We Are All Conservatives Now

British values have changed immensely over the past twenty years or so.  The country’s residents have little time for liberalism, as do New Labour and all the other mainstream political parties.  The media likewise often attack any view, which is not conservative and right wing.  One would have to think long and hard to give an example of a single country which does not have a left-leaning mainstream political party.  Even the United States differ in this respect.  Many see Barack Obama as recycling George Bush’s policies, but there are vast differences in policy.  The Republican party have gone ultra-right wing, largely to show Obama they can be more belligerent than him. For the moment, at least, the Democrats have a more favourable policy with immigration; they have a much more reasonable view of welfare recipients and so-called health care reforms.  It would be quite impossible to be more unreasonable than the Republicans, who for many are a group of extreme fanatics, who put business and profit before anything else.

However, in Britain you could not divide the two mainstream political parties, or indeed three of them.  There is a little known story concerning the Liberal democrats, six years before the 2010 election, a new book was edited by David Laws and Paul Marshall, and it is called the Orange Book.  In this book then prominent Liberal Democrats put emphasis on the markets, and how best to be elected, to move more to the right, which is exactly what the Liberal democrats did.  Labour, on the hand, does not even hide how far to the right they have gone.

It is simple if you look at the policies of the two parties, they are almost identical.  Take any area of policy.  Under what is named ‘justice’, Labour and the Conservatives only differ slightly.  Actually, laughably, labour are more to the right in this area than the Tories themselves.  It was the Blair government which introduced the IPPs, an acronym which is not very well known at all.  It stands for Imprisonment for Public Protection, in other words, an individual can be imprisoned for as long as the parole board and probation officers’ like, and if they have no desire to release him or indeed her, they will not be released.  Even if they are released, and there is no guarantee that there will be, they still will be technically serving a life sentence, or at least, have the potential to do so.  For they are placed on licence or a probationary period for a minimum of ten years, and it also has to be added, many of the offences are relatively minor.  The Conservatives have successfully overturned this policy.

Under Labour Britain had the biggest prison population in Europe, children were even being sent to jails, under Jack Straw’s legislation, it was made far easier to be convicted for rape, of which many innocent men were going to prison on trumped up rape charges, languishing on the Sex Offender’s Register for the rest of their lives.

Labour also started the privatisation of the NHS, the Conservatives continued to privatise it; one in three schools, in the hands of the same Government, became faith schools, again, the Conservatives are just as keen on faith schools, in essence, denying children the liberty to think for themselves; the failed work programs Thatcher introduced, were re-introduced by Blair and Brown, and the same system has been introduced by David Cameron; many civil liberties were removed, a kind of autocracy was taking place, terrifying the public with fear tactics from time to time, “the rules have changed”, said Blair after the attacks on the underground tube trains in 2005,  criminal record checks were demanded anywhere and everywhere, mercilessly, Labour created the ultimate Big Brother society, the Tories are having to evolve where Labour left off.  It is no secret Blair and Brown evolved Thatcher’s free market fundamentalism.  There is no freedom under the free market, only terror.  A one party state with three factions, one may add.

During his tenure in office, Tony Blair was acting as the virtual Foreign Secretary, as well as Prime Minister. During this time, his allies included Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin, George.W.Bush, Ariel Sharon, John Howard, Muammar Gaddafi, the royal family in Saudi Arabia, amongst many others.  Berlusconi was first elected Prime Minister of Italy in 1994, he was there on and off until 2012.  He was unquestionably on the right, and once called all Germans Nazis; his links with Fascism have been difficult for him to shake off.  Many of his cabinet Ministers were even former Fascists.  His immigration policy was particularly scandalous.  Many asylum seekers coming to Italy were sent to detention centres-virtual concentration camps-in Libya.  This was one of Blair’s most cherished allies, Mr. Blair, so the public would have it, was a man of the left. His wife even called him a socialist.

