1282 days ago
This is an acid test for the poseur Boris Johnson and his faux Tory regime: a trade deal with Australia has been negotiated and appears to allow high quality Aussie meat and other foodstuffs to enter the UK tariff-free. This has sparked a row within the Tories which would have greatly entertained my Grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, once the senior civil servant at MAFF, so a man who knew about farming, an anti EEC campaigner in 1975 and a staunch political soulmate of his pal Tony Benn. This is a real test for Boris.
1421 days ago
We burned a home-made EU flag on a bonfire here at the Welsh Hovel on January 31 to celebrate the first stage of Brexit. Tonight at 11 PM we fully and finally leave the Evil Empire and after 45 years of family pain it would be wrong not to celebrate again.
1426 days ago
I have not read the full 1500 pages of the Trade treaty between the UK and the Evil Empire. I am sure that buried in the detail are a few dastardly measures from inserted by stormtroopers from the Death Star. I don’t need to fall asleep reading it; I just look at the reactions of those who have.
1469 days ago
For seven years I have been recounting various episodes which will have caused my grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, a former Director General of the National Trust, to spin in his grave. Slowly, the organisation he loved is destroying itself but like the frog in slowly heating water it seems oblivious to its fate. For those who run the Trust live in a small liberal and elitist bubble.
1874 days ago
I start with a row I had with the Mrs on Brexit. It is pertinent to what follows so bear with me No Gold. I then move on to a different sort of socialist to the Mrs, my grandfather Sir John Winnifrith and his comrade in arms Tony Benn, that is to say Lord Drayson of Sensyne (SENS) where revelations yesterday were shocking. Oh, and that poltroon Neil Woodford is involved too.
2668 days ago
In her Guardian column today arch remoaner Polly Toynbee took time out from tending to her Tuscan castle to bash Brexit because it will hit British farmers so badly as they lose subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy. Natch, the BBC took time out from the month long LGBT-fest to make way to report this breaking news from its sister publication and thus Toynbee opined on Radio 4's Today Programme. It was classic Toynbee and I am so glad my late grandfather Sir John Winnifrith, a true socialist and friend of Tony Benn and a campaigner for No! in 1975 was not around to hear it. He would be incandescent as he really did believe in "for the many not the few."
3044 days ago
In days gone by it was perfectly respectable to be a Eurosceptic and a lefty. Great socialists such as Tony Benn, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle lead the battle to get out of the EU in 1975. But gradually most on the left have abandoned that position. That they have done so while working people and the old, young and sick across Europe have been screwed by the EU might be rather surprising.
And thus while Greek Pensioners have to live on £9 a day
3112 days ago
Looking at twitter I see folks aghast that Boris Johnson has compared the EU to Hitler. How dare Bojo link Brussells to white supremacism and killing Jews? You think I am kidding? Here you go:
@PritaBardhan
EU to Hitler? So is #BorisJohnson saying that a body of countries is a white supremacist thug & committing genocide?
Er no Prita Boris is saying nothing of the sort. Tactic one of Project Fear or is that Project Smear is to take what we Brexiteers say totally out of context. Here is what Bojo actually said:
3905 days ago
The veteran Labour politician Tony Benn has this morning died aged 88. As is the case, even for Bob Crow, his family have my sympathies. So what to make of Wedgie? This may rather surprise you.
Anthony Wedgwood Benn was an aristocrat who renounced his seat in the Lords to fight for what he believed in from the House of Commons. And he certainly had strong beliefs. During the 70s and 80s as Energy Minister in the appalling Callaghan Government and then in opposition he tried to swerve the Labour party violently to the left and he almost succeeded. He did his part in making Labour utterly unelectable and thus gave the blessed Margaret a good stretch in office. For that he deserves our eternal gratitude.
My grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, was a Bennite. After retiring from the Civil Service he was for the first time in his live, as head of the National Trust & War Graves Commission, able to speak his mind. And thus in the 1975 EU referendum campaign he found himself now and again speaking on the same platform as his hero. Their reasoning for opposing staying in the Evil Empire was that it was a construct to make rich farmers and industrialists richer at the expense, largely via food prices, of the working classes.
I am not sure that I follow their logic but at least I could agree with my Grandfather and Benn on one thing, the EU was a bad thing.
In his declining years Benn came to be seen as a bit of a National Treasure.
4169 days ago
It was a rather quiet week on the news front but in London around 2,000 assorted deluded lefty fruitcakes gathered on Saturday for the “People’s Assembly against Austerity.” Dragged from the 1970s were old loons like Tony Benn but there were also a new generation of loons. Benn has the excuse of senility. The new loons are just thick. Government spending is actually increasing year on year. The wicked Tories are spending more and more as the UK hurtles towards bankruptcy. What do they not understand?
As such I ask you for captions to this picture of assorted fruitcakes.
Please post your captions in the comments section below by 9 AM on Friday.
For what it is worth my caption is lifted from a quote from one delegate who attended the People’s Assembly. Yes he did actually say this.
