PEOPLE DON'T CHANGE

People don’t change, but they can make good decisions. This is a quote, or the gist of a quote, from an episode of Person of Interest, a TV show I watched avidly for two and a half seasons before rapidly losing interest after the scriptwriters killed off one of the only characters with a fully functioning sense of empathy (who happened to be a black woman) and which therewith descended into a cliched, repetitive, and all-too predictable (yet surprising) slapstick parody of itself.

WFH SAVED MY LIFE

I’ve worked from home since the end of February 2020. I transferred all my work and systems online to do so, and while I’m still part-time, in practice I’m now available 24/7 for every conceivable administrative emergency (“Hi David. Please order me some large coloured post-it notes and have them delivered to my home tomorrow” or “Hi David. Please bring £200 in cash to my house this morning so I can pay for my lunch meeting today.

The politics of envy?

A genuine laugh out loud moment from Jonathan Pie, who is definitely not having a liberal meltdown.

NOT FAKE NEWS

Convicted felon, fascist and fake news king, the 45ᵗʰ President of the United States paid the porn star ‘stormy Daniels’ hundreds of thousands of dollars not to tell anyone that she had sex with him. Last night, she appeared on a Channel 4 US election special with disgraced former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was there to plug his memoir “Unleashed.” Daniels wanted to know if Johnson had any children, and wondered if Johnson would leave his daughter alone with Trump.

Wasn’t Harris ahead in the polls until the UK government started interfering in the election?

LIZ KENDALL - MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS

Trials of employment advisers giving CV and interview advice in hospitals produced “dramatic results”, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall told the BBC. No. No they didn’t. The Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions was referring to her experience of visiting a severe mental illness Individual Placement and Support (IPS) programme. In the community. Mental health patients are in hospital usually because they are incapable of living life in general let alone getting a job.

Factional right-wing neoliberal think tank “Labour Together": The Budget is a Winner with Tories

Now we can all agree that Biden was a total failure of a president.

THE SOUTHALL GASWORKS STORY

The story of how the remediation of Southall Gasworks highlights the environmental injustices faced by communities of colour. The disregard for the health and concerns of these residents raises questions about the inequitable distribution of environmental burdens and the role of local government in protecting vulnerable populations. It also highlights the potential conflicts between development, profit, and public health, and the need for greater transparency and accountability from authorities and developers.

Every word speaks the brutal truth. The Year After Al-Aqsa Flood | Black Agenda Report

Dear President Biden…

IMPOSSIBLE DEMANDS

Starmer is cynically setting up the NHS to fail in order to present private healthcare as the fix. Starmer: a man way of his depth when dealing with the NHS https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/starmer-a-man-way-of-of-his-depth-when-dealing-with-the-nhs/ Starmer’s speech on the NHS yesterday offered view of a man unprepared for office who sends out incompetent messages to those who now work in the organisation he leads and who has no comprehension of the economic environment in which he must manage healthcare.

DEATH CULT

OBR: We have to kill old people and starve the children of the poor in order to keep funding our expensive wars and ensure the rich get richer. Labour: Let’s get to it! The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast for the national debt is a worthless exercise by economically illiterate fantasists https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/the-office-for-budget-responsibilitys-forecast-for-the-national-debt-is-a-worthless-exercise-by-economically-illiterate-fantasists/ The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that UK debt will rise to 300% of GDP in 50 years because they think it impossible that taxes can rise above current levels, even though state spending will reach 60% of GDP in their opinion.

Labour’s self-imposed, arbitrary and “binding” “fiscal rules” are the same as the Tories' Austerity policies. Political choices. The same choices. So much for change. Original link to the article from 11 years ago:

My polling station was empty when I went to vote around 1:30 pm. My nearly ten year old looked at the TWELVE names on the ballot. “Don’t vote Labour, Dad”. He looked some more. “There’s Joe!” he said. “VOTE FOR JOE!”

ELECTION FEVER

My inbox is full of people asking for my opinion and personal experience of this UK general election campaign and who to vote for. (Un)fortunately, as I sat down to type the words from my fingertips, my four year old decided he needed to express his thoughts instead. It’s obviously not to scale (he’s only four!), but you can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue.

New e-scooter and cycle hire infrastructure in Southall Green. [Edit] Not the ideal location.

THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide supporters!