Vladimir Putin is a far more disgraceful character from the arena of world politics.  Putin is responsible for some of the worst bloodshed seen in Europe in the 21st century.  The second Chechen war saw thousands massacred, all with the acquiescence of Tony Blair.  Innocent men were tortured in the most barbaric fashion, women systematically ravaged, and children were not spared the slaughter.  Putin, a man, who turned Russia into a Stalinist state once again, Stalin, has many similarities with Blair.

George.W.Bush was ultra-right wing, even more so than his predecessor, Bill Clinton.  Bush ran his government like a CEO executive, and the people around him were neo-liberal fanatics, who saw everything in terms of profits and offered a taste of Freedmanesque economics.  Blair was proud to turn Iraq into a bloodbath, for Blair is one of those free market fundamentalists who believes in profit over people.  He was certainly at home with his number one ally, Mr. Bush.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was a different kettle of fish.  Along with Thatcher, he was Blair’s major influence.  Clinton’s onslaught of the welfare state, particularly single mothers, pleased Blair emphatically. The secret bombing in Iraq, the indiscriminate, and by UN definition, illegal bombing of Yugoslavia, Bill Clinton’s love for arming the biggest mass murderer since Hitler, General Suharto, bombing a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which according to Human Rights Watch, the only organisation that could be bothered to investigate it, said Clinton’s actions cost thousands of lives.

Blair’s love affair with the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, is grotesque in every way.  Because of Blair’s support for Israeli-backed terror, more Palestinians were subject to the kind of terror that is both sickening and gruesome.  Not on one occasion did Blair condemn Israel for their continual terror.  Ariel Sharon, a man who was responsible for massacres in the 1980s when he was the Defence Minister, and before that, in the 1950s, when he was a general, he ordered the killing of civilians and the destruction of refugee camps.  Mr. Blair, a man of the left indeed.

Left and right no longer exist in Britain.  Instead, we have terms intended to fool the population. We hear terms like “hard-left”, “centre-left”, “mildly right wing”, “extremist”, “conservative”, “liberals”, and so on.  It is not difficult to decode those frivolous phrases.  “Hard-left” "socialist", and all the other terms just refer to right wingers, we need those terms to fool the general population into believing the country is not a one state ideology.

When you look at the media, it is even more intriguing.  The guardian, which paints itself as a paper of the left, has shifted vastly towards the right.  The paper is liberal at the very least.  Simon Jenkins, a columnist for the paper, was once an editor for the Murdoch press and referred to himself as an “enthusiastic Thatcherite”; Timothy Garton-Ash, another contributor to the newspaper, was once a journalist for the right wing periodicals, the Spectator, he was referred to a former journalist at the guardian as the “in house lunatic” at the guardian. Polly Toynbee, Zoe Williams and Madeleine Bunting are supine liberals. Jonathan Freedland, the crypto-racist and supporter of Israeli ethnic cleansing, is the worst of the lot. 

The country is shifting into dark times, a fascist mentality already present; one should not be surprised at what happens next.

17th October 2012

The Free Market

Margaret Thatcher famously said there is no alternative to the free market, likewise her friend Augusto Pinochet, the then fascist President of Chile, could have echoed similar sentiments. If he would have said there is no alternative to massacring communists, it would be no less absurd than Thatcher’s words.  Thatcher’s principle, or rather, one of her principles, was to destroy socialism. The Thatcherite free market fundamentalist extremists of the 1980’s evolved into the fanaticism of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the late 1990’s and beyond.  Britain and every country in Europe and indeed almost every country in the entire world has the free market as their financial structure. Yet the free market is seldom discussed, many do not have the slightest idea what it is, and those that do tell epic lies without knowing it.  

When free market faithful enthusiasts discuss this they often cite Adam Smith, shamefully misusing his name in their web of lies and deceit.  A few truths, here, should be pointed out about Adam Smith. It was Adam Smith who said “principal architects” in England were “merchants and manufacturers” who went on to use the state for their own interests.  Interestingly he labelled “the national interest” as a total and absolute fraud, saying it was a delusion.  For Adam Smith, one key principle is that individuals ought to be free.  He did not believe in the division of labour, being subjected to such things, destroys people, Smith says, but free market fundamentalists would have you believe otherwise.  The underlying question is was Smith in favour of free markets? That is not such an easy question to answer because he was only in favour of markets that led to total liberty, equality, freedom and so forth; what Adam Smith foresaw was not the terrifying model of the free market we have today, far from it.  So was he in favour of this sort of free market?  Certainly not.  What he believed in was the total opposite of capitalism.  Yet his name is still used, subverting his message.  

