ALB
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The Surrey Advertiser have replied saying they are going to publish in this week’s edition (out on Friday) the letter correcting their mistake that we stood for Lexit and explaining our real position on Leave or Remain. I am sure they will but I check on Friday.
The result for Milton Keynes is now up on the council website. It’s 104 out of 61,425 (0.17%), compared with 182 out of 65,481 (0.28%) las time. Another indication that our vote dropped less in Leave than in Remain areas (Milton Keynes voted Leave in almost exactly the same proportion as nationally.)
I don’t mind going to this one in a couple of weeks to distribute any leftover leaflets. It’s organised by the Marxist Humanists who have gone completely off the rails over “Trumpism” (including, sadly, Andrew Kliman):
Donald Trump–An Extraordinary Danger to the World. What We Can Do
Birkbeck College, Room B18
Mallet Street, London WC1E 7HX
7:00 pm Tuesday, 18 June, 2019Yes it is odd as the Surrey Advertiser is not the rag that most local papers have become. It is still in broadsheet format and has 3 to 4 pages of letters. In fact I have had a couple published in recent years.
I don’t know why they have ignored my email corrections (sent to the letters page). Maybe they didn’t get through or something. This time I have written so I am sure there’ll be a response, hopefully positive.
Despite a reminder the Surrey Advertiser has refused to publish this correction to their mistake in saying that we stood for “Lexit” as a “pro-worker EU exit”:
“I am afraid your description of our policy in your piece on the European elections last week was mistaken. We were not advocating so-called “Lexit” (a leftwing Brexit). We are not a petty British nationalist party. We were for neither Leave nor Remain as, in both cases, capitalism and so the problems it causes would continue. It exists in the EU and would in a Brexit Britain. What we were proposing as the alternative to both Leave and Remain was replacing the capitalist system of ownership by the few and production for profit by common ownership, democratic control and production directly to meet people’s needs, not just in Europe but throughout the world.”
Their formal complaints procedure is being invoked with a view to obliging them to publish a correction.
This response from Oxford to our leaflet distributed there by Royal Mail is evidence for that interpretation:
Hello, I’m just writing to wish you success in this election, and to admit that sadly, as much as I wanted to vote for you, the voting system forced me to choose a party (Greens) with similarly progressive views, but hopefully a better chance of gaining a seat.
If a sensible and fair system such as STV was in place, you would certainly be my top ranked party, and I imagine many more would choose you as well.I believe the top priority for this country (and indeed the world) is to implement fair voting systems, so that people will be free to vote for parties such as yours without the fear of their vote being ineffective, i.e. not represented in the final outcome.I agree 100% that capitalism has failed, and global socialism is what we need to strive for. Once again I wish you all the best.Here’s a comment from Philip Collins, one of Blair’s speech writers, in today’s Times on how he perceives Corbyn’s position on Europe:
He thinks Europe doesn’t matter much. In fact, it is a token of the new political divide. He thinks he is being vague on a second-order issue; he still thinks class is the primary point.
If Corbyn (or his speech writers) really thinks this, then he’s right. From a class point of view, it doesn’t matter much whether Britain is in the EU or not; it is a second order issue. The only difference between Corbyn and us would be that while he thinks reformism is the way forward we think socialism is.
However, if Collins is right and the perceived divide is now “cultural” between “lifestyle liberals” and those who favour “traditional values” then that would explain not only why Labour did badly in the Euroelections but also why we did worse than last time too.
It’s a hanging offence in the Labour Party too as the case of Alistair Campbell shows, though it seems he might be reprieved on appeal. But there’s this from Wednesday’s London Evening Standard:
A Labour Party spokesman said: “To be absolutely clear, the way Labour Party members vote is a private matter. But publicly declaring or encouraging support for another candidate or party is against the rules and is incompatible with party membership.”
How could it be otherwise, even in our party, since how could you know how someone voted unless they said how they did?
If anybody wants to go the leaflets can be ordered or collected from Head Office. Not going myself as I don’t fancy being kettled. Both sides will be out for a fight. The police after having to be gentle with the Extinction people and the Black Blob because they are like that.
Robbo, this factsheet from the US National Cancer Institute should allay your residual worries about catching leukemia from living near an electricity pylon or using your mobile or computer or microwave or watching TV:
It also mentions the meta study you are looking for.
What all this means is that we can accept 5G as a technology that can be used in socialism, another technology advance which (like electricity distribution has done), makes a socialist world of abundance even more practicable.
Yes, it seems to be more of a “stablecoin” than the original bitcoin idea as a currency that had nothing to do with the state. Because its price fluctuated so much bitcoin was never really going to be used as an ordinary means of paying for goods and became more a speculative “crypto asset” than a “cryptocurrency” (crypto referring to the blockchain technology it was based on). To work as a means of payment, crypto-cash needs to be stable and tying it to state-issued money (whether a single one such as the dollar or a basket of them as Facebook seems to be proposing) is ta way of doing this. As far as the US-style libertarians are concerned, this — tying a so-called cryptocurrency to state-issued money — must seem a betrayal of their original project. Actually, it represents the failure of their attempt to by-pass the state and its money. What was the point of that anyway?
Robbo, it didn’t take me long to find on the internet two fake-news-busting sites exposing that story about those birds dying in the Netherlands: from a 5G test:
https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/5g-radiation-causes-bird-death-in-netherlands-fake-news
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/5g-cellular-test-birds/
As to the science of the effects, a comrade who’s forgotten his password to here has drawn attention to this:
and, on the geopo9litical aspect mentioned by Marcos, to this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/science/5g-phone-safety-health-russia.html
OK, Imposs, here’s the numbers:
Hastings: 77 out of 24,473
Folkestone & Hythe: 75 out of 32,417
Basingstoke: 155 out of 48,566
Dover: 74 out of 33,523
Reading: 83 out of 40,428
Runnymede: 39 out of 21,062
Southampton: 103 out of 53,847
Oxford: 83 out of 45,141
South Bucks: 15 out of 20, 885
Talking of Oxford, I know of at least one person who voted for us last time and for Labour this time and of two who voted for us both times but in between voted Leave. Make what you will of all that.
Last time in 2014 it was 221 votes (0.56%). This time it’s 83 (0.18%). A huge drop due, in my view, to many of those who voted for us last time wanting to vote Remain or at least against Brexit this time, either Green or even Liberal. Another factor might be that 2014 was pre-Corbyn and some might have voted Labour.
The figures for most of the counting areas (local councils) are now available. They confirm that, although our vote fell nearly everywhere, it fell more in Remain strongholds. The top 5 in percentage terms are: Hastings (0.31), Folkestone & Hythe (0.23), Basingstoke (0.23), Dover (0.22) and Brighton and Reading (both 0.20). Oxford, the capital of Remainia (it voted 67% for the Remain parties), which last time was No 1, is way down at equal tenth with Canterbury and Runnymede.
Hastings and Basingstoke (one of the few places where the number of our votes went up) both voted Leave. Folkestone (where we have put in a lot of work in local elections) and Dover both benefitted from free postal distribution, which suggests that this does increase the numbers voting for us. I haven’t found the figures for Milton Keynes (which voted Leave) or Maidstone (where there was free postal distribution) which might confirm these conclusions.
For the record, the worst place is no longer Surrey Heath (where our vote actually increased from 20 to 29) but South Bucks (where our vote fell from 22 to 15). Its centre is the town of Beaconsfield. Perhaps not surprising as Disraeli when he was granted a peerage chose to be called Lord Beaconsfield.
