It seems there’s a new poem on the London Underground, that chimes well with the zeitgeist in the UK.
It’s called Downing Street December, it’s by one Mark Grainger, and for those who can’t read the words in the image, it goes like this:
“If I were posh, and blond, and hard of heart,
“I’d host a Christmas do at Downing Street,
“While making normal families stay apart.
“You wouldn’t see me there; I’d be discreet,
“Chugging champagne and snogging – cautiously,
“To give myself the best chance to deny
“That there’s one rule for them and one for me.
“Outside I’d let the bodies pile high,
“And when drilling the denial with my staff.
“They’d rehearse the bald-faced lie – and laugh.”
That’s pretty much what has happened, isn’t it?
What a shame Boris Johnson won’t see it – unless he reads the social media.
If he does, he’d probably love it – he’s that much of an egotist.
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Sadiq Khan: the train is probably empty because no RMT driver would want to get on one with him in it.
Wasn’t this a desperately disappointing development from Sadiq Khan, just when Tube drivers need support from the London Mayor who belongs to the Party of the Workers?
Tube drivers are striking because Transport for London has ripped up existing agreements and working arrangements for the Night Tube, demanding extra night and weekend working.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch explains: “This strike is about the ripping apart of popular and family friendly agreements that helped make the original Night Tube such a success. Instead the company want to cut costs and lump all drivers into a pool where they can be kicked from pillar to post at the behest of the management.
“We have made every effort in ACAS and direct talks since the off to resolve this dispute but it is clear that LU bosses are driven solely by the bottom line and have no interest whatsoever in the well being of their staff or the service to passengers.
“This strike action, and its serious consequences in the run up to Christmas, was avoidable if the Tube management hadn’t axed dedicated Night Tube staff and perfectly workable arrangements in order to cut staffing numbers and costs.
“We warned months ago that slashing two hundred Night Tube Train Driver positions would create a staffing nightmare and LU need to start facing up to that reality and soon. The union remains available for further talks even at this late stage.“
Contrast that with what Sadiq Khan, Labour’s London Mayor, has said about it, and you’ll understand why Unite’s Sharon Graham has tweeted what she did:
This comment is precisely why workers are turning away from @UKlabour when a Labour mayor attacks workers. It's about time the @MayorofLondon did the right thing and stood up for workers not just at election time but when it matters. https://t.co/MVHoo0PFwa
The Night Tube has an important part to play in our capital’s recovery and helps to improve safety for everyone, especially women and girls making their way home at night.
The letter to Khan states: “Our Lead Organiser for TfL wrote an email to London Underground senior managers… which ended with the words “We are happy to attend ACAS to resolve the dispute. And are available to do so.” We never received a reply to this email.
“Our reps and members have seen the email in which RMT offers to meet at ACAS and are justifiably furious at the complete misrepresentation of our position in the public domain. It is having an incendiary effect. It’s hard for us to understand why you’ve done this and all I can think is that you have been fed an inaccurate line by hawks within TfL.”
The explanation kindly suggested by Mr Lynch in the letter, even if true, wouldn’t let Khan off the hook because he should have checked the facts with the RMT Union.
It’s a terrible position for a Labour politician, in an elected position of authority, to choose. Here’s the better choice:
If you're a representative of the so-called workers' party and think the Night Tube is a good idea, here's an idea:
Instead of attacking and smearing tube drivers and their trade union over the strike, pay them much higher wages for night work, so they're incentivised to do it.
Under Starmer's dismal leadership Labour politicians, including the man himself, keep forgetting that they're supposed to be the party of the workers, not some kind of capitalism-peddling, worker-battering, corporate-approved Tory tribute act.
If Jeremy Corbyn stands as an independent at the next General Election, I don't think many people outside of the Parliamentary Labour Party will be campaigning for the official Labour candidate?
I hereby pledge that I will not vote for Starmer's Labour party and will do all I can to encourage my family and friends not to either. To reward traitors for their actions would be a terrible lesson for the younger generations. They want a war with the left-they have got it!
— Socialist Party | Liverpool Branch (@SocPtyLiverpool) November 26, 2021
There are lots of good points in those comments. Probably the most pertinent are those stating that people who want a better country – for everyone rather than just the very rich – don’t owe Labour anything now that it clearly does not have the principles on which it was founded.
Nobody is obliged to vote for Labour. It is Starmer’s – and Khan’s – responsibility to show, by example, that they are worthy of our support.
Starmer’s record since April 2020 – and Khan’s shocking performance over the Night Tube – tell us they aren’t even interested in it.
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Theresa May will be delighted that her anti-foreigner rhetoric is producing such violence against people from other countries who are here in the UK – right?
For the rest of us, this intolerance towards our fellow human beings is nothing but abhorrent.
