ocicats_bengals

Sleeping at night. Finally. Thank Trazadone.

Awhile since I posted. I'm on Facebook quite a lot after weening myself from Twitter.
I can't even remember how to add photos, although I think with an unpaid account it's more Photobucket and less direct. So no photos.

During the Westminster election campaign last year, the Sunday Times reported: “He’s very posh and very rich. No wonder the Tories want to keep Jacob Rees-Mogg out of sight”. The Sunday Times went on to describe Mr Rees-Mogg as “David Cameron’s worst nightmare”, presumably because of him being even posher and even richer than Cameron himself.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7094258.ece
In a previous election campaign, Mr Rees-Mogg made the mistake of touring the constituency in a Bentley with his nanny, Veronica Crook. “I do wish you’d stop going on about the nanny” he said afterwards. “If I’d had a valet, you would think it perfectly normal.” However, even Mr Rees-Mogg himself realised it would be better for him to keep a low profile. He said “whatever I happened to be speaking about, the number of voters in my favour dropped as soon as I opened my mouth”. So, last year, by the clever tactic of hiding himself away and saying nothing, Mr Rees-Mogg managed to get elected to the safe Tory seat of North Somerset. Mr Rees-Mogg is in the news for three reasons.

One, he is annoyed at David Cameron over the dropping of his sister, Annunziata Rees-Mogg, from the list of approved Conservative candidates.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002606/Sacked-Tory-candidate-told-pregnancys-disability-party-official.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Two, he has denied allegations that he met his wife in the frozen fish department of Sainsburys, Cheam.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100092758/jacob-rees-mogg-denies-allegations-of-meeting-wife-in-frozen-fish-department-of-sainsburys-cheam/

Three, he is sponsoring an amendment to the Scotland Bill to include a Westminster-organised referendum on independence.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2010-2011/0164/amend/cob1641606a.2397.html

The electorate in Scotland has just voted, quite emphatically, for folk who say they will hold a referendum on independence. Without making any assumptions at all about which way folk would vote in that referendum, it's clear most folk in Scotland like the idea of being consulted about this in a referendum. The electorate in Scotland has also backed seeking full financial authority for the Scottish Parliament. The (for the time being) leaders of both the Labour Party MSPs and the Liberal Democrat Party MSPs have stated that their parties will be "constructive" about this. Members of the ConDem government at Westminster appear to have indicated that they accept this new reality. With such widespread agreement on full financial authority for the Scottish Parliament, from both the electorate and from both parliaments, it's going to happen. And since that is the new "status quo", sticking an FFA option into a referendum on independence would be a completely un-necessary complication. Yes, or no, to starting negotiations for independence, is all that is needed.

"x" wrote "18 months soft imprisonment seems lenient"

I’m not going to get into a Daily-Mail-style complaint about “lenient” sentencing, from my point of view prisons are the universities of crime and do more harm than good. I think it’s an unhappy thing that Tommy Sheridan has been sent to prison. Yes, of course, Rupert Murdoch and his pals in the police and the establishment are enemies of the working class; that I would assume from the start. But the schemes of these enemies of the working class were made easier by the fact that Tommy Sheridan is a liar and a hypocrite.

"tollshot" wrote "Tommy Sheridan is someone who i have been familiar with since the anti-poll tax days. I was never a member of the anti-poll tax federation but i did actively protest against the tax from the very start. The reason i never became a member of the anti-poll tax federation was Tommy Sheridan."

From my point of view, although I was involved in the “federation” from the very start, nevertheless, the anti-poll-tax movement was more than just the “federation”. However, let’s be clear about this. First, there were local anti-poll tax GROUPS . I know, I was involved in starting one of the first, without any help at all from Tommy Sheridan. Later on , these anti-poll-tax GROUPS got together and formed anti-poll-tax federations. We got together with a couple of groups in Dundee and formed the Tayside Anti Poll Tax Federation. Then later still the Scottish Anti Poll Tax Federation was formed.

But let's be clear about this; the initiative for resisting the poll tax didn't come from the APT federations. Rather, the APT federations were formed because there was resistance. And I can remember the very first time I heard the name “Tommy Sheridan”. We had sent 3 delegates to some anti-poll-tax gathering in Edinburgh. They came back and told us about various things that had been agreed at that meeting. "Oh, and some young student called Sheridan is supposed to be acting as a kind of co-ordinator". But the appointment of this young student as a sort of co-ordinator wasn’t seen as being any big deal, and it certainly wasn’t seen as him being our “Leader”.

The myth that "Tommy Sheridan led the resistance" is one which has been spread by folk who were not involved in the campaign, and of course Sheridan himself and his pals have not been too particular about countering the myth. But it IS a myth.

Not only did we organise local demonstrations (with no assistance from Mr Sheridan), and take part in national ones, we organised people to turn out to physically stop sherriff's officers from carrying out poindings, organising phone-trees to contact people at very short notice for this purpose, and that sort of thing.