“…when you look at it on a personal level, if Nelson was your friend or your neighbour, you would absolutely agree that he should be given the immediate right to settle.” You. Absolute. Bastards. If anyone knows of a crowdfunder to support this man’s legal challenge, I would like to contribute to it. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-69016539

• drandrewv2@freeradical.zone, https://freeradical.zone/@drandrewv2/112449885402615520

Natalie Elphicke said Labour can’t be trusted and doesn’t listen. She said the victim of her husband’s sexual assault was a liar even after he was convicted. Does she really share Labour values? Starmer: “I’m delighted to welcome Natalie Elphicke to my changed Labour Party!”

“Zionism is rooted in trauma and fear. It’s about survival and love for the Jewish people. But like any other ethnic nationalism, Zionism establishes a hierarchy: It’s about prioritizing our safety and well-being, even at the expense of others. It relies on an alternate historical narrative that justifies the occupation and rationalizes the status quo. And it cannot produce a just peace on its own.” Via Zionism cannot produce a just peace.

M.S. Panesar hit wicket b Panesar 0 Tbf, he lasted longer than I thought he would.

WHAT MARXISM TEACHES US

What Marxism teaches us is simply to approach questions of society from a material basis: how does human life persist? Through production of the goods and services needed to live. How are these things produced under capitalist society? Through exploitation of the labor of the working class, that is, by requiring one class of people to sell their labor as a commodity to another class to produce values. What is the result of this system?

STOP THE PLANES

My wife was born in Uganda. She’s Black, like our kids. She came to the UK when she was five. She’s just told me she feels like she should put herself on a plane to Rwanda. Then she said she realised she came here legally, she has indefinite leave to remain, and she’s a British citizen. I asked her what was it that made her feel like she should deport herself.

A local shop owner asked why big kid wasn’t at school. When I told him it was closed because it was being used as a polling station we got talking about the elections. He asked me who I voted for, and then he told me he thinks “it’s going to be another hung parliament”.

My local polling station was deserted when I went to vote around 11am.

Zack, 35, says: “I got pretty disillusioned after I found myself consistently matching with anti-Zionists, even when I set it to ‘Jewish only’.” Zack put an Israeli flag emoji on his profile to rectify the situation. “It’s annoying because the more creative personalities I normally go for tend to be more anti-Israel.” Now he’s having fewer awkward conversations about the conflict, but the people he’s matching with are “less interesting”.

…blanket denial of Israeli war crimes has served to quiet the consciences of Israel’s most ardent supporters, ensuring their unreserved backing for the war. After all, if it can be argued that the rest of the world is lying, or, failing that, the devastation and casualties in Gaza can all be blamed on Hamas, then what is there to feel guilty about? Source: Six months of liberal Zionist doublethink

The agenda now is all-Israeli: There is no one else but us. Only our disasters, our suffering, our sacrifices – and everything else can burn for all we care. We have become as monsters. Not only in our actions, but above all in our apathy. Gideon Levy via Hippy Steve

WHERE'S DADDY?

We have AI that can decide who is a terrorist and then track their every movement so we can wait until they’re home to drop a bomb on their whole family. But the 3 successive precision air strikes on #WCK aid workers coordinating with and following route instructions from the IDF was just a ‘tragic mistake’ because it was night time. Hippy Steve

Hamas wants a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Mr Netanyahu’s office said the proposals were “unrealistic”.

Currently reading: Yesterday’s Man by Branko Marcetic 📚 He would indeed spend his Senate career showering Israel with unquestioning support, even when its behavior elicited bipartisan outrage. He helped to secure an unparalleled amount of US aid for Israel early on and to scuttle a 1998 peace proposal with Palestine, and he told an assembly of lobbyists that Americans “cannot afford to publicly criticize Israel.”

Back cover image of the dec 1975 issue of “issues in radical therapy” (via danielle carr on Twitter.)

File under HamasIsrael don’t care about their own people?

THRIVING?

My son’s school’s Thrive teacher is leaving. She helped transform my lad’s experience of school from being one where he had weekly if not daily challenges with regulating his emotions and his behaviour, to one where he enjoys school every day. She’s going to be very greatly missed. I managed to tell her this today and thank her for her work. It was so sad to hear her story. She has committed ten years of her life to helping our youngsters get the best start in life, and done lots of extra work getting accredited to do so.

