Author: R J Adams

It’s hard to know what to make of the man pictured above. In case anyone has doubts it’s the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

Prior to the E.U. referendum and ‘Brexit’ result, Corbyn was supposed to be in favour of Britain remaining in the European Union. Despite this he did very little before the event to persuade anyone of his views, whether for or against. Now, it seems, he’s decided to support the Conservative government and has come down heavily on the side of ‘Brexit’. So much so that in the recent parliamentary debate, forced on the Tories by the law of the land after a failed appeal by them of an earlier ruling, he ordered his Labour MPs to support the Tories by issuing a ‘Three-Line Whip’. It basically means if you don’t follow orders you’re fired.

Corbyn’s excuse is that the Labour Party must respect the will of the British people, even though almost half of them voted to remain in the E.U..

A recent BBC report featuring the latest data figures states:

The data confirms previous indications that local results were strongly associated with the educational attainment of voters – populations with lower qualifications were significantly more likely to vote Leave.
The level of education had a higher correlation with the voting pattern than any other major demographic measure from the census
The age of voters was also important, with older electorates more likely to choose Leave…^[1]

So it seems the more intelligent Brits voted to remain in the E.U. while the oldies and the thickies wanted out. It’s these latter folks that the government and the opposition Labour leadership seem to favour.

Has the whole ‘Brexit’ disaster then just become no more than a vote-getter? Has Corbyn thrown his principles to the wind because many of the ‘Brexit strongholds’ in the country are also Labour strongholds? And did Theresa May cast aside her original convictions on the E.U. for personal power and the opportunity to woo some of those Labour voters away from her political competitor?

Or does it go deeper than that? The Guardian writer George Monbiot, one of Britain’s best investigative journalists, thinks it does. He outlines the dark side of the U.S.-U.K. ‘special relationship’, and it all hinges around a man who is now the most powerful member of Theresa May’s government. That man is Liam Fox.

To understand the workings of Liam Fox and his involvement with U.S. corporate interests at the highest level it’s necessary to read (or, hopefully, re-read!) the Sparrow Chat post from September 12th 2016, entitled, “Atlantic Bridge – Dead Or Merely Undercover?”

It details Fox’s involvement with a fake charity, The Atlantic Bridge, set up ostensibly to “…bring people together who have common interests.” Those ‘common interests’ turned out to be a very short list indeed. In fact, Atlantic Bridge and its U.S. twin of the same name, was allied to a powerful, right-wing, conservative think tank, the American Legislative Council (ALEC), financed by the tobacco industry, big oil, big drugs, and the billionaire Koch brothers.

Running the U.S. branch of Atlantic Bridge was ALEC’s director of international relations, Catherine Bray. She’d worked for Daniel Hannan, a prominent far-right, British Tory Member of the European Parliament (MEP) who has long advocated an amalgamation of the Tory Party with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

Hannan was one of the principle activists of the ‘Brexit’ campaign. He’s also been a vocal critic of the British National Health Service, calling it “…a sixty year mistake.” His comments were backed by fellow Tory MEP Roger Helmer, who told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme:

“I think Dan has done us a service by raising these issues which need to be looked at. If 80% of Americans are getting better health care than we are in the UK then we ought to ask why, and we ought to ask how are we going to deliver equally good results.”^[2]

Catherine Bray had also been closely allied to two other British Members of the European Parliament, Richard Ashworth (who was later deselected), and the aforementioned Roger Helmer, a Tory who later defected to UKIP.

From this it becomes obvious that UKIP is dedicated to privatising the NHS, and it’s easier to understand the high profile of UKIP, both in the Brexit campaign, and Nigel Farage’s swift trip to Trump Tower following the result. He was, of course, primarily trying to cement a nice little position for himself as British Ambassador to the U.S., hoping to utilise Trump’s influence with Theresa May. Sadly for him, neither Trump nor May considered him sufficiently useful to them and he was sent home with his tail between his legs.

But another reason for Farage’s U.S. trip was UKIP’s involvement in the privatization of the British National Health service. To American Big Business, this is the jewel in the crown of Brexit. Having carefully engineered Brexit (and make no mistake, it was engineered) U.S. corporate interests are poised to move in on the NHS as soon as Liam Fox and Co. can hand it to them.