Of course the free market is all about bartering, buying and selling produce, but the free market is free from government interference and people too, it must be added.  This  sounds harmless.  It is extremely harmful.  What happens here is that, and this has been a concerted effort by western imperial powers, the poor countries remain poor while the rich ones expand their wealth.  The wealth of the rich countries remains in the hands of the select few: multinational corporations, private investors, CEO's and so on while much of the country suffers from mild poverty, others from absolute poverty.  There is homelessness in their tens of thousands in developed countries all over the world, slums have been created, prostitutes are forced into desperate acts, in many countries people can not afford healthcare, they even struggle to pay their household bills.  

When the words “in the national interest” is used, it is interesting to define what is meant here, when politicians of various ilk use this abominable phrase, they know precisely what they are talking about; the general population do not.  One other group who know what they are talking about is private power, because this language is aimed at them, in the free market system, not one that Smith envisioned, but what we have today, totally eliminates people: the worker, the student, the professional and so forth.  It is interesting to discuss what kind of system or framework does this.

The framework must be called a fascist one.  It is firstly important to understand what fascism is. A definition of fascism is not butchering people, forcing women and children into gas chambers and death camps, no fascism is something more clearly defined than that.  Fascism then is when you move an entire people from an  arena of sorts and reduce their liberty, freedom and living standards, and the free market certainly does that.  I am not arguing the free market is fascist, just the structure of it is.  The rest of government policy is aimed at gaining power.  For no sane person would issue such backward policies in a developed country.  Wealth and power come first, if the government create policies favourable to you, all that means is you are fortunate enough to be within a group  of people where government’s self interest lies, but it is nothing more than that.  Otherwise, the government have nothing to lose.  

Yet the free market and its devastatingly  fascist framework is not even debated in the capitalist press or media.  Mainstream political parties do not discuss it and people are totally unaware of its evils because they believe they have lavish freedoms when they do not.  For the nations, or rather the governments that do not submit to this free market fundamentalism are met with the bludgeon, nations that have met with this with a particular imperial power have been Cuba, Nicaragua, Indonesia, just to name some.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the former Kennedy aide, said that “the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands”.  He was, of course, speaking about the former President of Cuba, Fidel Castro. What Schlesinger did not go on to say was what his Government and future U.S governments have been subjecting Cuba to because of “Castro taking matters into one’s own hands”.  It is all fair and well to say Castro was a demagogue and that he was never democratically elected and so forth, while that is true, much of Cuba’s history is deliberately missed out.  In the 1820's those in power in the U.S spoke of invading Cuba for reasons of self-interest and doing unspeakable things there.  People like Benjamin Franklin and John Quincey Adams, after the British forbade such actions, agreed that in a hundred years or so, such a thing would be possible.  They did not have to wait that long.  It was in 1898 when the U.S were able to treat Cuba as their “backyard”, controlling their economy, in other words, stealing Cuba’s  wealth and putting it in the hands of American conglomerates, while many Cubans were just virtual slaves, working in heinous conditions to serve U.S interests.  From 1898 to the revolution in 1953-59 Washington installed dictator after dictator.  They were absolutely brutal, but had Washington’s support from the outset.

