Race War-The New Class War

The left love to divide and rule, or maybe that should read; the left have to divide and rule. They create hatred and animosity where it needn't exist so they can rush in and defend those 'under attack'. Just look how many decades they've been claiming the Tories are going to privatise the NHS, and the gullible believe it and become convinced the Tories will let poor people die if they form a government. Lies, lies and more lies.

But the old class warfare doesn't wash these days. Most people laugh if they hear an old school class warrior banging on about 'the workers' and 'comrades', and quite rightly too, it's a joke. The poor these days smoke, drive, have decent accommodation and a huge TV on the living room wall. Of course some people have less than others, that's life. But nobody in the UK today is starving to death, going to school in bare feet or living in squalor with inhabitable accomodation and cockroaches. So the left have had to create an alternative to class war. Race war.

The left, through political correctness, has created a climate whereby people daren't make a comment, no matter how harmless, about somebody of another race without the cry of racism going up. This week it's been race warrior Rio Ferdinand banging on about racism. It seems he and his brother were subjects of unpleasant chants this week from England fans, not surprising as they are obnoxious prats, but the claim is that there were 'racist undertones'. So "Rio Ferdinand, you know what you are" followed by a song about putting him on a bonfire is racist? Obviously not, to the sane, but many on the race obsessed left aren't sane. United fans have sung similar about City fans and Scousers for years. Is that racist too?

It's always a shame to see loony extremists using race for their own ends, be that the BNP on the nationalist far-left or the more internationalist left-wingers. Left, pardon the pun, to our own devices I reckon people of most races just rub along nicely together. As ever it is politicos and obsessives who cause the problems and resentment.

Of course we must remember that poor old Rio Ferdinand has faced such vile racism in this country that he only earns about £200,000 a week. Makes apartheid South Africa look cushy doesn't it?

Another Fine Mess, Still!

I'll lay my cards on the table, I'm no economic genius, I managed to scrape an 'O' Level in Government, Economics and Commerce but that's it. But even I can sense that something is wrong and little seems to be being done to fix it.

It seems to me that basic economics on a national scale should follow, roughly, the principles of our personal economics, meaning that by and large you live within your means. OK you take out the occasional loan for a new car, a holiday or whatever but to build up debt way beyond your income is seen, quite rightly, as irresponsible. So why should government behave any differently?

Many individuals are in a position, if they have borrowed a little too much, to work some overtime or maybe get a second job to bring in some extra money. What can government do? It is unproductive, it doesn't earn money, all it can do is tax or borrow. Anybody thinking the current government is acting responsibly should think again, maybe take a look at this report from the Taxpayers' Alliance. It details how this government has raised taxes in over 200 instances.

That doesn't strike me as being very conservative. A personal economics analogy might be the family who run up an unsustainable debt being able to look at the family next door, who have been prudent and saved, and take a few grand out of their savings account. That doesn't seem very fair to me. To put it on a national scale look at the proposed theft from savers in Cyprus by the European Union. I don't see government trying to tax its way out of debt being any different. But many people seem to accept this, failing to understand that government doesn't have a big money tree that it can pluck the odd million quid off, it has to take it from us, or borrow it.

What it seems to me is that we need a conservative government with guts. Osborne today could take some brave measures. He could cut VAT, cut income tax for the lower paid. Give the long term unemployed a tax holiday if they find work. Reduce fuel duty and the hated alcohol duty, and that's just a few ideas.

Yes people have become welfare dependent. But that is because government has created the conditions where it is possible for people to not bother working. People attack migrants, especially from Eastern Europe, but they are coming here and finding work, and living quite comfortably, in jobs that it seems too many people refuse to take. Otherwise why are there so many British people on benefits while migrants are gainfully employed? Blame the state, not the immigrants.

Fair enough, they would have to balance the books. Well start with looking at the huge waste in bureaucracy, the huge amount of money we send each day to the EU. The huge amount of money it costs us each day enforcing EU rules and regulations. The huge amount of money wasted in education on pointless and trivial degree courses, then look at the quality of some of the so-called graduates. Let's look at the huge amount we send abroad in aid. Stop it, it seems to be either going to countries such as India and China who don't need it, or to countries where it is being squandered by corrupt governments.

But I'm not holding my breath. Let's face it the Tories are led by Cameron, a liberal democrat in reality. He couldn't even beat Gordon Brown in 2010 so what chance has he got in 2015 of winning? Even if he did what was needed today it probably wouldn't be enough. And, when putting Cameron in a list of good Conservative leaders/ PMs remember, even John Major managed to win, against all the odds, in 1992. Cameron was a washed up nothing before 2010 and he just convinces us all the more with every day that passes.

The Times They Are a-Changing

Northern Quarter or Ancoats?

Yesterday I was in Manchester. I walked from the city centre to my parents' home in Gorton, about three miles. It was a route, up Ashton Old Road, that many of us took home in our younger days after a night pubbing and clubbing. Over thirty years on I found myself growing nostalgic and thoughtful, as well as more knackered than I ever remember being all those years ago on the walk!

