Hang up on the Tories
Right-wing former deputy chair of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, was “wrong”. Apparently that’s the message from Tory HQ. But minister for illegal migration Michael Tomlinson doesn’t know why.
Before being sacked, Anderson had claimed that Islamists have control of Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London. Presumably because Khan himself is Muslim.
“What Lee said was wrong, and as a result of what he said he had the whip removed from him”, the minister told LBC radio host Nick Farrari.
“What was it specifically… why was it wrong?”
“…It was wrong. What Lee said was wrong. As a result of what he said, the whip was removed from him”
“But why was it wrong?”
“…It was wrong, Nick, because of what he said…”
“Was it Islamophobic?”
“What he said was wrong…”
“But minister, was it Islamophobic?”
“Nick, it was wrong”
“Was it Islamophobic?”
“Nick, it was wrong”
Ferrari hung up. Wouldn’t it be great to have the power to silence politicians every time they talk nonsense! Then again, TV and radio producers would have a hell of a lot of space to fill.
Trident costly failure
Trident missile fails to launch, phew! Testing the nuclear missile launch system, which costs £17 million a go, ended up with the missile ploughing into the sea. Trident costs £3 billion a year to run and maintain the British government‘s ability to plunge the world into a nuclear winter.
At a time when millions of pounds worth of bombs and missiles are being dropped across the Middle East, working-class people here are forced to tighten our belts as the price of food and rents go up while our services are cut to the bone.
Producing weapons is certainly profitable at a time of war and crisis across the world. Each bomb or missile represents thousands of hours of work – by workers, researchers and scientists. Imagine what could be possible if instead of a system based on profit, we had a socialist system based on democratic planning for what we need.
Bank profits up
Speaking of misused wealth and resources, Britain’s ‘big four’ banks – Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays and NatWest – made £44 billion of profit last year. While people saw their mortgage payments jump, fell into arrears on bills and were told to get by on less, we certainly weren’t ‘all in this together’.
Imagine what that £44 billion could do if it wasn’t going into the back pockets of bank shareholders. It could be ploughed into Britain’s crumbling infrastructure, put to use building a high-quality free public transport network, or fixing the staffing crisis in the NHS. The £5 billion budget black hole facing local councils could be filled eight times over with a few billion to spare!
The resources and knowledge kept locked up in these companies could be taken into democratic public ownership and used to deal with the real problems facing us – solving climate change or the housing crisis to name a few.
The wealth is clearly there, but it’s in the wrong hands – we need the banks to be nationalised alongside big business and put to use as part of a democratic socialist plan.