It’s a known fact that David Cameron never wanted to hold a referendum on Europe. The Tory Party forced it on him. The Tories have been anti-Europe for years, seeing the future for Britain as nestling in the welcoming arms of American business, rather than that of the Europeans. Once in a while politicians trot out the phrase, ‘Special Relationship’, just to remind us.

Unfortunately for Cameron he eventually ran out of excuses to avoid holding the referendum while keeping the Party wolves off his back. As Ken Clarke, pro-European and old-timer of the Tory front benches, succinctly remarked on this issue:

“If you want to go feeding crocodiles then you’d better not run out of buns.”

The pressure mounted both from his Tory colleagues and, no doubt surreptitiously, their U.S. counterparts, until the British prime minister was forced to cave. Big money and the Tory/UKIP machine moved into gear, formulating a slick advertising campaign with little concern for truth or lie, while Cameron had so few true supporters among the party faithful that his Remain campaign hardly managed to get off the ground.

It’s a known fact that when politicians determine to do something the public may not like, the first thing they do is deny emphatically they’re going to do it. As the Guardian reported recently, Liam Fox is doing just that with the NHS:

Fears of an American takeover of the NHS are an urban myth “on a par with alligators in sewers”, Liam Fox has said as he revealed that US trade talks will begin within days. “It’s not been part of our approach to go into these agreements and sacrifice the right for government to regulate public services,” Fox said when asked about the perceived [NHS] threat during a Commons select committee hearing on Wednesday.

Pressed by the Labour MP Shabana Mahmood to guarantee that the NHS would remain “off limits”, Fox added: “As the person who will be negotiating [a US trade deal], I can say it would be not be happening on my watch.” ^[3]

Fox’s remark that “It’s not been part of our approach to go into these agreements and sacrifice the right for government to regulate public services” bears scrutiny. In America, Donald Trump’s new administration certainly hasn’t sacrificed any right to regulate public services, it’s simply been taken over by a corporate management team hellbent on deregulation. Most of these new ‘members’ of the U.S. government were, and still are, close business pals of Liam Fox through his Atlantic Bridge/ALEC connections. If they don’t intend to allow an American takeover of the NHS, why are so many in the British government trying to make a case for it?

Of course, it’s not just the NHS that corporate America is after. George Monbiot, in his Guardian article, “Dark Arts,”, writes:

The trade treaties that Fox is charged with developing set the limits of sovereignty. US food and environmental standards tend to be lower than ours, and they will become lower still if Trump gets his way. Any trade treaty we strike will create a common set of standards for products and services. Trump’s administration will demand that ours are adjusted downwards, so that US corporations can penetrate our markets without having to modify their practices. All the cards, following the Brexit vote, are in US hands: if the UK resists, there will be no treaty. What May needed – even before Trump became president – was a person prepared to strike such a deal.

As the Financial Times reports, “the election of Donald Trump has transformed the fortunes of Liam Fox”. He is now “an indispensable member of Theresa May’s front bench team”. The shadow diplomatic mission he developed through The Atlantic Bridge plugs him straight into the Trump administration…

This is part of what Brexit is about: European laws protecting the public interest were portrayed by Conservative Eurosceptics as intolerable intrusions on corporate freedom. Taking back control from Europe means closer integration with the US. The transatlantic special relationship is a special relationship between political and corporate power. ^[4]

At the beginning of this post I suggested it was hard to know what to make of the present British Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. A left-leaning politician, he’d set out to re-instill in his party the values it had stood for, until Blair came along in the 1990s and adopted neoliberal policies more in line with those of Thatcher and Reagan.

Now, it seems Corbyn is slipping away from those values. He’s a parliamentary outsider. As such he’s allowed himself to be seen as something of a comic figure by those around him, on both sides of the ‘House’. Labour needed to oppose Brexit, if only to force Theresa May into a concessionary position. Corbyn did the opposite. He actively prevented his MPs from voting according to their consciences. By so doing, he handed Theresa May, Liam Fox, and their American corporate cronies, Brexit on a plate.

