Once again the satirist, Johnathan Pie hits the nail on the head with Jeremy Corbyn's 2nd leadership election victory in a year.
Uneletable?
Well he now has an even bigger mandate to run Labour than he did before. Plus the Labour party now is the biggest political party in Europe with half a million members.
At a time when other political parties are dying. We have witnessed something akin to a reverse takeover of the Labour party. It is incomplete and it is certainly contested, but it is real.
Also by invoking the victories of Sadiq Khan in London and Marvin Rees in Bristol, he was showing that a social movement can yield victory at the ballot box - - theguardian.com.
Let's see what Johnathan Pie has to say about the unelectable Labour leader.
What do you think of Jeremy Corbyn's 2nd massive victory to stay Labour leader within a year?
Is he really unelectable or are you just falling for the Murdoch press media?
The Tory spin in the Daily Mail and Telegraph that spews out the lies that we cannot spend our money investing in the country but rather on wars, Trident and filling the holes in the Treasury caused by austerity measures?
Jeremy Corbyn wins yet another Labour election victory but will it stop the Blairites?
Guess what...
Jeremy Corbyn has won his Labour Leadership election battle against the unknown (to me at least until this content), Owen Smith.
I don't find it a surprise, I don't find it a shock I find it a waste of time and a stupid exercise by Blairites and their followers who they co-erced into joining their coup as a massive custard pie in the face. They have really wasted some important months when they should have been attacking the Tories on
Our new unelecte PM Theresa May and how she has gone back on many of David Cameron's policies, which should really trigger a general election, but as the Labour party were in no fit state to fight one they got away with it.
Examples include the re-introduction of Grammar Schools.
The possibility of Scotland holding another referendum to leave the UK.
China building our nuclear power station and security issues around this.
So many other items to mention.
This is what satirist Jonathan Pie thinks about the re-election of Jermey Corbyn.
This year he won with 61.8% of the vote to Smith’s 38.2%.
Last year he won with 59.5% of the vote against the other 3 candidates.
This must tell you something. Maybe that the people and the Labour members want him as their leader no matter how much the press attack him all the time and try and portray him as unelectable?
Are the Blairites mad, do they not realise that the Labour party and the part of the country who are left wing actually WANT Jeremy Corbyn as the leader.
Not some air brushed, PR managed, speaker phone in a suit, controlled by HQ who says what he is told to, and has no real opinions or beliefs of his own like Tony Blair - except when it came to God telling him to fight Iraq with Bush as it might be Armagedom.
We don't want constant US led war, like a puppy on a lead.
"Lets go bomb this country now UK our Special Friend", and then afterwards whilst the people are all still fighting in a civil war, or forming new terrorist groups we can later control for our own ends, we can let all the US corporations get the oil rights such as Halliburton.
Plus all the contracts to rebuild the roads and hospitals that we bombed for no reason in the first place can go to US companies formed for exactly this reason. Got to keep the US war economy GDP rolling by passing tax payers money to US military contractors.
Special Friend? The only thing special about our relationship with the USA is that we get to sleep in the wet patch afterwards and have little say when the "special" part is about to start.
We don't want to to give banks money at 0% interest rates whilst we all have to suffer with 10%+ or if your stuck then WONGA or 1 of the hundreds of pay day loans that have sprung up much more.
Is that not a sign something is wrong?
When the public have to pay 1000s of % APR for their money? Do you know the pay day loans interest rates at the moment.
WONGA - 1,177% APR
Satsuma Loans - 1575% APR
Sunny - 1,299% APR
Square Today Short Term Loan - 1265% APR
I could go on, but that seems wrong to me, especially when all these payday banks are owned by the same main banks at the top anyway. It seems to be one of our only growth industries in the UK at the moment along with online Bingo, Poker and Gambling sites. That doesn't say much for our economy does it?
If your a normal person, I consider myself normal believe it or not, then we don't want our economy to built on services that milk the common person so that big banks get even richer and the poor poorer. No, we want to re-focus it so that we have a skilled manufacturing base, a decent job for university and apprentices to enter into after work not fill the shelves at Lidl.
We want high tech, high skilled people and a way for those who have fallen off the track due to ill health or long term joblessness to get back into those jobs through free training. Not punishment by taking away benefits because they have an extra room in their flat, or they don't have a computer so that have to spend their meager benefits on bus fares into town to use the library to search for jobs as they currently have to do.
