Kmflett's Blog

Which Island should David Cameron be off-shored to?

According to the Panama Papers relating to the tax affairs of some of the rich and powerful in the world David Cameron’s father had a significant interest in offshore bank accounts. He was a private citizen so while we may have a view on this, that as it were, was that. Questions remain however about whether David Cameron benefited from these accounts. This is a matter of public interest, as he remains the Prime Minister. Indeed he said in 2011 that he would publish his tax returns. No doubt however he has been busy.

In the meantime perhaps one way of moving the matter forward would be to offshore David Cameron.

Here are some suggested locations:

Isle of Wight: Queen Victoria fled there when she thought the Chartists threatened revolution in 1848. King Charles 1^st was held prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle in 1648 but escaped.

St Helena the British took Napoleon here in 1815 after his defeat at Waterloo. It is thought to be the most remote place in the world somewhere between South America and South Africa. However an airport is due to open this year..

Rockall: an uninhabited island in the North Atlantic. The nearest human life is in the Outer Hebrides. Cameron could live in an all-weather tent, provided he can fish

Devil’s Island. Established as a penal colony in 1854 by Napoleon 111, Dreyfus was held here though it currently houses French space programme buildings

Robben Island. Seven miles offshore from Cape Town. Notorious for housing Nelson Mandela

Alcatraz. Island in San Francisco Bay was a prison from 1934-1963. Now a tourist attraction

More possible island destinations for David Cameron here:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ten-infamous-islands-of-exile-1947938/?no-ist=&page=2

Haringey Trades Council

Press Release 6^th April

c/o Union Office, St Ann ’s Hospital, St Ann ’s Rd, Tottenham N15

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266; keith.flett@btinternet.com

_____________________________________________________________________________

Support for junior doctor’s dispute in Tottenham continues to grow

St Ann’s BMA picket line 6th April

Haringey TUC, the local wing of the TUC in North London, has said that support for junior doctors, members of the BMA, continues to grow as Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt refuses to budge after imposing a new contract on them recently.

The trade unionists say that the BMA picket line at St Ann’s Hospital in Tottenham on Wednesday 6^th April was well supported despite early rain, with a home-made banner attracting support of passers-by and passing motorists honking horns.

Haringey TUC Secretary Keith Flett said it is clear that the junior doctors are resolute, as you would expect professionals to be, in underlining to the Health Secretary that the new contract is unworkable. They clearly have the support of the public in Haringey

Beard Liberation Front

Press release 5^th April

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

JEREMY CORBYN VOTED ‘STYLE ICON’ AFTER CRITICISM OF HIS DRESS SENSE

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been voted a ‘style icon’ after criticism of his dress sense appeared in the Guardian’s letters page last week.

The campaigners ran the poll, which received hundreds of votes, after one correspondent claimed that Corbyn would be a badly dressed man in any decade.

Those voting in the poll disagreed.

35% said Corbyn was a style icon

33% said they loved Corbyn’s beard

24% agreed he was badly dressed

The campaigners say that pogonophobia, dislike of Corbyn’s beard, is at the root of much criticism of Corbyn’s appearance just as David Cameron’s Commons complaint that the veteran politician didn’t do his tie up properly was probably motivated by fear of facial hair.

On the Guardian letters page on 1st April Val Walsh claimed that Corbyn’s dress sense was stuck in the 1950s.

On April 2^nd a letter from Bill Macinnes claimed Corbyn was a badly dressed man in any decade

The campaigners say that Corbyn would no doubt claim that his politics are more important than his supposed dress sense.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said the reality is that Jeremy Corbyn is a style icon compared to the Prime Minister anonymous suit wearing image. However the Labour leader still has work to do on his image. Less than 10% of voters in the poll thought he was a Fashionista.

The Ambridge Socialist April 5th

CONTACT KEITH FLETT 07803 167266 the real Borsetshire Echo: 65 years of class struggle in Ambridge

Special Edition

Helen: Guardian Editorial poses key question on cuts to women’s support services

The Guardian has posed a key question for the Archers in its Editorial on 5^th April (below).

The story line on domestic abuse involving Helen Archer and ‘monster’ Rob Titchener has been well written and well-acted.

The latest twist to the story however runs the risk of departing from a long period of careful story telling into the arguably over dramatic and unrealistic.