Comic actor David Schneider makes this clear:
I want my (tolerant, open, forward-looking, compassionate) country back. https://t.co/LfIP2QWtHK
We’re appealing for information after a vicious and racially-motivated assault on the Central Line.
At around 3.45am on Saturday (7 April), the victim – a 24-year-old woman – was talking to some friends in Spanish.
Two nearby women heard her and started shouting at her, saying she should be talking English when in England.
They then grabbed her hair and pulled her around by her hair. This resulted in injuries to her scalp and cuts to her face.
The women were both black and had braided hair. They were believed to be in their late twenties and one was wearing a brown jacket, while the other was wearing a black jacket.
The train was travelling from Liverpool Street to Stratford.
Officers are currently making a number of enquiries, including looking at CCTV from the stations and would like to speak to any witnesses from the night. Were you in the carriage and did you see what happened? Likewise, do you recognise anyone matching the above description?
Please contact BTP by calling 0800 40 50 40 or texting 61016 with reference 91 of 7 April.
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Police investigations are ongoing at a property in Sunbury-on-Thames.
Now two people have been arrested in connection with the failed bomb attack at Parsons Green tube station – but This Writer is willing to bet that still isn’t enough to convince some of you that it was real.
The Vox Political Facebook feed is full of comments straight out of the tinfoil hat:
“This looks like a phones gone pop or laptop’s gone pop. English molehill mountain… No bomb damage just a burning bucket.”
That would be because the bomb didn’t explode; only the detonator. That’s why it only caused a fireball which swept through the train carriage and singed 30 people (some quite badly), rather than a conflagration that could have killed them all, along with many more.
“No scorch marks then? Handbag must be very strong to survive a blast that injured so many.”
This comment refers to the following image:
[Image: @RRigs].
Of course the side of the handbag that would have taken any damage is facing away from the camera. Also, a fireball would have gone upwards and travelled along the carriage’s ceiling, not outwards. Finally, we have no idea when the handbag was put there; the image was clearly taken after the detonator had been triggered but beyond that we have no idea of the context.
“Gonna get a Lidl’s bag they are indestructible.”
This refers to the fat that the device appeared to be in a plastic bag from the Lidl supermarket chain. Look at the image, though – it clearly wasn’t indestructible.
“If this device sent a fireball down the length of the carriage I don’t understand why there are no signs of any scorch marks in the immediate vicinity, and the white plastic container is in pristine condition.”
Because the flames went upwards, not outwards, as stated previously.
Here’s an image typical of the kind of ‘false flag’ meme going around. They claim that we’re being misled but This Writer’s belief is that they have been created to mislead:
In response, I wrote: “No, it’s the aftermath of a FAILED bomb. It didn’t go off, remember? The fireball was from the detonator. If the bomb had gone off, there would have been a LOT more damage and your sarcastic little meme would be in extremely poor taste.
Seriously, have a think about what has actually happened before posting nonsense like this.
In response to the concluding question: No; it looks like the aftermath of a FAILED bomb.”
Another commenter pointed out: “Flammable gas tends not to burn a lot of things if its source it cut off before it can cause anything else to combust. That’s why it’s so widely used as a ‘safe’ flame source in film and TV production.”
The nonsense goes on and on.
One commenter compared a victim being walked away from the site with a bandage around her head with someone dubbed a “crisis” actress – but the resemblance was only superficial. It was not the same person.
But the boneheads were out in force. Here’s another one: “It doesn’t matter if they are crisis actors or not. If we don’t know by now that the security services are complicit in these false flags then we really need to knock our own heads – preferably with something hard!”
Of course we don’t know anything of the sort and there is no evidence to suggest that our own security services took part in an attack on innocent UK citizens, which would be a contradictin of their own purpose.
What do the people who were injured have to say?
Here’s some sense from another commenter: “I think the facts must come from the people who were there. There WERE some serious burns, one man lost hair from the top of his head and his scalp was burned, on the initial interviews there were people with bandages on their heads and hands and burned clothing. The flames travelled down the carriage at roof level according to what I heard, and a lot of people will have ducked down which would be the natural response and would have been shielded by others less lucky.
“My OPINION – and that of others I have discussed it with, is that the explosion was actually much less serious than it was intended to be, and fortunately for the victims, something went wrong with it resulting in only a small explosion when a much larger one was planned.”
This opinion is shared by another commenter who happens to be friend of This Writer and a former member of the armed forces: “The influencing factor in most IEDs is not the explosive used but the containment of the explosive to build pressure while it burns up. Contain the explosive pressure for just long enough and you have a powerful bomb. Contain it for too long and it doesn’t explode at all, don’t control it for long enough and you get the equivalent of a magnesium flashpot – a short but intense localised burst of heat and light that’s capable of causing 1st/2nd degree burns and loss of hair on people standing close to it but not enough to cause damage to sturdier materials like hard plastics. This is what appears to have happened here and if so, any shrapnel included in the bomb would likely not have been expelled.”