Call me stupid but we don't want to privatize everything from education to the NHS. Privatising the National Railways when you think about it can't be competitive anyway due to not having the ability to have 2 trains running on the same line at the same time to the same place. Isn't that what competitiveness should all be about?
Unless you are going to allow each railyway company to build their own tracks through the country (which would take decades due to planning permission and all the rest) then you should make our railways a decent public transport option for the nation by making them fast, on time, reliable and cheap. If you did all that more people would leave their cars at home, help the environment and use the trains like they do in Spain and France.
Why is it in Spain I could travel overnight and back to a place the same distance as London for a couple of pounds on a clean railway when here it costs me the best part of twenty pounds, and more if it's overnight?
No it has to be all about money and putting it into the pockets of companies after we have sold the rights for a few billion. It's a stupid mentality only dreamt up by the Tories and Blairites.
The same goes for education. Education should be for life. People should be able to re-skill throughout their lives without forking out thousands in loan repayments. You should be able to go to University for free, another Blairite scheme that has just expanded the cost of education to those that can afford it again and again.
Cut the amount of money we spend on a useless Trident scheme that relies on US GPS (so they could turn it off if we went rogue), and the trillions we have spent on wars over the last decade and we could easily afford free education for all for life.
If you are unemployed you should be able to get onto any workplace training scheme or educational course you want for free. It costs a lot more to have a jobless person claiming benefits for their home, pocket and council tax for years on end than it would for a year or two at a college.
We also have to admit that some of the things Blair and his cronies and followers did were bad for the country and it's future e.g Iraq, and voting in the Tories time again won't sort that out.
PFI was a nightmare for a start, one that will cost over £200 billion in the next 35 years. This will lead to hospitals and schools going broke if not already due to these huge debts they are with debts for the next 20+ years. Yes we may have build a lot of new schools and hospitals due to PFI, but the one thing we didn't build was houses - why not?
Was that because we couldn't find a way to allow the private sector to milk the taxpayer as they do with the others. Currently schools and hospitals have to pay contractors up to £100 or more to change a single light bulb if it breaks in a classroom instead of just calling out their handy man to do the job for them.
I remember being at school with a handy man who did all the odd jobs around the place and we all loved him more than the teachers.
He did everything that needed to be done and he cost a hell of a lot less than what schools are currently paying for fixing anything broken at the moment. Just think of the waiting time for the private contractors to arrive for one, and then the inflated costs all to fill their pockets. What is the point apart from a one off payment from the private company to fill whatever gaping hole the treasury currently has and then face decades of debt?
Of course it doesn't worry the MP's who put it into action as they will be long gone by then. Probably working for the companies who are running the PFI schemes they helped push through parliament no doubt.
Also I don't want to bail out the banks without jailing the directors as Iceland did. The people who led us into the 2008 crisis in the first place should be punished like any other criminal. I want some justice for all this mess and austerity everyone is facing.
Why are we giving banks money at 0% when we could be making National Bonds for investments in house building that will return a nice profit for investors, much needed jobs flooding in and most of all provide the housing people need?
These are all things Jeremy Corbyn wants to do. I can't find a fault in it so please leave your comments to what is so stupid about these policies please.
From the Guardian
Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to “wipe the slate clean” after winning a convincing victory in Labour’s bitter leadership battle, securing 62% of the vote.
Speaking after the result was declared in Liverpool, Corbyn thanked his rival, Owen Smith, and urged the “Labour family” to unite after the summer-long contest.
“We have much more in common than that which divides us,” he said. “Let’s wipe that slate clean from today and get on with the work we’ve got to do as a party together.”
Corbyn secured 61.8% of the vote to Smith’s 38.2%. The victory strengthens his hold on a party that has expanded dramatically since the 2015 general election and now has more than 500,000 members. In last year’s contest, he won 59.5% of the vote.
Corbyn won a majority over Smith in every category – members (59%), registered supporters (70%) and trades union affiliates (60%).
View the original article at the main Dark Poltricks web site at Dark Politricks where you can get even more #altnews and daily politics away from the mainstream.
What do you feel about the recent UK election results?
By Dark Politricks
Did any of you foresee the result of the recent UK general election in which the Tories won an overall majority despite every poll leading up to the election calling it too close to call.
