Disgusting, deplorable, disgraceful, disloyal indefensible, betrayal of Corbyn ( by his own Labour Party officials)

Letter to The Times:

Your political reporter, Eleni Courea (“Antisemitism ‘smear campaign’ by Corbyn allies, “Times, 13 April 2020) astonishingly manages to reverse the story of how from day one of Mr Corbyn becoming elected Labour leader in summer of 2015, a cabal of disloyal paid Labour staff - including its then General Secretary (now Lord) McNicol- did all in their elevated position within the Party to undermine their leader and his shadow cabinet team, to one of Corbyn supporters attacking their detractors.

She has interviewed some of the people who are condemned in the report by the actual vicious words they use in hundreds of deeply pernicious and mutinous, often obscene emails and WhatsApp messages.

 

Instead of relying on re-reporting from Sky News,  your political reporter could have done a very quick internet search, downloaded and read the 860 page report herself.

She would then have seen what a complete travesty of the truth her report today really is.

NHS is not "Love Powered" Prime Minister, but tax-powered

Letter to the Daily Mail:

Our Prime Minister said in his message on 12 April to the nation on leaving hospital- his life having been saved by a multinational health care team- that the NHS is “powered by love.” (Daily Mail)

It is not. It is powered by resources. Money raised by taxes.

I left hospital at the end of January after my own life-saving cancer operation. My post -operational hospital care was carried by nursing professionals from India, Jamaica, Ghana, Uganda, Thailand, Cyprus and Italy.

The ward cleaners were from Bangladesh and Laos.

After the Covid19 crisis is over, the British health and social care system needs to be long-term, sustainably financed.

This is in the gift of an eternally grateful Prime Minister.

May I suggest he find the money by cancelling the £205,000,000,000 ( £205 billion) unneeded Trident nuclear system that all can see has proved useless defence against the Coronavirus pandemic invasion.

The fugitive Covid19 virus: China protesteth too much, methinks, over murky origins

Unpublished letter to Mail on Sunday

Zeng Rong of the Embassy of the Peoples’ Republic of China protests too much in his letter you carried last week (Mail on Sunday, April 5). He may be correct that the Chinses authorities have had great achievements in combatting Covid19 since it escalated, but what remains unanswered is how did the fugitive virus originate and escape from Wuhan?

If it indeed started in the Wuhan live-wet market, then the local environmental health authorities have a huge responsibility for allowing creatures such as live bats and live pangolins (an anteater look-alike) to co-exist  close together in cages, when it is known the latter  is a carrier of bat-orgin viruses.

And it is also known that zoonoses ( animal- to-human viral contamination)  is possible from pangolins, which are illegally on sale in the giant market. It is little known that UK suppliers have shipped creatures to be sold in these live-wet markets, despite the the cruel conditions in which creatures there are kept.

But if the fugitive Covid19 virus escaped somehow from the Chinese State’s only  National Laboratory of Virology, located in Wuhan, as your  political editor  proposes it might have  in his article “Did the Virus leak from a Research Lab in Wuhan?”

The British Government has shown a complete disinterest in this possibility.

 

For example, on 10^th March a question (number HL1839) from Lord Alton of Liverpool  asked ministers what assessment they had made of the number and location of microbiology laboratories in China that handle advanced viruses; and what assessment they have made of the role any such laboratories may have had in the initial spread of the Wuhan coronavirus?”

 

It was was extraordinarily answered by Lord Bethell with: “We do not hold this information.” s

 

https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Lords/2020-02-25/HL1839/

Labour's youngest MP, Nadia Whittome ,was similarly given a brush-off by  junior health minister, Jo Churchill , on 26 March in a written answer (29268) saying "We have no plans to authorise research into the security control of viruses under investigation at the Wuhan State Institute of Virology."

 

Why is the UK Government so ignorant? In formation is readily available in the public domain.

 

For example, Nature journal reported three years ago that  a major maximum-security biolab was being developed by the Chinese Government  part of plan to build network of biosafety-level four (BSL-4 facilities) across China: the first was to be opened in Wuhan.

 

It was planned to focus on the control of emerging diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization ‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world. (“Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens,” Nature, 22 February 2017: www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487)

 

Two years later, the US Centers for Disease Control issued a press briefing note in May 2019 (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/5/18-0220_article) on the ‘Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory User Training Program, China’ prepared by seven authors from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wuhan branch).

 

The authors stressed: “According to China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, the chance that exotic pathogens could be brought into the country has dramatically increased Our new BSL-4 facility will play an integral role in preventing and controlling highly pathogenic microbes.”

 

And concluded ominously “Microbes contained in BSL-4 laboratories pose a significant risk for transmission and are frequently fatal; most have no reliable cure.”

 

What went so catastrophically wrong?

 

Bankers, Hedge Fund Managers, Nuclear WMDs, very expensive nuclear power plants verses and care & NHS workers: who are the keys our society?