Misery in Cuba was so widespread that people started to rise up.  The Castro brothers, Che Guevara and others overthrew Fulgencio Batista.  During the revolution, Castro was supported by his North american neighbours but when Castro initiated his agrarian reforms and the other things he planned, they changed tact.  Castro, on becoming President of Cuba, did what any decent person would do.  He threw out the American corporations who were literally thieving billions from the Cuban economy, and instead launched impressive social programs in Cuba which were lauded all over the world.  This was the threat, nothing to do with communism, that is just a fraud, a delusion to justify in launching terror campaigns against Cuba, which the Kennedy “liberals” did.  John.F.Kennedy launched a terror campaign against the Cuban people in the early 1960's. He appointed his brother, Robert, as the person to lead the terror campaign.  Over a period of decades Cuba was subjected to a systematic terror campaign by America.  During Kennedy’s short reign, chemical weapons were used, a factory was bombed, killing 400 workers, huge damage was done to Cuban infrastructure, including crop destruction, not to mention the economic strangulation of Cuba.  If it was not for Cuba’s impressive health care system, tens of thousands would have died as a consequence of U.S-imposed sanctions.  This systematic terror was because Castro refused to adopt to free market fundamentalism, in other words, refusing to permit U.S corporations from bleeding Cuba dry, while Cubans remain in total penury.  It was nothing to do with communism.

Nicaragua had adopted the U.S framework since 1933, when Washington instituted a brutal dictator, the most notorious family in the whole of Nicaragua: the Somoza's.  Every American President since Roosevelt had supported this barbarism. But in 1979, Nicaraguans rose up, overthrew Anastasio Somoza, the Sandinista's took power and announced free and fair democratic elections. The then President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, was beside himself, he supported Somoza right up to the end, or there abouts, so instead he supported terror against the ruling party, this was extended all throughout the 1980's by Ronald Reagan.  Under Reagan’s two-terms at the White House , he had blood on his hands: at least 50,000 were slaughtered in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, the ruling party, built social programs for the poor and refused to sign up to Reagan’s free market fundamentalism.  The terror Reagan and his recidivist colleagues subjected Nicaragua to is both heinous and outrageous, but will be omitted here.  Adopt our fascist framework or perish, that is the option countries like Cuba and Nicaragua face.  

Indonesia is another story completely, and it is a world away from Latin america.  Indonesia is in South-East asia and from 1945 until 1967, was led by the nationalist, Sukarno.  He did not care so much for neo-liberal, fascistic monetary institutions and asked the World Bank and the IMF to leave the country; in 1957-8 Britain started a covert war with Indonesia and began arming insurgents and opposition groups, a coup was plotted, with direct U.S and British involvement but it failed.  A second coup in 1965 was successful, Sukarno was overthrown and General Suharto was declared President. He, to Washington’s relief, embraced the World Bank and the IMF, he opened up Indonesian markets to foreign investment.  Washington and its European allies did not care that Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and wiped out a third of the entire population.  The massacres were akin to Nazi war crimes, around a million people in Indonesia were also murdered, all in favour of opening up foreign investment with the west.

The European Union in the 21st century, now prefers free market enterprise to democracy, Greece and Italy are models which are likely to follow.  One prominent journalist at the Financial times, Gillian Tett, has already argued that Britain needs a Prime minister to deal with the markets, suggesting it should bypass democracy altogether.  Germany, and others impose fiscal austerity programs, as they like to call them, and expect whoever is elected to adopt their decisions which have already been made for them.  If democracy ever did exist in the European Union, it is certainly being undermined because of the markets, everybody goes on about the markets but never give clear definitions what they are.  

Ever since the infamous financial crash of 2008 a barbaric sort of fascism has been established in Europe.  The people who are paying the price for banking fraudsters are the people with the least money: public sector workers, the unemployed, and those on the minimum wage, while the powerful and rich are feeding into the free market machine and are seeing stupendous profits, and British banks, who are known to have committed grotesque crimes in their fraudulent activities around the world; their connections with murderous drug cartels and terror groups, being given fines instead of life sentences.  The people paying these fines are not the banks but the wretched, the poverty-stricken and destitute worker.