There was a general expectation across the media that there would be another hung parliament and probable coalition government with the Lib Dems as King Makers.
The multitude of polls preceding the election were very wrong, whilst the exit poll was spot on.
This led to ex Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown to embarrassingly have to "eat his cake" on the subsequent BBC's Question Time due to his comments on election night TV that:
"If these exit polls are right I will eat my hat" - Paddy Ashdown
His party, the Lib Dems were almost wiped out and went down to single figures losing 49 seats and leaving just 8 MP's in parliament.
Along with 2 other party leaders, one of which changed his mind after a day (Mr Farage), the Lib Dems leader Nick Clegg immediately resigned leaving the future of the party in doubt along with Labours.
The Labour party also had a bad night, almost being wiped out in Scotland, and losing 26 seats. However Labour still managed a 30% share of the popular vote despite pundits calling the election "too close to call" right up until the votes came rolling in for the Tories across England.
The Lib Dems were never going to be forgiven by their core voters for joining the right-wing Tories instead of their natural cohorts, the left leaning Labour party, in a coalition. Many Tory back benchers were very unhappy at the unequal number of Lib Dem ministerial posts that were given out to their junior partners in the collation that was, as we were kept reminded, in "national interest".
Whilst they may have helped prevent some Tory excesses and helped push the amount you can earn before paying income tax up above £10k, they showed their lack of respect for the voters, mostly young and left leaning, when they broke a much publicised pre-election promise never to raise University tuition fees. This promise was broken almost as soon as Nick Clegg got made Deputy PM and access to ministerial chauffeurs and apartments.
The Lib Dems sign pledge with top students never to raise tuition fees in 2010
Tax breaks for the rich, a raise in VAT which is a tax raise that affects the poorest the most, a massive failure to reverse the huge police state Labour had built up and a decimation of the benefit system to save money instead of taxing the banksters who had caused the financial crisis were all unforgivable as well.
We were kept being told that the deficit was shrinking whilst in fact it grew along with the national debt. The last Government was not a success story at all.
Maybe Nick Clegg saw joining the Tories as his only chance to get some modicum of power whilst he could. He must have known the writing was on the wall when he basically stuck two fingers up at his constituents and joined the Tories.
Letting the banksters get off scot-free, supporting the Tories war on Libya and speaking out for Israel instead of condeming it when it attacked Gaza which was quite common to hear when they were the third-party with no expectation of favours for power were just some of the things that pissed off grass root Lib Dem voters.
He thought the electorate were willing to vote for constant coalition with a referendum on a change in voting but the country wasn't ready for the watered down choice they had to make. Maybe if they had made their point after the recent election more people would have been willing to vote for a change.
You just need to look at how the popular vote in the recent election matched seats to see how many people would be pissed about the current voting system.
The Green party and UKIP together won around 16% of the popular vote (5,038,712 votes) yet only returned one MP each to Westminster.
Yet on the other hand the SNP won far less when it came to the popular vote, Scotland has a population of 5.2 million and only 1,454,436 people voted for the SNP, yet they took all but 3 Scottish seats, 56, a massive gain of 50!
They almost managed to take every single seat in Scotland but instead chose to leave one each for the major 3 parties taking the remaining 50 seats. The SNP are sending a nationalist mob down South who want to see an end to the union and more Scottish powers devolved. This includes the articulate and always enjoyable to watch debate, former leader of the party, Alex Salmond as an MP.
People who had never thought about electoral reform are now calling for it.
Those people who say we only just had a referendum on changing our first past the post system seem to forget that the choice on the cards for voters was not a proper proportional system but instead a form of alternative voting. This is where you would mark an alternative candidate who would take your vote if no-one managed an overall majority.
It does seem odd that Scotland's 1.5 million voters can send 56 MPS to Westminster yet England can vote over 5 million to achieve just 2 MP's.
So now without the Lib Dem's "Steadying Hand", as one of their election adverts put it. There to prevent Labour spending all the cash again and there to prevent the Tories from being too mean, we are now left with an overall Conservative majority.
That means that there is no-one to stop them hammering away at the poor whilst letting their rich benefactors and friends all off with tax cuts and a far too complicated tax system that provides enough loop holes for most of the Tory front bench to keep multi million pound trust funds overseas and away from the UK tax man.