TORYBOY

ToryBoy The Movie is the account of filmmaker John Walsh’s disillusionment with what he saw as the corruption, lies, hypocrisy and general incompetence of Blair’s Labour government, and his conversion to the Conservative (Tory) Party general election candidate for Middlesbrough in 2010. Under his own steam and £15,000 of his own money, John found his opponent, Sir Stuart Bell, the serial incumbent Labour MP, invisible and unknown to his local constituents who nevertheless voted him back in every four or five years (albeit with an ever diminishing majority).

WRITING TO MY MP: ICJP - COMPLICITY IN WAR CRIMES

Adapted from this template letter. Dear Mr Sharma, My esteemed representative: I write to you today with a heavy heart, weighed down by the profound disappointment I feel in your recent actions. Your unwavering support for Israel, despite its blatant disregard for international law and its commission of war crimes, has cast a shadow over your impartiality and your ability to hold office effectively. The recent decision by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to serve written notice to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer of their intention to prosecute UK governmental officials for their role in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes has sent shockwaves through our nation.

CURRICULUM VITAE (REPETITUM)

Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels. Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths.

Last night, I watched ToryBoy The Movie. This morning, I watched unelected former Tory Prime Minister and Jewish National Fund patron David Cameron become the UK’s new Foreign Secretary.

Where we’re at. “Humans are complex and flawed.” “Nazis were only human.” “Hamas are animals and must be slaughtered.” “Palestinians don’t count.”

After more than three weeks of Israel’s “targeted” bombing of Hamas in Gaza, Starmer claims that a ceasefire now “would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capabilities to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October 7.”

PROPAGANDA

Last night, I was away in the middle of nowhere with no wifi and very poor data connection, so put on the TV to watch the BBC/ITV news at ten. Haven’t watched it for fifteen years or more. It was pure propaganda for Israel. Jeremy Bowen even said as much: “This is what they want you to see” (as opposed the genocide in Gaza).

PAY RISE

I haven’t had a pay rise since April 2017. Taking into account the cost of living increases year on year, and especially in the last year or two, I’ve effectively taken a pay cut every year. To be fair, I was thankful to have a job at all during and after covid. Thanks to Kate Morley’s historical UK inflation rates and price conversion calculator, I now know how much I should be earning if my pay had kept up with inflation.

FREE PALESTINE

There seems to be a co-ordinated drive to obliterate Palestine, and Palestinians, from the map. I find it very upsetting that my government, and many other “Western” governments are wholeheartedly supporting Israel’s genocidal “self-defence” narrative. Nothing justifies carpet-bombing innocent people - mostly women and children. Nothing justifies cutting off their supplies of electricity, water, food, fuel. The sadistic Netanyahu told Palestinians in Gaza to leave, then bombed the crossing into Egypt while they tried to do so.

CLASS

Thinking about Maths at school, got me thinking about the origin and meaning of class. It’s a classic word, and means so many different things depending on the context in which it’s used. Its Roman origin relates to the dividing up of society, or groups of people for war or military objectives. My Latin teacher at school was obsessed with lining up the desks and chairs at the end of each lesson.

RESPONSES TO MY OPEN LETTER TO PETER MASON

I got a reply to my open letter to Peter Mason[pdf], Leader of Ealing Council, and one of my local ward councillors. Slightly oddly, he addressed it not just to me, but also to CASH (Clean Air for Southall and Hayes, and my neighbour Angela Fonso (who heads up the campaign group. You can see a record of all Mason’s Letters to CASH, if you’re interested in the history. I’d also submitted two Freedom of Information requests(FOIs) to try to get answers, as I didn’t expect a reply (as he has never replied directly to any of my previous questions).

OPEN LETTER TO PETER MASON

Publishing this as it’s in the public interest and I’ve had no reply to my original email sent on 1st July (Mason has, as far as I know, several personal assistants who read and respond to his emails, even if it’s just a holding acknowledgement response - I’ve had one before, as well as a next day reply, and a ‘no reply at all’). I’ve also now submitted two Freedom of Information requests to get answers to my questions.

Based on [residents'] feedback, Ealing Council has drawn up a list of ideas to reduce congestion and to make walking, cycling and using public transport easier in Southall. There are links to the survey results and to a new survey.

Adam Curtis (1984), The Great British Housing Disaster, on how local councils dealt with unsafe new housing developments. “Privately, they know that their tenants are at risk, but publicly they have to try to defend the decision to leave them…”

Local council elections today in many areas. Don’t forget you now need to take some form of id with you (passport, driving licence, or something else from this list).