This is a clear example of the free market.  That it is only interested in helping people who really need it: the rich, the powerful and so forth.  The crash justified in extending the fascist framework across Europe: increasing taxes on the poor; decreasing wages for the lowest paid workers and for those that do not work at all, finding new and creative ways to suspend benefit payments, introducing furtive taxes on the poor and defenceless, while at the same time empowering the rich and powerful.  Presently it has turned into a dystopia for many. People who once lived comfortable lives and now living on the streets, people are forced to give their children away because they no longer can afford to feed them.  These cuts to public spending are applauded everywhere.  Yet if the whole of Europe imposed the law onto the rich into paying taxes, instead of paying nothing, the debt would be wiped out overnight. 

What has indeed taken place is shock therapy.  Shock therapy is a system where a country has experienced a shock, in this case a global recession, so many countries are affected.  The shock therapy then begins.  Public services are privatised, taxes are reduced for the rich, funding to public services are then slashed and this becomes the norm.  It will continue without people even realising it.  Politicians of all parties will be complicit in all of it, as will the media, only a few voices will be openly opposed to it and such people are vetted from reaching the mainstream media.  And so it goes.  

The free market serves only the interests of the rich and powerful.  The media are aware of such practices but refuse to report it, intellectuals are aware of these practices but refuse to discuss it, politicians are also aware of these same practices, and lie outright when asked about it. There is only so much misery and suffering people can take, and governments ought to realise when people have nothing to lose fear that is when the savage actions of government will really become regretful.

4th February, 2013

the Evil that Men do

On  page seventeen of philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, he writes:

I would have imagined Lindbergh's not mentioning the Jews in his acceptance speech to be a promising omen, an indication that he had been chastened by the outcry that had caused him to relinquish his Army commission or that he had changed his mind since the Des Moines speech or that he had already forgotten about us or that secretly he knew full well that we were committed irrevocably to America-that tough Ireland still mattered to the Irish and Poland to the Poles and Italy to the Italians, we obtained no allegiance, sentimental or otherwise, to those Old World countries that we had never been welcome in that we had no intention of ever returning to.  If I could thought through the meaning of the moment in so many words, this is probably what I would have been thinking.  But the men out on the streets thought differently.  Lindbergh's Jews was to them a trick  and no more, the initiation of a campaign of deceit intended both to shut up and catch us off guard.  “Hitler in America!” the neighbours cried.  “Fascism in America!  Storm troopers in America!”  After their bombing having gone without sleep all night long, there was nothing that those bewildered elders of ours didn’t think and nothing that they didn’t say aloud, with our hearing,  before they started to drift back to their houses (where all the radios still blared away), the men to shave and dress and grab a cup of coffee before heading for work and the women to get their children clothed and fed and ready for the day.

Charles Lindbergh is Philip Roth’s fascist-to-be in 1940s America.  The enemy: Jews.  Over the 1930s and 1940s it was not only Germany that created and preached anti-semitic sentiment, it was prevalent all throughout Europe. The onslaught against Jews everywhere reached new levels of depravity after the great war, or it is often referred, the first world war.  A media onslaught had became visibly more aggressive during this time.  Its aim?  Brainwashing people to despise Jews, and blame them for all society's ills.  The English newspaper, the Daily Mail, was one of these media outlets which attempted to create a frenzy against the great enemy.  Even Shakespeare wrote about the persecution of Jews hundreds of years ago: “He hath disgraced me, and hindered me a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what is his reason?  I am a Jew”.

Six million corpses later and the brainwashing media are a little different to the Weimar press.  Back then Jews were cast as the enemy, now the chosen foe is not a single ethnic or religious group but the impoverished poor: victims subject to the harsh conditions of the welfare state, asylum seekers, refugees and other life’s unfortunates.  Newspapers such as the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Times, the Daily Telegraph, all English newspapers, use this same methodology to instill fear and hate to the rest of the entire population.  Take immigration.

“We got is wrong on immigration”, say the British Labour Party.  Did they indeed?  It is interesting why they said this when they did. The population of England were overwhelmingly angry of the levels of immigration seen under this Labour Government.  They did not believe what they say for a second, but in order to be re-elected, they are willing to fabricate almost anything to get support from the “right wing” press.  Yet under this same Government there were horrific levels of abuse concerning these impoverished unfortunates.  