Surely this is a money bomb for accountants and the rich looking for loop holes.
The Hong Kong tax code, widely held by tax lawyers to be the most efficient in the world, is a mere 276 pages long.
The British tax code which has tripled in size since Blair got into government in 1997 is currently in excess of 17,000 pages!
If our government really wanted to claw back some money from waste they would surely shorten this gargantuan piece of legislature.
As anyone knows the longer and more complicated a piece of legislation the more loopholes and get out of jail cards are to be found within its pages.
Instead they will carry on using their right-wing supporter rags of papers, the Sun and The Daily Mail, to attack benefits claimants and the poor. Obviously forgetting the fact that benefit claimants had nothing to do with the banking crash or the dramatic rise in the national debt and deficit under the previous two administrations.
Instead they get $1.9 billion fines in-case the banking system is "destabilised".
I don't understand why their banking licence could have been kept whilst still jailing the bankers in control of the slush funds and drug cartel accounts as an example. London must continue to be the bankster capital of the world it seems. This won't change under any Tory administration.
What will change under the new Government?
Well let's watch embarrassingly as our country, who actually came up with the European Convention on Human Rights, pulls out of the Human Rights Act. This is despite the fact that it was written by Conservatives after World War II to show the newly freed countries that some things related to a countries ethics and morals should be set in stone and not relative to a countries current situation.
This will be something that will not only be a massive blow to civil rights in this country unless replaced by an English Bill of Rights that actually means something and is kept to, not invalidated bit by bit over the years as the US Bill of Rights has been.
People don't seem to realise that the Human Rights Act although abused by a small minority of terror suspects in jail or on control orders trying to prevent extradition to countries where they will be tortured - including the USA - is there to protect them as well.
You may read the odd cherry picked Daily Mail horror story about the new Abu Hamza we can't extradite to a country X or Y where they maybe tortured or executed. Why, because we have morals and see ourselves as a civilised country not a 7th century Islamic State where heads roll as often as the weapons we sell them are unboxed.
The national debt will continue to grow due to the lack of GDP, plus the interest rate apartheid which sees banks loan money from the Bank of England at half a percent whilst the average man now has to rely on WONGA loans with an APR of 1,500%.
The current national debt stands at £1.36 trillion, almost triple the £0.53 trillion it stood at in 2008, the time of the economic collapse and grows at £5,170 per second.
As stated on the National Debt Clock website:
"Mainstream media headlines today are focused on Britain's record national debt, which just surpassed £1 trillion, a figure that can only exponentially increase unless the entire mechanism of Government finance is overhauled.
The truth however is much worse, factoring in all liabilities including state and public sector pensions, the real national debt is closer to £4.8 trillion, some £78,000 for every person in the UK."
Our National Debt Problem
UK National Debt Over Recent Years
During 2007, the Labour government borrowed £37.7bn, of which £28.3bn was invested in big projects (the balance of £9.4bn represents the current budget deficit). However during the last government during 2013, the Conservative-led coalition borrowed £91.5bn, with just £23.7bn invested.
So when you hear George Osborne talk about fixing the hole in the roof or reducing the deficit / national debt, take it with a big pinch of salt.
Instead of recouping and saving billions by doing just some of the following ideas they are mostly going to attack the poorest in society, both here and abroad.
It really pisses me off when I hear MP's call our rotating Trident submarines at sea an "independent" nuclear deterrent. This is because they all rely on US GPS satellite systems. Unless we put our own GPS system up into space we would always have to ask the permission of our US allies to fire any nuclear missiles anyway. Therefore it makes the whole system redundant.
What if we had to go to war with the USA? Why not save the £34bn and spend it on the NHS instead. Nukes are not going to help in the war against terror and when China and the USA finally duke it out our piddly number of missiles is going to be inconsequential when it comes down to it.
Satellites will be one of the first victims of any war between the US and China. Falling from the skies like rain drops in any major conflict as China and the USA race to become the superior technological and information power house before any real bullets or nukes are fired.
As China showed the world in 2007 when it downed one of it's own Satellites with weapons from earth, it is willing and able to take the modern battlefield that one step further and into space by making the US armies massive reliance on information and technology redundant.
We seem to blindly follow US policy as if it's our own. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the UK £20bn by 2010 and the final cost when you add in extras such as the cost to society due to the fact that a large proportion of homeless people, those with mental health problems and prisoners are ex service men will increase that by the end of 2015.