The overwhelming chorus from the ‘false flag’ brigade is that the attempted bomb was a bid by the minority Conservative government to attack what’s left of our civil liberties.
But there’s one big problem with that: We already know that the UK’s ability to detect planned terror attacks has been whittled away by Theresa May and the minority Conservative government. There should be no support for any attempt to remove our remaining civil liberties because it would be the wrong response by this government to a situation for which this government is responsible.
In short: It is irrational to support oppressive measures proposed by a government to stop an emergency that it has created.
The ‘false flag’ brigade should think about that before parading their ignorance across the Internet.
There is another aspect to this story that has been seized and perverted by the ‘false flag’ people – the claim that the first man to be arrested had formerly been fostered by a couple who had looked after hundreds of children, including refugees. The claim is that MI5 had radicalised this 18-year-old in some way.
This Writer is keen to know how that is supposed to work. It seems more likely that, as a refugee, this person was recruited after leaving the care of Roger and Penelope Jones, but I’ll stand corrected if I have to. I suspect I’ll be waiting for confirmation of the story for a very long time.
A second man has been arrested in connection with Friday’s attack on a London Tube train, police said.
The 21-year-old man was arrested in Hounslow, west London, on Saturday night on suspicion of a terror offence and is in custody in south London.
An 18-year-old man is also being held on suspicion of a terror offence over the Parsons Green explosion.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd told the BBC that the second arrest suggests the attacker was not “a lone wolf”.
Police are searching a residential address in Stanwell, Surrey, in connection with the 21-year-old man’s arrest.
Police are continuing to search a house in Sunbury-on-Thames in Surrey.
It is thought the 18-year old, who was arrested in the port of Dover on Saturday morning, lives there.
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An image from a Twitter user of an alleged device on the train at Parsons Green tube [Image: @RRigs].
“Attack my arse. Mobile battery went pop.”
“No scorch marks then? Handbag must be very strong to survive a blast that injured so many.”
“Lidl bags are bomb proof wow who knew?”
“That “bomb” doesn’t seem real. Where is the burn damage to the surroundings. How come journalists ‘just happened’ to be there? This doesn’t feel right.”
“Smokescreen.
“I think this bomb was nothing more than a firework that went off a little more vigorously than intended.”
The above are just some of the responses to This Site’s article on the alleged terror attack at Parsons Green tube station.
Fortunately, the police are taking the matter a little more seriously than the clowns mentioned above and have arrested an 18-year-old man in the port area of Dover this morning (September 16).
You can draw your own conclusions about why he was found there.
Here’s part of a statement issued by the Metropolitan Police:
“The 18-year-old man was arrested by Kent Police in the port area of Dover this morning, Saturday, 16 September, under section 41 of the Terrorism Act.
“The man remains in custody at a local police station. He will be transferred to a south London police station in due course.
“Detectives from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command are continuing to urge anyone with information about the terrorist attack to contact police.
“Thirty people are known to have been injured during the attack in which an improvised explosive device was detonated on a tube train at Parsons Green Underground Station at around 08:20hrs on Friday, 15 September.
“So far, detectives have spoken to 45 witnesses and continue to receive information from the public to the confidential anti-terrorist hotline.
“The public has sent 77 images and videos to investigators via the UK Police Image Appeal website. Anyone with footage or images from the incident is urged to upload them at www.ukpoliceimageappeal.co.uk where they will be looked at by investigators.
“Anyone with information is urged to call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321 or, in an emergency, always call 999.”
This Writer would urge anybody with information, who has not yet come forward, to do so via the avenues listed in the statement. Clowns need not bother.
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An image from a Twitter user of an alleged device on the train at Parsons Green tube [Image: @RRigs].
The question has to be asked: Would a terrorist have been able to plant an improvised explosive device (IED) on the London Underground if Theresa May had not cut the police’s ability to detect and prevent such attacks?
It seems highly unlikely that 22 people would now be receiving treatment for flash burns after the device partially exploded at Parsons Green station, if the ability of the police to gather intelligence about planned attacks had not been seriously hindered by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
But I wanted to highlight the words of Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute – an expert on the subject. Speaking in June, after the London Bridge terror attack, he warned that police were less able to detect terrorism than they had been in the past:
Expert Michael Clarke says terror attacks could have been prevented – intelligence services missed 'flashing lights' pic.twitter.com/8cH2X9PZiC
— Grassroots Voices (@GrassrootsJC4PM) June 5, 2017
It seems clear that nothing has been done to address these failings.
This is proof that Theresa May is a threat to our national security. But she is still sitting in Downing Street, pretending to be a prime minister. WHY?
An explosion that injured a number of people at Parsons Green underground station in west London was a terrorist incident, the Met police have said.