By so doing he may well have sealed the fate of Britain’s National Health Service.

^{[1] ” Local voting figures shed new light on EU referendum” BBC, February 6th 2017.}

^{[2] “NHS attack by MEP ‘unpatriotic'” BBC, August 14th 2009}

^{[3] “Liam Fox dismisses NHS takeover fears ahead of US trade talks” Guardian, February 1st 2017}

^{[4] “Dark Arts Monbiot, February 4th 2017 (also published in “The Guardian” as “How corporate dark money is taking power on both sides of the Atlantic” Guardian, February 2nd 2017 (a must-read!)}

^{Peel Island, Coniston Lake – The Setting Chosen By Arthur Ransome For His Book “Swallows & Amazons”}

Recently my good blogging pal, Twilight, at “Learning Curve on the Ecliptic” wrote of the Portugese/Brazilian sense of nostalgia known as ‘Saudade’.

Twilight tells us that ‘Saudade’ is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves, often carrying a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return.
(For a more in-depth understanding of ‘Saudade’, nip over to “Twilight’s Place”).

Reading her post and watching the videos she presented made me realise how much Saudade was, and still is, present in my own life.

I remember the first time it appeared.

When I was a very young boy of maybe seven or eight years my parents took my sister and I camping every summer to an idyllic spot, known locally as Blea Brows, on the shores of Lake Coniston in the English Lake District. They would pitch an old, ex-army, tent near a small pebble beach not far from where the lake runs into the River Crake. It was a remote, peaceful, place tucked away behind trees and invisible from the main Ulverston to Coniston road, though that scarcely mattered as in those days the road would be classed as busy if half a dozen cars a day passed along it.

It was two weeks of sheer heaven for me. I would roam through the woods, catch minnows in the lake shallows, but most of all I discovered the bounteous spiritual magic of nature. Whether it was watching the sun set over the hills, the flash and roar of a summer thunderstorm echoing around the fells, or shuffling out of the tent at three in the morning for a pee, only to be caught, mesmerized, by the mighty searchlight of the Milky Way, it’s billion glowing stars reflected in the glassy, mirrored, surface of the lake.

As I grew older the Lake District holidays with my parents waned until they ceased altogether. I returned on a number of occasions, trying to relive those wonder years, but somehow it was never quite the same. Eventually other interests took over as I matured; those childhood holidays faded into memory.

Sixty plus years later, the Lake District and my magical area around the Coniston Fells have changed little geographically, but my time was before the invention of motorways. The sound of a car winding its way round the twisty curves of that lakeland road would send my sister and I scurrying up the path to stand excited at the roadside, waving enthusiastically as it went by.

Now that same road is choc-a-bloc with traffic in the high season, the fells spattered with the bright red and yellow mountain jackets of young enthusiasts at the many outward bound schools, or at rock-climbing tuition. Every farmhouse, it seems, sports its “Swallows and Amazons” tea room.

I hadn’t been back there for quite a long time. I was beginning to feel that thing called Saudade. At first I was perplexed that although those intense feelings that drew me there as a child still moved me, the place itself no longer held the same magnetism. I realize now it wasn’t so much the place I was missing, but those particular moments of my childhood.

The Lake District of my early years no longer exists. Businesses have sprung up to cater to the huge influx of summer visitors. Camping is now only allowed on designated, controlled, sites with shower blocks and toilets. Elsewhere, the “NO CAMPING” signs abound and wardens patrol to ensure their adherence. The quiet isolation I remember has given way under the strain of modern life.

So, too, has the beautiful, idyllic, spot that was all mine for two weeks every summer of my childhood. It still exists, but nobody’s allowed there anymore. That very place, Blea Brows, where my parents pitched their tent so many years ago was sold by the British government to a private developer two years ago for the princely sum of 90,000 pounds, along with a number of other areas of the Lakeland National Park. ^[1].

BLEA BROWS
Coniston Water, Torver Common, Cumbria
About 9.99 acres [4.07 hectares]
with 575m of Lake Frontage

Tenure: Freehold
On the instructions from the Lake District National Park Authority. A truly wonderful, majestic, stretch of shoreline. Prominent rocky features, variety of trees, stunning views. Immense amenity value. Wonderful birdlife. 575m of Lake Frontage. About 9.99 acres (4.07 hectares).