The first thing I found in Manchester was the St Patrick's Day parade. I'm afraid my view is that we should have these parades only when the Irish start having St George's Day parades, hopefully never! I find something cheap and tacky about supposedly sane people dressing up as leprechauns and wearing ludicrous Guiness hats. As for the claim to Irishness of people after drinking a pint of Guiness, don't get me started on that one. If you love Ireland so much it's only a short flight or boat crossing away.

So I decided to get out of the way of all these Plastic Paddies and headed to Ancoats. Except Ancoats has now been renamed the 'Northern Quarter'. Northern Quarter? What is it a quarter of? A quarter of the city centre maybe? A quarter of Ancoats? It's a ludicrously pretentious attempt to make parts of Manchester, and other English cities, sound  a little more exotic and continental. Fine in Paris but bloody hell, Manchester? Sorry, no, it's still Ancoats and should always remain Ancoats. It was the heart of industrial Manchester where terraced streets lived in the shadow of great Victorian mills, while not wanting it preserved in aspic, renaming it is cultural barbarianism and an insult to our heritage.

As I headed down Gt Ancoats St., maybe soon to be renamed Northern Quarter Boulevard, I decided to see if a great old pub called the Moulders Arms had survived the recent massacre of the great British pub. But no, not only is it shut but it is now the derelict site you see above. This was the sad story all the way up Ashton Old Road where most of the great old Victorian pubs have either been demolished or turned into white goods superstores or tile warehouses. The Seven Stars, one of my old granddad's many watering holes, seems to be just about surviving, but for how long?

Urban wasteland or Beswick?

I just about remember the old heavy engineering and steel works along the road around Beswick and Openshaw. My Aunty Agnes lived on a terraced street running off the Old Road opposite the works in Openshaw and I remember the hooter  sounding and seeing thousands of men swarming through the gates on push bikes or on foot to hop on one of the old Manchester Corporation buses lined up to take them home. Now there are green spaces on one side with tiny lego type houses and flats while there is still a high wall on the other hiding huge mounds of rubble where the factories used to stand.

Going back in time the greatest shock to those people, long gone, who lived in this part of Manchester when it was thriving would be the demographic change. In the hour or so my nostalgic meander took me I must have passed twenty or thirty people. Not a single one was a native English speaker. The only white people I heard speak were Polish or from some other Eastern European country. I couldn't help wondering what they must make of East Manchester. I know what older people left in East Manchester, who were here fifty or more years ago, think of it in 2013, and it's not very much. At least I could pop into the African and Asian foodstore, another former pub, to stock up on jerk seasoning.

Sunny Gorton

I once heard Billy Connolly telling how, living in Los Angeles, he used to get strong nostalgic longings for the Gorbals where he grew up in Glasgow. Eventually he went back feeling rather emotional but, like East Manchester, he found it had changed. He then had the realisation that what he was pining for was not actually the Gorbals, it was for that period in his life when he lived and grew up there. I know exactly what Billy Connolly meant after my nostalgia filled promenade up Ashton Old Road.

SWP RIP

Good to see the vile gang of Marxist thugs known as the Socialist Workers Party finally going through its death throes, not before time.

Gone but not missed. More a cult for the psychologically disturbed than a political party really.

Lies, Socialists and Hypocrisy

It never ceases to amaze me how the socialists constantly bang on about the Tories attempting to privatise the NHS. Since the late seventies I've heard lefty after lefty banging on about them privatising the NHS, and it hasn't happened yet. But still they are banging on about it. Lies, lies, lies. If only the Tories had the guts to do it I may consider voting for them again.

Then I still hear them banging on about Margaret Thatcher. Even now the loonier fringe of the socialist movement will blame Mrs Thatcher if there is an outbreak of flu. But then dare to blame the Labour governments from 1997 to 2010 for the financial mess we are in, or for the murderous mess they made of the NHS, and they claim innocence citing being ousted in 2010. Hypocrites as well as liars.

UKIP-A Sense of Perspective

UKIP do have a habit of getting a little giddy if they get a decent result, and let's be honest, last night's result in Eastleigh was good. But...

At this stage in their development they should be winning by-elections like that. Ask them about the anomaly of hating the EU but having MEPs and they claim it's so they can use the resources to fight in the UK. Well they haven't succeeded there have they? Even Respect, with no MEPs just a loony like Galloway have one MP. Even the Greens, the true lunatic fringe, have one MP.

Can UKIP really be taken seriously?

UKIP claim to be the fourth party in England, maybe the UK, but last night they couldn't defeat the Lib Dems. Yes, Eastleigh is solidly Lib Dem, but most constituencies are pretty solidly one party or another. The Lib Dems have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, sleazy downright dishonest but UKIP still couldn't knock them off their perch.

The main problem for UKIP is that their MEPs have gone native, and key workers in the party are dependent on MEPs for their salaries. The problem there is that most of them are clueless about campaigning and are only there because they are cronies and drinking buddies of their paymasters, the MEPs.

Just as damaging are their policies. They are a totally impossible to achieve wishlist for Daily Mail readers. Spend massive amounts on border security and the military, while slashing taxes. How the hell can that add up?

Let's see what they get in Eastleigh in a general election, not in a by-election when there was a huge protest vote to harvest. And until they have more MPs than Respect or the Greens they should keep shut about claiming to be the third or fourth party, it only makes them sound absurd.