IT'S LIKE ANIMAL FARM

JAMES CAMPBELL reveals his on-line

experiences of Putting Hartlepool First, a group that says it is aiming at a new way of doing politics in Hartlepool. It's good intentions don't appear to be put into practice.

Since around Mid-March I've been occupied mainly with a Hartlepool political group called Putting Hartlepool First (PHF).

I call them a political group because they do seem to be a little confused about what they are themselves despite having been around in some form or other since 2012.

What initially attracted my attention was that they described themselves as a group of independents who're opposed to the way the town is being run but recognise that the way the party political system was used in the town restricted the ability of a true independent from being able to influence change.  They even say that they have no whip to enforce policy or a party line and members are able to vote however their conscience tells them to. I liked this train of thought because one of my core beliefs is that elected representatives acting in the interests of their party often runs contra to the interests of the people they represent.

My first contact with PHF was via their Facebook page and resulted in a series of frustrating debates where posts and questions that challenged the views of PHF were regularly deleted and on some occasions people who had done nothing more than ask a question were blocked from the site too.

The full details of this is here: http://wp.me/p2BV0e-8q

My last Facebook interaction with PHF was to post that blog on their page where it was deleted within 8 minutes and I was blocked within 10 minutes.

THE PETRIE DISH EFFECT

ANDY FLEMING details how we need to completely replace our current economic paradigm if we are to have a future on the Earth.

It’s so easy to be negative about the current global economic system. And of course there is every reason. Most readers will be aware that the economies of virtually all major developed nations including China are well, stuffed.

When it comes to a solution however, yesterday’s Labour Party European Election broadcast brought home our dilemma. In its theatre and comedy it was excellent, vividly portraying the economic abyss we have descended into as a nation. Character assassinations of Cameron and Clegg flowed freely, highlighting their promotion of the philosophies of greed, inequity, deceit, self-advancement and privilege.

There was of course no reference to Labour’s immense culpability in our economic plight. Neither was there one positive economic policy proposal of how the people’s party was going to fix things. Apart, that is, from the usual rhetoric of economically castrating the bankers, with whom until late 2008 they were so intimate.

They offered no practical policies because here’s the thing; there aren’t any. That’s because the whole current global economic paradigm based on greed, central banks, drugs, money laundering, the military industrial complex and war is quite simply not fit for the new millennium. Tinkering around at the edges with an economic system originating in the sixteenth century simply won’t work, and here’s my rational for saying this, based surprisingly not in politics but in science.

VOTE. BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT A POLITICIAN

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

More than ten years ago when I first started banging on about the not voting thing, virtually everyone thought I was bonkers.

Now, I'm in great company. Not only are millions of 'ordinary' people realising that we can't change the system unless we first smash the system, but people like Russell Brand are articulating perfectly what I've believed for ten years. Hell's teeth, even Jeremy Paxman has said he totally understands Brand's stance on not voting.

Sadly, there are people out there who just don't get it. They blabber on about voting being our democratic right and something that people fought in wars for, blah, blah, blah. Actually if they opened their eyes just a little, they'd see this "democracy" is a complete sham. Smoke and mirrors. Throwing a few crumbs to keep us plebs happy.

Well, I'm not happy. I'm absolutely seething.

Here's why.

* I don't want to live in a society where the weak, the vulnerable, the sick and the disadvantaged are picked on and picked off one by one. That is precisely what we have seen the Tories and their LibDem bitches do since they came to power. The sick. The disabled. Those with too many bedrooms. The long-term unemployed. All have been in the cross hairs of the nasty party and ace marksman Iain Duncan-Smith.

* I don't want to live in a country where young people are told they have to work in crap dead end jobs or they'll lose their few quid job seekers allowance. Or where bright young people work for three years at university to get a degree and then find they are £50,000 in debt and the only jobs available are part time supermarket positions. Or where people graft in Poundland for free to give them work experience. Imagine that: working in a shop where everything is worth a pound except you.

* I don't want to live in a country where obnoxious footballers are paid more in a week than a neuro surgeon or a heart consultant will earn in a year. We have nurses run ragged on £25,000 a year or less but Wayne Rooney and his mates are earning a million quid a month. From a moral, ethical and compassionate point of view there is simply no justification for this nonsense.

* I don't want to live in a country where corporations and wealthy individuals are allowed to find loopholes in tax laws to avoid billions in tax every year. Tax that would mean those poor bastards who are being made to suffer could actually have decent lives.

WRIGHT LACKS THE RIGHT STUFF

MP for Hartlepool, Iain Wright.

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

Hartlepool MP and Chancellor Osborne.  Two peas from the same pod.

When I stared this blogging lark, I had no idea it would be such a messy business.

I can assure you it is. I've just spent five minutes cleaning porridge off the screen of my laptop after spitting a huge mouthful over the screen. I bet there were many people in Hartlepool similarly exasperated as I was with the Hartlepool Mail Budget story today,

In a nutshell it was an attack on the budget and the Chancellor in particular. Normally I'd applaud anyone who describe George Osborne as smug and complacent. Such a description would have my 100% support.