Letter sent to The Guardian:

I wonder whether the nation now agrees with the Labour Party argument put at the last election four months ago, that NHS and social care workers - along with public transport workers and indeed supermarket shelf stackers- are key to our society succeeding; or the alternative put forward by the Tories that investment ‘casino’ bankers, hedge fund managers, (and other assorted business parasites, like chief executives of failing companies who pay themselves £multi-million  bonus even as their companies go under) are the real key workers?

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Letter sent to The Times:

As a long term supporter of progressive politics, I was really surprised  that you saw fit to publish the letter from a discredited has-been New Labour cheerleader politician in Lord Hutton of Furness ( “Starmer’s credible shadow cabinet,” letters,   ( 9 April 2020)

He takes a swipe at the outgoing more left wing shadow cabinet as he praises incomers. 

The new shadow  Foreign Secretary, Lisa Nandy, pledged  in an interview with veteran political broadcaster, Michael Crick, in 29 January, that were she ever in a position of power, she would authorise the launch of British Trident nuclear weapons. 

She is currently shadowing Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has been given temporary authority over such nuclear launch authority, as the Prime Minister recovers from Covid19 in hospital.

Any such action, of course, would immolate millions of innocent foreign human beings.

Lord Hutton used to represent in the House of  Commons the BAE systems company town where Trident replacement submarines are being built.

He was a string supporter of Trident when he was Defence Secretary under Tony Blair.

He is now the President of the Nuclear Industry Association, some of whose members are daily in significant breach of social- spacing rules at their construction sites, such as French state company EDF energy at the £24 billion Hinkley Point C plant near Bridgwater.

It is such reckless nuclear activities as Trident and Hinkley that are threatening to drive the nation to the brink of extinction, not the left wing element of the Labour Party!

Super-rich footballers and Premier league clubs must save the minnow football league clubs

Letter sent to the Daily Mail:

Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) chief executive, Gordon Taylor, a former Bolton Wanderers player several decades ago, (Mail,3 April) needs to be reminded when he attempts to justify continued astronomical wage payments for his members (footballers) that they are themselves non- playing right now!

 
Martin Samuel‘s attack in the Mail in Monday April 6th should not be about rich top footballers giving money to back the NHS, but to keep the small clubs alive until football can re-start to what surely will be huge crowds everywhere!

These pampered premier league super sports stars want to retain their extravagant incomes of between £100, 000 to £320,000 per WEEK, while standing by as clubs’ administrative staff, ground preparation staff and stewards etc, few of whom earn much more than £50,000 a YEAR, are having their income slashed.

 
Martin Samuel  rightly pointed out in Wednesday’s Mail in an article stressing the “nuclear option”’ that even some Championship clubs - and remember these are the bigger and richer ones in the lower tiers-  are in real danger if disappearing unless some kind of ‘Group Administration’ can be agreed soon.


Samuel is right in his call on 9 April (Mail) that the rich clubs should stop procrastinating -and pay up!

Mr Taylor’s former club, Bolton once in the top tier ( now the Premier League) of the football pyramid, are certainly going to be relegated to the fourth tier, (second division) next season. 

 

That club’s whole future is on the brink, because the lavish resources of the top tier are selfishly retained among the already super rich clubs. Many other much smaller clubs like Morecambe and Macclesfield face extinction.

 

I support Chelsea, and think our club’s  owner, the multi billionaire Roman Abramovich, should kick- start an emergency support fund for lower league teams. 

 

Chelsea after all has secured several top players - like Ethan Ampadu, now a Welsh international, whom they signed  from fourth tier club Exeter City- and money could come directly from the massive wages of  the 25-player first team squad, who would barely notice, say, £500.000 coming out of their annual wages, but it could protect the less celebrated jobs of many in the lower leagues, and save some clubs from closure  altogether.

 

Nuking Labour's atomic albatrosses

Letter submitted to The Guardian:

I agree with Sir Keir Starmer in his victory acceptance speech as new Labour leader that there should be “no return to business-as-usual” politics after the Coronavirus crisis is resolved.

The U.K. government  across the next ten years is going to have to find large sums of money to pay for the costs of protecting the economy and boosting the resilience of the NHS during the current Coronacrisis.

Two places where Sir Keir should start: the cutting taxpayer largesse that supports the unnecessary military and civil nuclear programmes, ie Trident nuclear WMD renewal at £205 billion; and new nuclear power plants at at least £25 billion each. He will need to change Labour policy to do this, at annual conference.

His biggest opponent will be Unite, the Union, led by old leftie  nuclear Neanderthal ,Len McCluskey, who likes taxpayers subsidising jobs for his members in both nuclear sectors, despite the fact they are the most expensive jobs per £ spent in the country.

Yes we need change, Sir Keir; this is where you should start. And the money saved should be directly invested in the Laour flagship policy, the Green New Deal, to decarbonise the economy.