The Guardian suggests that a key issue is whether the Archers can grapple with the realities of reductions in women’s support services and the impact this has had on those suffering abuse.

In other words, can the Archers grapple with cuts? Well David Cameron’s mother has come out against cuts to services…

Guardian Editorial 5^th April

Whether you find the long-running BBC Radio 4 everyday tale of country folk, The Archers, compelling listening or the apogee of smug, the domestic abuse storyline between Helen and her bullying, manipulative husband, Rob, which reached a violent climax on Sunday night, has been all too illuminating about the way an abusive relationship develops. Listeners – some of whom resented its intrusion into their daily escape to a rural idyll – were left with a vivid and authentic impression of how an intelligent, competent woman can be reduced to helplessness by a partner who sets out to control her.

On Sunday night, after months of incremental development where Helen only slowly came to understand what was being done to her, the plot rapidly escalated into violence. To some, this felt out of tune with the painstaking authenticity of the earlier storyline. In particular, the decision to make Helen the instigator of the violence that night, rather than Rob, in defiance of the weight of real evidence, seemed a betrayal of its earlier integrity.

The Archers team has been working on this story, helped by women’s support organisations like Women’s Aid and Refuge, for two and a half years. Maybe programme chiefs panicked that too many of the regular audience were getting nightmares. More likely, letting the plot develop in a way that was truer to most victims’ experience might have meant Helen seeking safety in a refuge that had been forced to close because of cuts to local government spending. The programme prides itself on tackling the big social issues like domestic abuse, Alzheimer’s or, a generation ago, abortion. But it never, ever, strays into contemporary politics.

In the real world, support for women’s organisations has not only been whittled away by squeezed town hall budgets, it has also been undermined by what academics say is a misunderstanding of evidence by the Office for National Statistics. According to recent research, the ONS counts violent and sexual offences in a way that significantly underestimates how women are affected. So service provision is reduced; and, because by their nature refuges and the support services they provide have to be discreet, cuts tend not to be noticed by the wider public. On The Archers, the plot is still developing. It’s not too late (at the time of writing) for it to recognise how vital women’s support services are – and how thin on the ground they have become.

The Ambridge Socialist publishes weekly on-line after the Omnibus edition of the Archers on a Sunday morning

In forthcoming issues of the Ambridge Socialist:

Why the Archers is not the new Eastenders

Why Titchener should face trial

The Ambridge Socialist April 4th

CONTACT KEITH FLETT 07803 167266 the real Borsetshire Echo: 65 years of class struggle in Ambridge

Special Edition

Helen: self-defence is no offence

As the Daily Telegraph pointed out today while violence when an abusive relationship breaks apart is not uncommon, usually it is the man who attacks the woman. The number of cases where the reverse applies, as the article again points out, are small and well known legal cases in the main.

Arguably there is a touch of Eastenders about this latest turn in matters between Helen and Rob but it can’t be denied that the story has generally been well told and very well acted. So much so that it has raised a media spotlight on abusive relationship and raised thousands of pounds for women’s refuge charities.

Inevitably barristers have pitched into the discussion. A New Statesman article argues that Helen’s actions could not be self-defence because Rob was not attacking her at the moment she stabbed him. It suggests rather that it is manslaughter with considerable mitigating circumstances of abuse.

The Ambridge Socialist however believes that self-defence is no offence and that is why Helen acted on Sunday to protect both herself, her unborn child and Henry.

The Ambridge Socialist publishes weekly on-line after the Omnibus edition of the Archers on a Sunday morning

In forthcoming issues of the Ambridge Socialist:

Why the Archers is not the new Eastenders

Why Titchener should have faced trial

Emergency bulletin 3rd April

Helen has stabbed Titchener. It would not have been what the Ambridge Socialist planned for him.

However it was not the first such incident in Ambridge:

In 1957, whilst Bob Larkin was out poaching, he was accidentally shot dead by Tom Forrest. Charged with manslaughter, Tom was later acquitted.

These are the official thoughts of the BBC. Forrest was charged with manslaughter not murder and got off because he was the Ambridge gamekeeper, a regular forelock tugger to the ruling class. The ‘accidental’ death of a peasant did not warrant a guilty verdict in 1957.

We’ll see how matters work out in 2016