Also, as early as June 1988 I was writing to friends and contacts in England urging them to support our campaign, and to prepare for non-payment in England when the poll tax was introduced there. I presume folk like Tommy Sheridan and co were also contacting their Militant Tendency colleagues in England, saying "get on with organising against the poll tax down there, because if you don't, them bloody anarchists will be leading the movement". I even know a member of the SNP who spoke against the poll tax at a local public meeting in a small town in England months before the tax was introduced there.

It was because we were resisting so successfully in Scotland there was an anti-poll-tax movement in England. If we had failed to resist the poll tax in Scotland, that would have been it, Maggie would have won. Folk in England would have said "What's the point, the Scots have given up, we can't beat Maggie". But we didn't fail, and we didn't give up. We were able to show opponents of the poll tax in England and Wales a successful, organised, mass campaign of non-payment that they could join in with.

I was one of a number of Scottish anti-poll-tax protesters who went down to London for the big protest there on the 31st of March 1990. At the demonstration, folk were congratulating anybody with a Scottish accent on our fight. I made a point of singing, loudly, to that well-known samba tune, "We're STILL no payin the poll tax". The mood of the demo was optimistic BECAUSE we in Scotland had been running a campaign of non-payment for a year.

And yes, that demonstration did turn into a riot. And Tommy and the other Militant leaders completely misjudged the mood of the public over that. I remember getting into a taxi in London, the London taxi-driver told me there were certain parts he couldn’t take me to because of the rioting, but then he added “Mind you, I think it’s great that they are giving Maggie a bloody nose”. And that reaction was typical. The wider public LIKED the rioting.

And Tommy Sheridan was asked about it on the television news and said that “The Federation” would be taking action against these rioters who had “disrupted” a peaceful demonstration. Within a few hours, he had realised his blunder, and he never repeated that remark, or did anything about it. In fact, he and his pals deny he ever said anything like that. But I saw that TV news broadcast, I didn’t imagine it, Tommy Sheridan condemned people who were actively fighting against the poll tax.

"x" wrote "Tommy Sheridan's crimes go much further than perjury."

Indeed they do. I think he should acknowledge this, and stop lying to himself, to his wife and family, to his colleagues, and to everybody else. The first step in redemption is to acknowledge the sin..........

Should update my journal, but have caught the dreaded Twitter/Facebook bug, and I'm only good for 140 characters anyhow. My granddaughter was born on the night of November 15th, although being after midnight she presented herself on the 16th. I know know when Nadja says she has to PUSH, no SCREAMS she has to push, baby is within minutes of being born. By the time we got to Montrose, she was creating the best Exorcist tribute I've seen. So that's me.

A week or so after the UK election, "The Independent" daily newspaper printed a letter from me. I said

"After all the talk of 'change', what we have, as so often in the past, is a government led by a posh boy from Eton and Oxford, with another posh boy from St Paul's and Oxford as Chancellor. The same kind of international banking speculators whose vile greed brought us into recession in the first place are circling like vultures over a sick animal, and this government will serve the interests of those vultures. This very old-fashioned government is preparing to make the common people pay for the crimes of their pals. THEY are preparing for class war. Those of us who are not from their privileged class (or that of Nick Clegg - Westminster School and
Cambridge) have to prepare to resist. I don't know exactly what forms the resistance will take, but resistance there will be. This government will, of course, soon be in conflict with the Scottish government and parliament, who will be trying their inadequate best to protect us in Scotland from the worst. But nobody should look to the SNP or to the Labour Party for leadership of the resistance. It wasn't them that took the initiative in resisting Maggie Thatcher or her poll tax, and it won't be them at the front of the resistance now. In fact, don't wait for any politician, or any party, to 'lead' the resistance. Be prepared to take the initiative yourself, and be prepared to link up with anybody else who is showing willingness to resist."

Some folk thought that a bit over the top at the time, but seven months later it's clear we are indeed plunged into class war, and there is indeed resistance, and folk are indeed taking the initiative for themselves and linking up with anybody else prepared to resist.

That being so, the whole Julian Assange business looks like a bit of a side show in some ways. Not only is he not "the most influential anarchist ever", there's plenty of evidence he's not an anarchist at all, and decidedly authoritarian in some of his views and practices. As for Assange's main supporter on here, Jeremy Dixon may not be too expert at winning friends and influencing people.

Nevertheless, having said that, it does look like there is something rather suspect about the enthusiasm with which this particular "sex-crime" is being pursued, when far stronger cases of rape are deemed not worth bothering with. And the decision to refuse Assange bail, when bail has regularly been granted in less favourable circumstances, also looks suspect.

That being so, the suspicion lingers that he just has to be kept in jail till they figure out what they can get him for.