Add to that the £1.75bn cost of David Cameron's war in Libya and the cost we are now dealing with due to the failed states we have created across North Africa, people smuggling into Europe, and increased security checks on immigrants due to fears ISIS is using people trafficking to implant sleeper cells in the country and the cost of recent wars reaches £12bn. This does not even include secret wars such as our involvement training fighters in Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.
During 2010-11, the HMRC estimated that companies were avoiding tax worth £4.1bn however some campaigners such as Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, think that the real figure could be £12bn or more.
This is not even including the amounts of money "legally" avoided by our huge tax code that gives corporations such as Vodafone the means to avoid £6bn in tax during 2010, an act which spawned the anti-austerity protest group UK Uncut.
Added together legal and illegal tax avoidance could easily be in the £20bn+ figure per fiscal year.
These are just 3 things that could be done to prevent more austerity whilst increasing spending, generating growth by creating jobs and not wasting money on pointless exercises in hubris by going to war to destroy a country only to spend more money trying to re-construct it and deal with the aftermath of failed states such as Libya and the recent people smuggling epidemic.
Has David Cameron even admitted that the hundreds of people dying in the Mediterranean are related to the failed states of Libya and it's neighbours which we helped create. From Tony Blairs 2004 kiss with Gaddafi in the desert to blockades to prevent immigrants reaching Europe in two easy steps.
Tony Blair makes up with Col Gaddafi in 2004
A cramped boat full of desperate people trying to flee the failed state caused by David Cameron and the Axis of Wars destruction
Will the Tory government do any of these 3 easy ways to save dozens of billions of pounds?
The answer is obviously no.
The divide between the rich and poor will get wider.
The people who keep the lights on in London won't even be able to afford to live in the city they work in due to the average house costing £350,000. Even in certain rich areas of London like Kensington, up to 70% of houses are classified as "Second Homes". Even the local paper shops for the rich people of Chelsea are shutting down due to the influx of rich Chinese and Russians buying up our capital city.
Instead the Tories will attack immigrants, benefit claimants, people who cannot get good jobs and rely on job seekers allowance and more diversionary tactics as they continue Maggie Thatcher's dream of a total privatised country.
We only have 5 more years until we get another chance to vote for a party to represent us. The problem is there doesn't seem to be a party on the horizon I can see myself putting a cross against anytime soon.
Labour is Tory Lite, and with the resignation of Ed Milliband, a person many could never imagine seeing as PM, much in the same way I can never imagine Boris Johnson as PM, let alone Mayor of London, we have no real party that represents the people anymore.
The Greens did well to get 1 million votes but with our current system of voting, one MP per million votes in England is not going to get us far and they still have an environmental edge that puts many off them despite the fact that if you read their manifesto there would be many aspects to it that you could find yourself agreeing with.
Maybe it is just the fact that they are led by a woman and their only MP, Caroline Lucas from Brighton is a woman who puts many working class men off from voting for them.
Personally this election, I did as I said I would and spoilt my ballot paper. This was because there was no-one on it that represented my views. I live in an area where Tories have always ruled and there is no chance of Labour or Lib Dems getting in instead. In one election in my ward Labour and the Lib Dems didn't even try to contest the seat which allowed the racist BNP to come 2nd!
I hoped enough people would do the same so that even this amount of spoiled papers would have to be recorded along with party numbers and shown in graphs such as the one from the BBC website I put on this page.
From anecdotal evidence from people I spoke to at various events and groups I know quite a few people also spoilt their papers.
I would still love to know how many people did write "None of the above" or spoilt their ballot in some way or another.
If you took the effort and time out of your day to go and vote there should be a "None of the above" option by default to measure peoples dissatisfaction with local politicians or political parties. However because there isn't we should create our own.
Hopefully by the time of the next election a party which doesn't represent the Axis of War, Austerity, Tax cuts for the rich and attacks on the poor will emerge, a bit like how the Unions created Labour. The only exception is that we don't want to see our new party being taken away from us slowly and infiltrated by MI5 to ensure when it becomes electable it's going to be "establishment ready"like MI5 asset Tony Blairs successful attempt to turn Labour from a real Left wing socialist party to Tories with northern accents.
We have plenty of protest groups about but no political consensus or a political body that we can use as an umbrella for them to rest under.