For Sale by FORMAL TENDER. Closing Date: 12th MARCH 2015.

GUIDE PRICES: £70,000 to £90,000

“Saudade is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves, often carrying a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return.”

I can never return to those halcyon days of my childhood spent at Blea Brows on the shores of Lake Coniston, but the longing for them never fully goes away. Now that longing, that Saudade, is tinged with feelings of revulsion and disgust at a government hellbent on selling off the birthright of its people. No doubt by now the place where I played as a child is fenced off and signed: “KEEP OUT PRIVATE PROPERTY.”

At least, in my heart I will always have access.

^{[1] “First they came for Coniston Water. What’s next?” Telegraph, March 9th 2015}

^{THE LUNATIC ASYLUM}

To anyone who has access to the internet, TV, or radio, it must surely be obvious by now that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. While governments, and those who make up the composition of such bodies, have never been totally trustworthy in their dealings or promises, events of the last few days provide clear evidence that those once running the asylum have been well and truly ousted, and the inmates are in charge.

Donald Trump is undoubtedly the “Master Psycho.” While murmuring soft promises of fidelity into the ears of ex-coal miners, and showing macho pretence of caring for the American people, he only yesterday signed an order preventing some hundreds of visa and ‘Green Card’ holders from returning to their homes in the United States.

Stranded at airports inside and outside the U.S. these people were coming home from business trips, vacations, or visits to relatives in other countries. They have wives, husbands, children, parents, sweethearts, fondly awaiting their homecoming. Trump, with one flourish of his spiky, psychotic, signature, kept them apart.

^{Trump’s Signature (or, possibly, an earthquake reading!)}

Thankfully, the sane people outside the walls of the asylum have taken legal steps to overturn this constitutional nightmare, at least temporarily, and allow these poor people to their homes. We wait to see how the next move of the chief inmate will pan out.

Meanwhile, an escapee has fled to Turkey. Theresa May, until yesterday inside the asylum cooking up further chaos with her leader, Donald Trump, has now managed to break out and was last seen in the company of another lunatic, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of Turkey to whom she’s agreed to sell 100,000,000 British pounds ($125,500,000) worth of military fighter jets.

You don’t believe she’s a lunatic? Consider the evidence:

When May was British Home Secretary pre-Brexit she sat on the fence over her position regarding the E.U. until finally she came out and said that she couldn’t agree to remain in the Union because it would be wrong to accept Turkey as a member. On April 25th 2016, the BBC reported:

Mrs May said Albania, Serbia and Turkey had “poor populations and serious problems with organised crime, corruption, and sometimes even terrorism”.
She added: “We have to ask ourselves, is it really right that the EU should just continue to expand, conferring upon all new member states all the rights of membership?”
She said the UK had “forgotten how to lead” in Europe and must re-assert itself to force change from within, adding that it could veto Turkey joining the EU. ^[1]

One day later, the Telegraph also reported:

The Home Secretary is trying to cast herself as the reluctant Remainer already, carving out very deliberate dividing lines between her and David Cameron by raising questions in her speech today about whether it is “really right” for the EU to give countries like Turkey “all the rights of membership” and that Britain just needs to leave the European Court of Human Rights. ^[2]

Apparently Mrs May thinks it would be wrong to allow “countries like Turkey” to join the E.U. because of “serious problems with organised crime, corruption, and sometimes even terrorism,” but it’s absolutely okay to flog this same nation one hundred million pounds worth of lethal fighter jets.

Given suitable evidence, to label one particular nation a potential enemy is an eminently sane thing to do. To then provide it with the weaponry it needs to harm you is insanity.

Anyone who considers Theresa May’s antics rational should, perhaps, consider joining the rest of the inmates in the asylum.

^{[1] “Theresa May: UK should quit European Convention on Human Rights” BBC, April 25th 2016}

^{[2] “Theresa May wants you to stay in the EU. Has she blown her chances of ever being Tory leader?”Telegraph, April 26th 2016}