RISKS TO HEALTH FROM REMEDIATING SOUTHALL GASWORKS

AI is more ethical than Ealing Labour Party. No money was exchanged. What are the risks to health from remediating Southall Gasworks on site in the open air? The land is highly contaminated with benzene, naphthalene and a while host of other VOCs, PAHs, heavy metals, “blue billy” and asbestos, and surrounded by residential streets. The local community is mostly of south Asian and African heritage, and it is known that people with this heritage can be genetically vulnerable to naphthalene poisoning.

I AM THE LEADER OF EALING COUNCIL

I asked Google Bard to advise me on a local matter. I am the leader of Ealing Council. I have received more than 250 reports about a BAD odour nuisance and air pollution from the remediation of the highly contaminated Southall Gasworks land. We had a public meeting where 250 angry residents complained about health problems as a result of the air pollution, including eye, nose and throat irritation, respiratory problems and infections, and even cancer and death of loved ones.

UNDER POISONED SKIES

Watched Under Poisoned Skies on BBC iPlayer last night. It’s the sad and shocking story of children in Iraq dying from leukaemia as a result of toxic air pollution from mega rich oil companies burning off excess natural gas in the open air near their homes. Benzene (found in the air) and naphthalene (found in the children’s urine samples) are the main carcinogens. Levels of benzene are between 3 and 9.

SOUTHALL RESIDENTS TO GIVE BLOOD SAMPLES

After six years of campaigning for justice: “The fact that gas used to be manufactured from coal has been lost to the public consciousness, but the chemical legacy remains.” “These communities already have multiple disadvantages with air pollution, overcrowding and poor housing. This is another burden being placed on them.” Via: Scientists to examine health fears at west London luxury development

HORSESHIT PARADE

I visited the Palace of Westminster this week with my big kid on an educational school trip. It was a very cold, wet and windy day, and we were patriotically under-dressed and sans brollies. We took a good lashing from Mother Nature. The tour of the Houses of Parliament was cool, dry and stuffy, and the little radio headphones we were given so we could hear better were sub-optimal. The House of Commons was closed to ordinary commoners like us, but the House of Lords was open as long as we refrained from parking our cold, wet and windy working class bums on our superiors' ‘holier than thou’ red leather benches.

Finally got around to watching Our Friends In The North. ‘None of the issues the show mines so brilliantly – from inequality, deindustrialisation and the parlous state of Britain’s housing to homelessness and the corruption of our public officials – have gone away.’

‘…housebuilders appear to be making ever greater profits.’ ‘[they] …blame the planning system, the costs of materials and labour for elevated prices. It’s also popular to blame land prices.’ ‘The evidence to back up this claim is hard to find.’

‘…according to research by the London Tenants Federation, we are demolishing more social housing than we are building. Economics makes that inevitable.’ www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opin…

Solidarity with all teachers today, especially those striking for better pay. Eight year old is at home, and refusing to practice for his spelling test tomorrow because he doesn’t want to be a scab.

‘…financial liberalisation, mortgage reform and lack of investment in the existing building stock has transformed English homes into crumbling vehicles for the accumulation of wealth.’ We need more than new homes - Positive Money

No tipping or dumping.

‘…prioritises the maintenance of public housing, which is crucial in ensuring that people have a roof over their heads and a comfortable place to live’ Singapore housing policy

RESPONSE TO EALING'S AIR QUALITY STRATEGY AND ACTION PLAN

Ealing Council’s draft Air Quality Strategy is a 64 page document together with a 40 page Action Plan, and the consultation period runs until 30 January 2023. It’s taken me the best part of six weeks, all my spare time over Christmas and New Year, to get through it all, make notes and cross-reference to try to make sense of it all and offer some feedback. Really, there must be a much longer consultation period if Ealing Council is genuinely interested in residents' views.

New podcast, International Marxist Radio (IMR). The first episode features Ealing’s own Joe Attard speaking to In Defence of Marxism (IDOM) editor-in-chief Alan Woods. Well worth a listen, Alan is a very knowledgeable and engaging speaker.

THE PROPERTY LOBBY: THE HIDDEN REALITY BEHIND THE HOUSING CRISIS IN EALING

There will be 14,800 new homes in 23 new developments in Southall over the next few years. 14 units over 10 stories high, and 7 over 20 stories high. Up to 40,000 new residents (and their cars)! One third of the total new developments in the whole of Ealing borough (only Acton is getting it worse). So not happening so much in the ‘white’ or richer areas of the borough, for some reason.