Amelia Gentleman, the Orwell Prize-winning Guardian journalist, is one of those rare finds who documents the appalling cases of abuse and suffering; her humanity and humility towards others is touching.  She recounted an abominable case, which for many, is very difficult to believe.  Believe it they should, for it is the truth. A young Moldovan girl, in fact a child is what she was, this child, at fourteen-years-old, who at the time, according to Gentleman, was:

Living with her mother in Moldova when two older men invited her and a friend to a birthday picnic in a nearby forest. Both girls were knocked unconscious, driven to Romania, blindfolded, taken across a river in an inflatable dinghy to somewhere in Hungary, dressed in dark clothes and made to walk through the forest across the border during the night, passing through Slovenia and arriving eventually in Italy.

They were sold onto two separate men. Katya worked first in a flat in Rimini and then on the streets of Milan. After some months, she managed to escape and was sheltered for a while in the Moldovan embassy there, when she discovered she was pregnant.

This was the start of the horror that was unfolding for Katya, for that was the child's name.  After reporting what had happened to the Italian police, she returned to Moldova where she was found by this gang, and killed her pet dog as punishment, raped and beat her.  A friend of hers has been murdered by one of these trafficking gangs.  The horror of trafficking happened once again for Katya while she was in Turkey, ordered to work in a nightclub and from there was taken to london.  Katya comments about the clients there: “they're drunk, and just come and say, 'Give me this, that'. No one asks: 'How are you?'. Some of them asked, 'Why do you do this job?', but I wouldn't answer," she said, explaining that she was afraid that if she appealed to them for help, they might turn out to be friends with the trafficker.”  Fortunately for Katya the place was raided by the police, and because of threats of her Albanian captors, they had already killed her dog, so she only revealed snippets of information to protect her family.  In this wonderful country, her trafficker was permitted to visit her on eight separate occasions.  The next part of Katya’s story is truly sickening.

According to the girl, now an adult of course, said this some time later in court

They took me to a forest and I was beaten and raped. Then they made a noose out of rope and told me to dig my own grave as I was going to be killed.... They tied the noose around my neck and let me hang before cutting the branch off the tree. I really believed I was going to die. They then drove me to a house where many men were staying. They were all very drunk and took turns to rape me. When I tried to resist, one man physically restrained me and pulled my front tooth out using pliers.

But there is something missing, one may add.  How could this happen a third time?  There is a very simple answer to that question.  Britain, under the Labour Government sent her back to Moldova, in their impressive benevolence in responding to the sort of horrific abuse.  She survived this particular attack because of sheer luck.  They stopped attacking her because they thought she was still a commodity and they trafficked her to Israel where more systematic and malevolent abuse took place, before once again being taken to London.  There was another police raid, once again, like last time she was in police detention, that is how girls like this are treated by the benign Labour party.  And again, knowing the horrors she had experienced decided to return her to her home country, that was the decision, however because it may prove to be bad publicity, they gave her refugee status in Britain.  

The (Conservative) Home Office Minister, Damian Green,  who was in the post the time the Gentleman article was written, 2011, said the following: "The UK has become a world leader in fighting trafficking and has a strong international reputation in this field."  Yes, so maybe the Government did get it wrong on immigration.  

There are common arguments against letting foreign nationals into the country.  All of them flawed.  The first is that they are “benefit scroungers”, putting across the very idea that is wonderful to live in a world where they can live in mild poverty, well this is an argument that has been had had.  There is no truth in it.  Foreign nationals claiming asylum do not get the benefits the natives get, primarily it is food vouchers they are entitled to and perhaps enough money to pay part of their bills but the crass media do not give us this information.  In fact they misinform the public deliberately, and put them into a frenzy.  People reading the Murdoch press literally believe asylum seekers are getting hundreds of pounds a week, even thousands, but this is false.  They receive £37 a week.