 

 

Letter to The Times:

 

I find the appointment of Lisa Nandy as Shadow Foreign secretary by new Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, very disturbing.

During the Labour Party  leadership  campaign, in an interview on 29 January,  she told former Channel Four  political correspondent, Michael Crick ( who is now freelancing),  that if she were  to become Prime Minister, she would authorize the launch of Trident nuclear missiles. (https://twitter.com/michaellcrick/status/1222460139887824896)

Were any British leader to do so, it would immolate millions of innocent civilians abroad.

What kind of moral compass does Ms Nandy have to  give such an appalling reply?

 

 

Letter to The Sunday Times:

As a former political editor of the left-leaning New Statesman, your deputy rotor Sarah Baxter has developed a deeply jaundiced view of how the Labour Party was democratised and made much more progressive under the special leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. (“Starmer’s first task is a Cobynite clear-out, 5 April)

She advocates bringing back into the shadow cabinet failed former Blairite ministers Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn, and former shadow cabinet member, Rachel Reeves.

The former two resigned from Corbyn’s first shadow cabinet helping to wreck Corbyn’s ability to run a coherent opposition. The latter declined to join after maternity leave.

She claims “anti-semites flocked to  Corbyn’s banner.”

This is a received in-wisdom. There has been a microscopic number of Labour members who have acted  in a anti- Semitic way. There are however very many utterly unsubstantiated claims  by people like the Jewish extremist Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge.

MsBaxter calls for hundreds of thousands of Labour’s 550,000 leftist members to leave the Party because they do not share her now centrist political vision. This is a nonsensical suggestion. 

Labour will remain a broad church across the democratic left spectrum.

Sarah, get used to it under Sir Keir too!

Questioning nuclear myopia

Two as  yet unpublished letters:

 

To The Guardian:

 

 

I thought it was a brilliant April Fool to insert a set of spoof answers on nuclear power from the three Labour leadership candidates in your on-line article covering their views on 17 environmental areas (“What are Labour leadership candidates' green policies?”, The Guardian,1 April 2020;  

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/01/what-are-labour-leadership-candidates-green-policies )

 

 

How could we expect that not just one, but all three- Lisa Nandy, Rebecca Long-Bailey Keir Starmer - would say they support more new nuclear power stations after Hinkley C is completed.

It is fanciful to think RLB would have said something as silly as she “ supported new nuclear power where it is needed for the UK’s future energy security.”

Or that Lisa Nandy could ever say something as ill-founded  “ right in the middle of a climate emergency – is not the time we should rule out a role for nuclear power or any other low-emission technology, ” (even if she apparently recognised the cost and radioactive waste problems of nuclear.)

And Sir Keir could never have said something as neanderthal as insisting  he “supported the Labour position that nuclear power is part of the mix of moving away from fossil fuels,” could he?

This whole story is far too implausible! But a good try.

 

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To The Times:

 

Your report in the business section (“Ordering site closures could bring roof down on construction companies, warn officials," The Times,  1st April 2020) rightly highlighted the tricky dilemma facing Business and Energy  Secretary, Alok Sharma, in balancing keeping some construction activity going without exacerbating the Coronavirus crisis.
 
All construction to help the current NHS capacity crisis surely must continue happen. But other construction sites need to justify their need to stay open
 
One such site is the giant nuclear construction complex at Hinkley Point C (HPC, near Bridgwater in north Somerset) where a £24 billion new plant is being built.
 
On 25 March, the Daily Mail printed a photograph whose caption states it is taken in the workers' canteen at Hinkley Point. Diners are packed together, cheek by jowl, with absolutely no spacing.
 
Why had the safety authorities at Hinkley permitted this gross violation of Governmental guidance on coronavirus safety practice to take place in one of the most sensitive sites of critical national infrastructure, despite many pleas from the Prime Minister, Health Secretary and other ministers?
 
The chief nuclear inspector, Mark Foy, at the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) told me in an email shortly after:
 
“It is ONR’s understanding that HPC has been advised by HM government that it is regarded as Critical National Infrastructure and as such, can remain open.”
 
Other reported (and photographed) avoidable risks have included un-spaced and disorderly queuing to enter plant via security controls in the morning and jostling to get on works buses in the evening.
 
HPC owner, NNB-EDFhave made modifications, announced on 1^st April, but not enough.
 
Local group, the Stop Hinkley (SH) campaign, loudly announced that it was horrified that the 4,000-strong workforce at the HPC construction site was set to continue working during the Coronavirus ‘lockdown’ effecting the rest of the UK. SH spokesperson Katy Attwater said:
 
“This is putting lives at risk right across Somerset and the whole of the country. Why hasn’t the Prime Minister ordered them to stay at home – is he just pandering to the nuclear lobby?”
 
That is the correct question: what is the answer?