Students, the young unemployed, the people who cannot afford to live anywhere due to the lack of cheap housing, the anti-war brigade, the pro privacy, anti GCHQ/NSA Pirate groups. UK Uncut, Occupy, anti-austerity groups, religious organisations and charities that manage food banks and support the poor. These are just a few of the protest groups around at the moment.
Groups helping wounded soldiers and soldiers disillusioned with the wars they have been forced to fight. People working 50 hour weeks on minimum wage or not being able to take loans out at decent interest rates due to interest rate apartheid. These are more people who might be looking for a new political home.
Basically anybody who doesn't want to see the gap between the rich and poor get wider would be a perfect member or voter for such a Peoples Party.
In the meantime let's just hope we still have a public NHS, good public schoolmma decent benefit system and proper jobs with decent pay in 5 years time rather than another tripling of the National Debt and more lies about reducing our debt that the current Chancellor likes to spiel.
Facebook Group want to make Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead number one in tribute to Maggie Thatchers death
By Dark Politricks
At the news of the death of Margaret Thatcher my country was instantly split between those who had remembered life under her during the 80's and those who probably went "who?". However even the second group of people took the chance to party and riot like good little Englanders all around the country.
For those of us old enough to remember her and her governments time in office it was a choice between respectful mourning of a great Prime Minister, whether or not you agreed with her policies, or a chance to celebrate the death of someone who had brought great misery to large parts of the country.
For those people living outside the South East of England during the 80's it was a time in which skilled workers lost their jobs and the only replacements were service based such as IT, Sales, Marketing and other forms of employment that someone without a degree could move to unless they wanted to serve burgers in McDonalads or say "Hello" and "Goodbye" at the local B&Q.
The rest of Europe used to call the UKthe "sick man of Europe" during the end of the 70's and it was a time of 3 day working weeks, power cuts, IMF bailouts and rubbish piled sky high and left in the street for rats to fester in due to regular militant union action.
Maggie Thatcher came into power in 1979 determined to smash the power of the unions and she did so using new laws and the strikes led by Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers during their famous strike of 1984 to 1985.
Scargill whose wife on news of Thatchers death called her "evil", claimed that the government had a long-term strategy to destroy the mining industry by closing unprofitable pits, and that it listed pits it wanted to close each year. Although the Government denied this at the time it didn't stop the massive strike action that led to famous battles such as those at Hatfield and Hunterston between miners and soldiers dressed up as policemen where blood was shed on both sides.
Although Arthur Scargil was a communist sympathiser and had links to the Soviet Union at the time; quoted as saying that "the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin explained the real world". He was demonised by the Tory press and ultimately failed in his attempt to stop Thatcher shutting down the mines.
This led to the wastelands of the North that weren't put right until very recently and whole towns were put on the dole. The cost to the taxpayer that came from the huge unemployment in these towns with the social ills related to it far outweighed any subsidy that would have been needed to keep the mines open and proud men in work, paying tax and supporting their families through hard work.
Although the Miners strikes were held during a time in which there was a real choice in UK politics, between those people who wanted real left or right wing policies, and had their parties to vote for that upheld those views.
With Labour on the left and the Conservatives on the right. The era of Maggie Thatcher led to the rise of the neo-Thatcherite, Tony Blair, who once elected as leader of the Labour Party took it to the centre ground and abolished a major part of it's core belief i.e clause 4.
Clause 4 of Labour's constitution committed the party to nationalisation (or re-nationalisation) of the key industries and utilities.
As Thatcher was privatising everything she could, even at rock bottom prices. There was still hope for those people who believed state built industries such as the railway should be owned and run by the state for the benefit of the people NOT private shareholders.
We can all see what a mess the railways have become with ever increasing price rises due to the lack of any "real" competition. Can someone tell me how can two competing train companies run trains on the same line at the same time? If not then how would privatising the industry have any hope of bringing fares down due to competition between competing companies?
"Well, Margaret Thatcher is perhaps the politician I have the greatest admiration for. I am reading her memoirs at the moment."
Not exactly the thing someone who is supposed to be your opponent across the political sphere would say.
Especially about the one person who probably did the most to change UK politics in the last 30 years and remove all "socialist" tendencies from your own party - a party that was supposed to be socialist and pro-trade union in nature when it was founded!
