It's the kind of film that Clarke absolutely excelled in, and Trevor is a definitive Clarke character. You can draw a line from Archer in Scum right the way through to Bex in The Firm and you'll be sure to find Trevor leering directly at you in the centre of that line. Each one of them are responsible for actions which means they are shunned by an appalled society, but they are each extremely intelligent and see themselves principally - and correctly - as a desperate victim of the system that they must fight, with the only weapon they have left - their eloquent, aggressive defiance. Even Bex who, with his white collar job as an estate agent, has managed to beat the system to some extent - riding on the Thatcherite wave of the 1980s - still feels the need to act belligerently against some aspect of authority; for Bex, it's tribal and he chooses the most tribal of protest, football hooliganism. Interestingly, when a sequel was mooted to Made in Britain, Leland suggested that Trevor would have remained obnoxious, but diversified into becoming a 'Loadsamoney' style yuppie, spraying Cristal everywhere and generally making a nuisance of himself in the trendy winebars of London.

In a time when the stereotype for skinheads was that of mindless knuckle dragging thugs, Made In Britain was a sobering, thought provoking wake up call. Indeed, Trevor is still to this day (barring Shane Meadows' This Is England) a unique depiction of just such a character, because television all too often takes the easy route of the cliche. There aren't many Alan Clarke's out there now who can tell viewers in their cosy homes just what the real world is actually like - a complex and confusing thing indeed. Speaking of complex, I haven't even mentioned Errol, the rather dopey black youth Trevor 'befriends' in the centre and who, noting Trevor's overbearing charisma and intellectual superiority, begins to act like a sheep, following Trevor around, parroting and mimicking the racist language he uses when targeting the home of an Asian family late at night - "Baboons, go back to the jungle!" - from a young black boy, its very incongruous but all too easy to see the release he gets from it, a chance to let off steam and 'belong' in some strange way. Likewise, Trevor a belligerent racist complete with a tattoo of a swastika between his eyes, doesn't actually seem to have much of a problem with Errol.

Clarke's trademark use of Steadicam makes its debut with Made in Britain, allowing him to capture every spurt of energy the wild Trevor- who can barely keep still - has across the 70 odd minutes. As such Made in Britain is an important, seminal production in the Clarke oeuvre, the first to capture the kinetic fluidity of the characters or the way of life he constantly wished to explore. It is arguably my favourite film of Clarke's.

Made in Britain has been released several times on DVD as a stand alone feature and is available alongside the three other plays in the Tales Out Of School series via Network DVD.

To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic plays please sign the petition I started here

The Rochdale Pioneers (2012)

This is my second watch of The Rochdale Pioneers, a beautifully shot little fifty minute feature film, specially commissioned as a tribute to the founders of The Co-operative Movement here in the heart of the north in the 1840s.

The conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought with it widespread famine, chronic unemployment and drastic wage cuts in the working classes of the UK.  Four years later, in Manchester, a peaceful call for reform to improve conditions and gain suffrage  ended in tragedy; the demonstration being cut down by cavalry in what became known as the Peterloo Massacre. From there, many co-operative ventures commenced taking tentative steps  to improve conditions, but they had all faltered and failed.

This is where we join the action of the film; in 1844 Rochdale, the pioneers of the movement  are determined to succeed and  to provide affordable alternatives to tarnished poor-quality food and provisions, using 'honest weights and measures', with the surplus benefitting the community. It was the vision and efforts of this small number of working class men that became the true birth of the co-operative movement, with the principles still in use by the modern co-operative today (despite the scandal and misfortune to strike the Manchester based co-op of late); a movement which now numbers around 1.4 million independent enterprises with nearly 1 billion members worldwide.

It's a loving and fitting though admittedly earnest tribute, nicely presented and portrayed with Mancunian favourite John Henshaw standing out in particular in the cast. It may be somewhat reminiscent of the old educational TV series How We Used To Live, but I reckon that's in its favour rather than a criticism. I still maintain, as I said in my original review, that this would be a useful tool to play in classrooms up and down the country.