But when the criticism comes from Hartlepool's Labour MP Iain Wright then it's two other words that come to mind. POT and KETTLE.

It's a perfect description of the lacklustre local lad who took over from Peter Mandelson in the safe Labour seat. Many times I've heard people describe Wright in such terms. Lots of them have been lifelong Labour supporters who have not only become disillusioned at the national party under the stewardship of Ed 'Mr Bean' Miliband, but are becoming visibility angry at Wright's ineptitude.

The rot began to set in with the long-running hospital saga. Wright made endless pledges to the public to the effect that Hartlepool's hospital would remain in place as long as he was MP. I'll give him his due, the hospital is still there. Unfortunately almost all of the wards are empty as services and most have the staff have been transferred to North Tees. Wright has been impotent and has sat idly by as there has been a gradual chipping away of services.

If this failure to prevent the dismantling of vital services was Wright's only red mark on his homework, the loyal Labour voters of Hartlepool might be persuaded to forgive him. In the face of public service cuts and a devious and dangerous Tory plan to privatise the NHS, there is perhaps little headway that a North East Labour MP is going to make in the commons. But at least he could have shown a bit of fight and passion. Frankly I've seen more grit and determination from Dale Winton. 

BLAIR'S BIGGEST LIE CONDEMNS A GENERATION TO SLAVERY

Tony Blair's education policies represent the biggest con trick in political history.The gullible, who went along with his deceit are now realising just how cruel this charlatan's lies actually were. Because there are few jobs for graduates or anyone else, just unemployment and mountains of tuition fee debt.

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

WHENEVER I hear Labour Party supporters discussing Tony Blair, I always think of that fantastic scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian; "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The man who Labour Party members thought of as a Messiah is now treated like a foul fart in a lift. So reviled is Blair that Labourites are pretty much trying to airbrush him from history. And no bloody wonder. The Labour imposter achieved less than zero and those who were taken in by him know it.

But it's not the Iraq war or the other heinous stuff that Blair did that I really take exception to. No, his big crime as far as I am concerned is when he mouthed those immortal three words: EDUCATION. EDUCATION. EDUCATION. The biggest con trick in political history.

Blair pressed all the right buttons and used all the right language. He wanted all kids to have access to good schools. He wanted all kids to go to university. He wanted kids from council estates to go to the top universities. He wanted working class kids to become barristers and surgeons and nuclear physicists. Everything was possible in his new Labour dream. It was all bullshit to hide the truth.

LABOUR DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUNG PEOPLE OR THE LOW PAID

Stockton North Labour MP Alex Cunningham. His constituents have complained via Twitter because while campaigning for a Living Wage, he shamelessly exploits a young office apprentice by paying them just £125 per week.

By HARRY BLACKWOOD

If the Labour Party MP Sadiq Khan is to believed (please don't, he's a politician) his party cares deeply about Britain's young people. They must do. Why else would Labour be committed to lowering the voting age to 16?

Well, how about if it was nothing more than a callous and calculated plan to get young people to THINK Labour cares in order to grab a few extra votes? Forgive my cynicism, but a lifetime of dealing with scheming, duplicitous, lying politicians has taught me to be suspicious about everything they say and do.

The reality is that the Labour Party don't give a damn about young people. If they did they'd make a manifesto pledge to do something about the insultingly low wages paid to young people. The National Minimum Wage of £3.72 an hour for 16/17 year olds is nothing more than slavery. Hell's teeth why don't they just go the whole hog and start sending kids up chimneys again?

This issue of low pay was brought into sharp focus this week when Stockton North Labour MP Alex Cunningham was taken to task on Twitter by constituents after it emerged that he was taking on an apprentice in his office and paying the young person £3.37 an hour, or the princely sum of £125 a week for a 37 hour week.

GUTLESS ED 'MR BEAN' MILIBAND MAY NOT EMBRACE LIVING WAGE

Sir George Bain, credited with devising the UK minimum wage has told the Financial Times that his system of protection for the low paid is outdated

By HARRY BLACKWOOD

WITH impeccable comedy timing, the Manchester United footballer, Wayne Rooney, signed a new contract today that will see him earn £300,000 a week. Yes you read that correctly £300,000 A WEEK for kicking a football.

Now I realise that's not funny. No, what's funny is that on the same day as an oafish footballer was putting pen to paper on a contract that will see him earn over a million quid every month, Sir George Bain - the man credited with coming up with the UK minimum wage - was telling the Financial Times that his system of protection for the poor had run its course.

You bet it's run it's course. It had run its course the day it was introduced because minimum wage was never going to lift people out of poverty. It was only ever going to keep them IN poverty. After 15 years that's EXACTLY what it's achieved.

The same poor bastards that were working all week on minimum wage In 1999 to earn enough just to scrape by are doing precisely that in 2014. Earning £6.31 an hour (the current legal minimum for adults) certainly isn't living. Hell's teeth, it's barely even surviving. That's what millions in the world's sixth richest country are doing - working their backsides off just to exist.