Then again there are rumours from ex MI5 agents, including the well known whistle-blower David Shayler, that Tony Blair himself was an MI5 informantwho was recruited at University to spy on the very left wing radicals he pretended to be part of.
If true was it any surprise that his rise to the top of the Labour party was so quick and that once he became leader he quickly removed any semblance of socialism from it?
These were the same industries that Thatcher was busy privatising and whilst her policies put many people out of work it also modernised many UK industries and gave the UK an advantage over it's European allies, many of which still have nationalised industries to this day. However although many people remember her as being euro-sceptic it was her government that signed the Maastricht Treaty and pushed the UK further into the hold of the European Union that controls much of our law and life to this day.
Tony Blair's reformation of Labour into "New Labour" led the party to multiple electoral victories but it also ended any real choice in UK politics as all major parties are now based in the centre ground fighting over small changes to very similar policies.
The only real choice comes from voting for smaller parties like UKIP, the Green Party, Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party or any other smaller parties which take polarising views on how the economy should work and society should be run.
Views from total liberalisation, freedom, total state control and even communism. Political Parties like this are too small to gain national traction and they create a massive disenfranchisement of the UK voting populace, many of whom show their frustration at the big 3 by refusing to vote at all.
However, whether you loved her or hated her Maggie Thatcher was one of the most dominant personalities in UK politics over the last few decades and her death has been marked by sadness as well as parties.
For example, on news that Thatcher had died multiple parties broke out all across the UK from Scotland to Brighton people took a chance to celebrate and sing the song "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!"
One officer was taken to hospital and five others were injured in clashes in Bristol after a street party turned violent. A man was arrested after revellers refused to leave the street party, and threw cans and bottles at police, according to Avon and Somerset police. A police vehicle was damaged and an officer remains in hospital. His injuries are not thought to be serious.
Police said the group "refused requests to peacefully disperse", leading to the use of shields and batons by officers. A spokeswoman said police received a number of calls from residents about the party.
She said party-goers were "throwing stuff around and starting fires" before police arrived.
People celebrate in Brixton. Photograph: George Henton/Barcroft Media
In Brixton, south London, people gathered from around 5.30pm in Windrush Square and by nightfall had attracted about 200 protesters after a party was announced on Facebook. The Ritzy cinema was festooned in banners, with the now showing sign rearranged to spell out "Margaret Thatcherdead". One banner read: "Rejoice, Thatcher is dead." Others chanted: "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, dead, dead, dead."
Revellers spray a bottle of champagne at George Square in Glasgow. Photograph: David Moir/Reuters
In Leeds a group gathered to hand out "Thatcher's dead cake", singing and cheering at one of several street parties. In this footage from YouTube.com a man is seen chanting 'If you all hate Thatcher clap your hands' into a megaphone.
While in Liverpool, where many reviled Thatcher for her role in the closure of the city's docks and her perceived role and views on the Hillsborough disaster, there was a gathering lit by red flares on the steps of Lime street station. Police said they had not been called to any disturbances in the city related to the former prime minister's death.
Around 300 people gathered in Glasgow's George Square which experienced highly charged poll tax protests in 1989, after the introduction of one of Thatcher's most divisive measures. Revellers wore party hats, and popped a bottle of champagne while streamers were thrown into the sky.
Groups such as the Communist party, the Socialist party, the Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation and the International Socialist Group were joined by members of the public. Martin Chomsky, the lead singer of Chomsky Allstars, performed his song So Long Margaret Thatcher in George Square.
"There are mixed emotions. I was never brought up to celebrate anyone's death but the pain she brought to Latin America, Europe and around the world should be remembered," he said.
"I would rather that Thatcherism was dead because she is mostly to blame for what is going on today. She is responsible, but not solely, for the massive gap between the rich and the poor."
Anti-Thatcher protesters gathered at Trafalgar Square in London. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP
In Derry and Belfast, there were republican celebrations. In one incident in Derry a petrol bomb was thrown at a passing police patrol near Free Derry Corner during a street party. In the Falls Road area of west Belfast, car horns were sounded and champagne bottles cracked open as hundreds gathered to wave flags and chant.
In Trafalgar Square, central London, champagne bottles were passed around as people celebrated, while a Facebook group is calling for another celebration in Trafalgar Square on Saturday from 6pm.