I know someone in a big old house where the temperature indoors now is not much higher than outdoors. They put their heating on and watched their smart meter tell them they’d spent £13 in an hour without really getting much warmer.

We’re lucky that our modern little first floor flat has good insulation and retains heat. We started putting the heating on in the morning for no more than half an hour last week, and it’s soon toasty, and stays warm all day.

Surprised I haven’t been asked to remove this review of FM Conway. Is 5,000 views a lot? I guess, at the end of the day, it makes no difference.

Got soaked the skin collecting big kid from school (who, it turns out, ate and drank nothing all day…). Last time I got this wet was on my way to record this interview for the BBC…

Regular exposure to even low levels of air pollution may cause changes to the heart similar to those in the early stages of heart failure… Low levels of air pollution linked to changes in the heart

Public concerns over remediating the toxicity of the land… have not been addressed in the revised plans…. “no details have been provided” on the proposed remediation strategy. Brighton Gasworks developer changes plans to include affordable homes

STRAWBERRIES FOR PIGS?

Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else. Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them. We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land.

CHAOS AND CONFUSION

If you thought last year was bad…. No one could have foreseen this! British coastguard sued by French charity for failing to save drowned refugees. Broccoli and cauliflower thrown away. A shortage of lorry drivers. Renationalised energy companies.

NATIONALISING SAUSAGES

Navy gunboats defending our fish from the French. An army of Sikhs feeding European lorry drivers caught up in Kent. Shortages of broccoli and lettuce. Nationalising sausages doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea, now, does it?

HIGH TRAFFIC NEIGHBOURHOOD

Took me an hour (as opposed to 10 minutes) to drive my lad home from school this afternoon, thanks in part to the High Traffic Neighbourhood (‘Improving access for HGVs’) in Southall ‘Green’. Like a rat, I tried the side streets and back roads option and found those to be jammed, too, and Scotts Road - although confusingly still two-way throughout - is now No Entry from the eastern end.

RETURN TO WORK

I returned to work last week after my extended absence due to respiratory illness, which may or may not be related to three years of breathing the poisonous gasworks' air. I find I now have to literally climb over two rough sleepers camped outside the door of my workplace in order to get in. There is no more space in the nearby doorway, and the doorway around the side entrance is similarly occupied.

TRIGGER VOTE FOR SHARMA

In July 2019, I attended a public meeting with Public Health England to discuss air pollution problems created by the development of the old gasworks site. At this meeting, I asked Public Health England if it is true that people with Asian and African heritage are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene – one of the main causes of the stink coming from the gasworks site. Do you know what they said?

SOUTHALL UNDER SIEGE: THE NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL

‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council. He’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014. ‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’ Moving swiftly on. Oppressive odour The highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.

INCONSIDERATE CONSTRUCTOR

Lorry driver on his phone while leaving ‘Southall Village’ building site, right next to school entrance during school run. Got a load more verbals from the driver and his colleagues on site - ‘Did he hit anyone?’, ‘He doesn’t work for us!’ All part of the Considerate Constructors Scheme, aka Couldn’t Care Less Scam.

TWENTY TEN (THE PREQUEL): THE CHEESEMAKER

Originally intended as a follow-up to part one of my milk-based food product styled personal review of 2010, this post quickly regressed into a metaphorical guide to the cheesemaking process, as you will see. By the end of the first week of March 2010, I felt like I was several thousand feet above sea level. High up a mountain, again, perhaps mostly due to the ever-decreasing capacity of my right lung, but plummeting to new emotional depths thanks to the leaden weights of my ever-increasing self-doubt and sense of despair, perhaps partly as a reaction to stopping taking my antidepressant medication (although I stopped because I was feeling worse, not better).

WATERBOARDING ON THE NHS

Abstract: Gagging for it. Tags: waterboarding, NHS, bronchoscopy, torture, worklessness, Nazi, psychotherapy, banana, splat On Another Planet this week: controversial new government plans to tackle ever increasing worklessness using waterboarding. Techniques refined and perfected by secret military personnel known only by their codename ‘Our Boys’ are being piloted by the NHS in an effort to ‘encourage and empower’ people claiming statutory sick pay to return to work. One persistent malingerer, who asked not to be identified, claimed that he was subjected to an horrific ordeal at the hands of his torturers and says he was tricked into believing he was just playing a game of ‘doctors and nurses’.