The second argument is that they are “taking all our jobs”, again, the intention is to whip the population into a frenzy. The argument is then is “they are taking our jobs”, the Sun, the Daily Mail, and Daily express, preach this fanatical nationalism, without mentioning relevant facts.  These newspaper groups, at least journalists writing for them do, would prefer to close the borders and stop immigration completely.  Rupert Murdoch is Australian, David Cameron roots come from abroad, as does the former Home secretary and leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, the former Labour Party leader, Edward Miliband’s father was Belgian, the list goes on and on.  There are a huge amount of footballers who are foreign nationals and sports personalities in general, without immigration, the N.H.S would collapse.  The number of foreign-owned companies is startling.  How many Chinese “chippies” are there, Indian and Pakistani off-licences, paper shops, take-away foods, how many taxi drivers are foreign nationals? There are professors working in the universities, are we to send all these rascals out of Britain?

So these villains are taking all our jobs.  If the savage media, the government and opposition are so hell-bent against immigration, why not send them all back?  Send all the doctors back, send the nurses back, close all the Indian and Pakistani eating establishments, close down every Chinatown in the country and close down foreign-owned companies like McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Cafe Nero, Ikea, kick out all the footballers who are not British, expel all foreign diplomats and ambassadors, that way there will be no more jobs left to steal.  At the same time, the country would barely exist anymore, the Treasury would lose hundreds of billions of pounds a year, the whole country would be decimated, state pensioners would get a fraction of the money they get today and many would die due to extreme poverty, there would be little money going into education, into the N.H.S, infrastructure, and soon enough the country would be no better than a third-world country.  People would be dying everyday in hospitals, in all hospitals in fact, wages would plummet to almost zero, most people would be homeless, children would be removed from their parents because they would be too poor to feed them.  Immigration has brought an exponential amount of benefits to the country, and this same savage media know as much.  

What is the third argument then?  They are taking our homes or houses.  Reports suggest, well not suggest but say that around 1 in 10 foreign born nationals live in social housing, so this whole xenophobic line that they are no houses or flats to live in because of immigration is a complete fallacy. Many immigrants are not even permitted to enter education or even work, and the slums in which these unfortunates are relocated is totally outrageous.  

One final point on this; the word “our” is illuminating here.  Just because you are born in the country or indeed any country, you are “our” and everybody else is “them”.  That you must be offered this job over “foreigners”, despite being indolent, insolent, unqualified and inexperienced and quite generally, a loathsome person. This is the argument of a fool.  These same fools have been discussing economic migrants and not the unfortunates claiming asylum for safety because they have endured terrible horrors beyond what most people can even imagine.  But why should “we” take these people, why “us”?

That is an interesting question.  The country, from the 21st century participated in the bombing of people’s homes in Afghanistan, Iraq, libya, and with the occupied territories, the British state, along with the U.S have created a mechanism to prevent peace, at the same time selling Israel weapons which are used to perpetuate the occupation-illegal under international law-as have the tens of thousands of settlements that have been built over a number of decades.  Why should Britain allow Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis and Palestinians across their border?

These “two-legged beasts”, as former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin refers to Palestinians, or rather perhaps Arabs in general, have been forcibly removed from their homeland with Full British backing and complicity, so when these Palestinians come to Britain what moral right do they have to refuse them? Well, they often do.  They are able to do so because what is really happening in Israel and the West Bank is a secret to many, because savage media groups choose not to report Israeli aggression.  

With Iraq and Afghanistan, well if you go bombing people's homes, again the following argument should be made: you have a moral duty to house these poor impoverished people.  It is as simple as that, with Libya, these rebels the Government supported, commit terrorist acts against the general population and this is well known, many of which are women. The “rebels” which the Government at the time supported commit shocking acts of violence against their own people, so when they come here from the prevention from being raped or tortured, Britain bears some culpability, it is the same with Syria. The two main political parties, or rather three, supported Bashar-al-Assad regime, as they supported Hosni Mubarak, the former President of Egypt, as the protests were raging, not  Prime Minister at the time but Tony Blair called him “a good man”, the same thing happened with Tunisia, Yemen and so on.  