What Sir George failed to properly address in his FT article is how his minimum wage concept has actually failed miserably. What it's done is normalise low wages instead of acting as a benchmark to create a ripple effect and drive wages upwards.

There has been no ripple. There are 1.2 million UK workers who are paid £6.31 (or within 5p of that) and a further 1.4 million who are on within a measly 50p more. Employers think they are gushing philanthropists if they pay a few coppers above what they are legally obliged to.

In total there are five million workers in the UK who are 'low paid' by using the "official yardstick" of two thirds of the typical hourly wage. AND THERE IN A NEAT LITTLE PACKAGE IS THE PROBLEM.

WRIGHT AND THE MAIL. EXPERTS IN HYPOCRISY

Joy Yates, Editor, Hartlepool Mail

by HARRY BLACKWOOD

In a previous blog I wrote about the breathtaking hypocrisy of Hartlepool's Labour MP Iain Wright.

Wright, is happy to blather on about how the government is not doing enough to bring decent jobs to Northern towns like Hartlepool, but it's a case of do as I say, not as I do. You see Wright thinks it's perfectly acceptable to employ his wife on £27,000 a year instead of giving that job to an unemployed local person.

In the good old days of proper journalism when local newspapers would make MPs like Wright accountable for their actions, The Hartlepool Mail would have been asking him to explain his duplicity.

Not these days. No flaming chance.

It would be hard for the Hartlepool Mail to bring Wright to book because the Editor and the papers owners are just as proficient in the hypocrisy stakes as Wright.

MR WRIGHT IS MR WRONG

Hartlepool MP Ian Wright opening one of the town's food banks.

by HARRY BLACKWOOD

This smarmy character with the ill-fitting suit and a stupid grin on his face is cutting the ribbon to "officially" open Hartlepool's first food bank.

So who is he and why would he be smiling at the thought of people having to rely on food hand-outs to keep hunger at bay?

Well, the "gentlemen" in question is Iain Wright and he's the Labour MP for Hartlepool.

I have no idea why he has a moronic grin on his face considering what he's doing, but I'll hazard a guess. He's grinning at the thought that it's another photo opportunity for the sheepie in his Labour stronghold to be brainwashed by. Well, that and the fact that Mr Wright is never, ever, likely to need a food bank.

One of the reasons of course is that he has a very nice MPs salary. It gets better. Mr Wright has a second income as well. His wife Tiff is in the fortunate position to be earning more than £27,000 a year working part-time as a secretary.

DON'T VOTE. IT ONLY ENCOURAGES THEM

by HARRY BLACKWOOD

It's now more than 25 years since I voted in any sort of election and I've spent the past ten years actively campaigning to get people to follow suit.

You may have been told otherwise but voting is not actively taking part in democracy. It is actively taking part in an elaborate con trick. It's stupid and I know I can convince you that I'm right.

My politics can best be described as compassionate socialism. My leanings have always been left of centre. So, living in Hartlepool - a Labour stronghold in the North East of England - I should have been a happy bunny. Not a bit of it. I've always had a deep-seated mistrust of politicians and when, in 1991, Labour parachuted a smarmy, middle class spin doctor into constituency, I really began to think about how voting and democracy actually works.

That man was Peter Mandelson and his arrival in my home town not only changed my views of politics, democracy and voting, it changed the entire course of my life. But all that is for another day.

So, why was Mandelson handed the safe Labour seat of Hartlepool to fight in the 1992 election? Well, it certainly wasn't for his strong Northern roots or his working class background. Both were non-existent. And it wasn't because of any political achievements. It was a reward for favours done and favours expected.

When Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Stephen Byers, Alan Milburn, Mandelson and others plotted to hijack an ailing Labour Party, they weren't doing it for the good of the nation, the good of democracy or the good of the Labour Party. They were doing it for the good of themselves. Just like the Great Train Robbers divided up the spoils of their haul, so the architects of New Labour did for many years to come. Instead of getting a few mail sacks full of £20 notes, Mandy got the safe seat of Hartlepool as a launch pad to becoming a multi-millionaire Bilderberger and political power broker.

But don't think this scam is unique to New Labour. Far from it. The Tories do precisely the same; as do all political parties. It's the same grace and favour system operated by Royalty and rich landowners for generations.

But here's the rub. This is the bit where hopefully you wake up. They can only get away with it if
you go out and vote. They are desperate for your vote. They will do anything and say anything to get your vote. Without your vote they are finished. It has nothing to do with democracy or policies or principles. It's all about power and control.

Don't believe me? OK try this. At the last election the parties spent more than £30 million trying to get your vote. The Tories spent more than half the total amount. Do you honestly think they spend these vast sums of money to benefit democracy? Give your head a shake. They do it for power. Agreed?

So why do they want power? For power's sake. OK I'll give you that, they're a bunch of power mad psychopaths. So how about thinking further. Where did that £15 million that the Tories spent come from?