Commuters on a tube train reported hearing a bang and seeing a fireball flying down the carriage during Friday morning rush-hour. Pictures and video, purporting to be from the train carriage, were posted of flames coming out of a carrier bag containing a white bucket.
Police later confirmed the blast came from an improvised explosive device.
NHS England said 22 people were receiving treatment at three hospitals as well as an urgent care centre in Parsons Green.
None was thought to be in a serious or life-threatening condition.
The incident is the fourth terrorist attack in the UK this year, following incidents at Westminster, London Bridge, Manchester and Finsbury Park in north London. The UK terrorism threat level remains at severe, meaning an attack is highly likely.
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The London Underground is in a mess due to cut by the Conservative Government and poor management by Boris Johnson Conservative administration.
Sadiq Khan, the current (Labour, he says) Mayor of London appeared on Radio 4, to oppose the strike, but is arguments do not ring true.
His administration may be working to limit the damage but the service is suffering now, and changes imposed by Johnson and the Tories may be hard to reverse.
The strike was called because of ticket office closures and the loss of 800 staff members under Mr Johnson. Mr Khan could only say 200 jobs had been restored, and his comments about ticket offices were limited to saying he had accepted the findings of a review by Travel Watch. He did not say what those findings were.
Meanwhile, Tube staff are striking because the service is not safe. They say the cuts, along with “brutal” unilaterally-imposed changes to working practices that have been imposed by Transport for London (TfL) have led to “a further exodus of staff from the service”.
That is their right; anybody can walk away from a contract if the other side imposes unfair conditions.
And it doesn’t take genius to work out that they are right to do so.
The level of support for the strike among those who remain – only 10 stations are open, it has been reported – is evidence of this.
The Tube system needs restoration now – not talk about doing it tomorrow (maybe).
Claims that the strike is causing misery for a day show a lack of understanding that the aim is to prevent misery on a regular – or indeed permanent – basis.
They are the claims of the selfish, the narrow-minded, and the ignorant.
They are on strike to ensure stations do not have to close due to lack of staff and that 1m more people can travel comfortably on the tube
Some critics are even claiming that Tube workers have decent, well-paid jobs and should not, therefore, be striking.
The only reason any employee has a decent, well-paid job, is union action – including strikes. And in this case it is clear that striking remains the only way to protect pay and conditions that the Conservative Party has tried to erode.
It’s time some of the people catching a bus today also got a clue.
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The big question: Tories want nurses to ask the elderly, “Will you die so we can save some pennies on your pension and healthcare?”
For once, the Daily Mail‘s indignation is right on the button.
It reports today that district nurses are being asked to encourage elderly people to sign their lives away.
These ask if people have a preference to die at home when their time comes – and go on to suggest: Do you agree to a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) notice?
In other words, if they suffer a life-threatening health risk and doctors could bring them back, will they tell the medical professionals not to bother?
Nobody knows how long an elderly person might live after having their life saved. Some might say the Mail is simply trying to protect its readership – but this does seem to be a cynical attempt to save money – not only on health care but also on pension payments.
“The Royal College of Nursing says its members, most of whom will be meeting the patient for the first time, should not be put into the position of asking the elderly to sign their life away, particularly since they may be confused and not have a relative present to support them,” the Mail‘s comment column states.
It quotes a healthcare expert who said “the question itself is ‘callous’ and potentially disturbing, since it might leave the frail or vulnerable wondering if the visiting nurse ‘knows something they do not’, and death is imminent.
“Doubtless the NHS will say there is no malice intended, but this approach is as deeply troubling as it is insensitive. Don’t forget the Liverpool Care Pathway – under which patients judged to be dying were left without treatment, food or fluids – similarly began with supposedly humane intentions, only to be scrapped after… fears that it was being coldly misused to free hospital beds.”
Slightly less believable – on the face of it – is a plan reported in the Daily Mirrorto force children in a central London council estate to use a play area underground.
The Conservative-led council that runs the Churchill Gardens estate wants to use current play facilities at the primary school to build an elderly people’s home, the paper reported.
Land marked out to accommodate the elderly will instead be used – get this – “for luxury apartments overlooking the Thames and the multi-billion-pound Battersea power station development. Flats that no-one in the overcrowded Churchill Gardens estate will be able to afford”.
Yes – it’s social engineering. Bring in the super-rich; bury the proles (and their children). Ensure enough Conservative voters live in the area to keep the Tories in control there.
Does anybody think the council has any intention of building children’s play facilities underground? It seems a bizarre effort, considering this council’s desire to do anything rather than spend money on the poor. Also, it would open up the estate to the possibility of terrible crimes, as children who are out of sight – as Tory councillors seem to desire – would be prey to criminals.
Both stories highlight the attitude of Conservatives in power in the UK today. They don’t care about anyone but their own.
They deprive the poor to save money, and then lavish it on those who have too much already.
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