The morning of the vote on disability benefits (Tuesday 1st of July), I received a letter from the Labour Party. It told me that the party was doing a great job, taking “tough decisions” which have resulted in all of us “turning a corner”. These choices were, said our General Secretary, “Labour choices” which reflected “Labour values”. “We hope that this makes you proud” she told me. “Max, we would love to have you back” she said. “Will you rejoin the Labour Party?”
They must be desperate. It is true that I was a member of the Labour Party for many years, many decades in fact; and, with one or two absences (the late ‘60s and the Iraq War, for example) remained so until the current Starmer regime decided that people like me were not wanted on the voyage.
I should have resigned over Gaza, and Starmer’s statement on LBC that Israel’s right to self-defence included the right to cut off power, water, and food. I didn’t. I protested. I wrote to my Labour MP, met him, put my views forward. But I didn’t resign. Not then.
I actually resigned on the day that my MP joined the majority of Labour MPs to vote in favour cutting the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
The announcement came out of the blue. Reeves had gone for cuts which even Osbourne’s austerity policy could not entertain. Of course, it was a Labour choice. It reflected Labour values. And it appeared to fund not the so-called black hole but Starmer’s determination to fund the defence of Ukraine.
Just before the election, we had been moved from the Warwick and Leamington constituency to the doughnut constituency of Kenilworth and Southam. It was not pleasant finding oneself being represented by a Tory.
Except that, in the winter fuel allowance debate, the Tory voted against the cuts. It was my old Labour MP who voted for it. Not only voted for it but wrote a long justification of doing so, which included drawing a parallel between the fuel allowance and his subsidised train fares to London and back. Loyalist Labour members told me that over 50% of pensioners were millionaires, and how they used to spend the fuel allowance on shoes.
And the same thing happened last Tuesday. Jeremy Wright voted against the PIP and disability cuts. Matt Western, who had originally signed the ‘reasoned amendment’, then voted unreasonably in favour of the shambolic government.
Some of you - thanks - will have noted that this is my first post for some months. Medically and mentally I have been reluctant to take on the political situation here, in Palestine, in the US.
But we need to face up to it. It’s no use turning off the news. I shall be joining a political party.
It might be Green. It might be a new Corbyn alliance, especially if Faiza Shaheen is involved.
But it sure as hell won’t be Starmer’s Labour.
Today from the everysmith vaults: I have inherited a number of recordings of The Ring Cycle and am currently on the Rudolf Kempe 1957 version from Covent Garden. Despite the ‘bootleg’ quality of the recording, it is close to that of Solti. Commended.
They must be desperate. It is true that I was a member of the Labour Party for many years, many decades in fact; and, with one or two absences (the late ‘60s and the Iraq War, for example) remained so until the current Starmer regime decided that people like me were not wanted on the voyage.
I should have resigned over Gaza, and Starmer’s statement on LBC that Israel’s right to self-defence included the right to cut off power, water, and food. I didn’t. I protested. I wrote to my Labour MP, met him, put my views forward. But I didn’t resign. Not then.
I actually resigned on the day that my MP joined the majority of Labour MPs to vote in favour cutting the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
The announcement came out of the blue. Reeves had gone for cuts which even Osbourne’s austerity policy could not entertain. Of course, it was a Labour choice. It reflected Labour values. And it appeared to fund not the so-called black hole but Starmer’s determination to fund the defence of Ukraine.
Just before the election, we had been moved from the Warwick and Leamington constituency to the doughnut constituency of Kenilworth and Southam. It was not pleasant finding oneself being represented by a Tory.
Except that, in the winter fuel allowance debate, the Tory voted against the cuts. It was my old Labour MP who voted for it. Not only voted for it but wrote a long justification of doing so, which included drawing a parallel between the fuel allowance and his subsidised train fares to London and back. Loyalist Labour members told me that over 50% of pensioners were millionaires, and how they used to spend the fuel allowance on shoes.
And the same thing happened last Tuesday. Jeremy Wright voted against the PIP and disability cuts. Matt Western, who had originally signed the ‘reasoned amendment’, then voted unreasonably in favour of the shambolic government.
Some of you - thanks - will have noted that this is my first post for some months. Medically and mentally I have been reluctant to take on the political situation here, in Palestine, in the US.
But we need to face up to it. It’s no use turning off the news. I shall be joining a political party.
It might be Green. It might be a new Corbyn alliance, especially if Faiza Shaheen is involved.
But it sure as hell won’t be Starmer’s Labour.
Today from the everysmith vaults: I have inherited a number of recordings of The Ring Cycle and am currently on the Rudolf Kempe 1957 version from Covent Garden. Despite the ‘bootleg’ quality of the recording, it is close to that of Solti. Commended.
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