These poor and impoverished people are just one aspect of these vicious attacks conducted by the media.  The second is the nation’s own citizens.  These are the country’s biggest unfortunates. It is the young, the disabled, the unemployed, the clinically depressed, single parents, jobless families, and working class communities in general.  first I would like to discuss single parents.

It is in the interest of the single parent not to work, if they do they will be robbed by the Government of almost every penny they earn.  They must pay income tax, council tax, rent,  they must pay to see the dentist, a doctor, pharmacist, but the most brutal thing of it all is the fees they are made to pay for  childcare.  There is a word people often use in the country, that word is freedom, but this freedom is without opportunity, and freedom without opportunity is not freedom at all.  These poor women are desperate to work, but if they do all their pennies will be removed from them.  It is as if they have a noose around their necks and they are just waiting for the nooses to tighten.  

They ought to get high paid paid jobs or enter higher education for this to happen, some may argue.  Indeed.  Can a single parent afford to get themselves into tens of thousands of pounds in debt?  The persistent tuition fees top-ups is a concerted effort in prohibiting working class people from going to university.  There is, for these people, little opportunity for work, little opportunity for education, and these single parents, mainly mothers, are living in a sort of Kafkaesque nightmare.  Many live in miserable poverty, they bring up their children and they too live in poverty, and so it goes.

These policies that are created, to many, remain a secret, because the savage media and corporate television media choose not to report it.  They, instead, choose to write about “benefit dodgers” and benefit cheats”.  To make matters worse, as if they were not already bad enough for these young mothers, they are being taxed, or rather, robbed further.  

It is not only single parents that just are affected either.  It is affecting the jobless and other vulnerable groups.  It is pushing people into unsavory areas, into slums, whose lives of appalling suffering is assured.  George Osborne, tells people to be up at 6am, looking for work.  This is from a man who has made more cuts than every hair dresser in Europe combined.  It reads like a dystopian science fiction novel.  You must look harder for jobs, yet where are these jobs, we may ask?  There are jobs, that is true.  These jobs, however, come in the form of temporary and part-time work and “zero-hour contracts”.  Of the full-time vacancies, if one is lucky enough to get one of these, the person will hold on to it as if they were holding on to life itself.  This is the rub.  The employer can make unacceptable demands, treat you like a dog, what is the employee going to do, leave?  A situation has now been created and now, finding a full-time job is like finding a treasure chest full of gold.  While at the same time, legal aid has been cut, so you are no longer liable to get legal aid if you are unfairly dismissed.  

VAT is now 20%, and that is designed to make the poor pay tax. Put it in this context, the poor pay more tax per income earned than any other people.  When work does turn up, it is always in some cancer factory like McDonalds, Burger king or Pizza Hut.  It is these people who have ceased to be human beings.  They live like robots and still can barely afford to live. This is the kind of society that is being created by these these loathsome free market fundamentalists.  

In 1933 Adolf Hitler Was democratically elected chancellor of Germany.  Paul Joseph Goebbels became Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda in 1933, controlling the press, radio and all aspects of culture; Hermann Wilhelm Goering became the Commander of the German airforce in 1934.  He founded the gestapo which he headed until 1936;  Karl Adolf Eichmann was responsible for carrying out Hitler’s Final Solution, administering concentration camps; Walter Richard Rudolf Hess was the deputy leader of the Nazi party from 1934-1941.  Heinrich Himmler led the SS from (1929-45) and the gestapo (1936-45 )

David Cameron assumed the premiership in the United Kingdom in 2010.  Ian Duncan Smith became the Secretary of State for Works and Pensions (DWP);  George Osborne held the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer; William Hague, the foreign Secretary; Theresa May, the Home Secretary; Michael Gove, the Education Secretary

There are a lot of similarities between Adolf Hitler and David Cameron.  The German Chancellor was democratically elected and David Cameron’s party received more votes than any other political party in the country; he became Prime Minister.  But of course Hitler was never re-elected but still carried on ruling Germany.  Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, has spoke of “technocratic governments”, in abolishing what she calls democracy, and replacing it with a government, so they are able to deal with the markets.  It is clear though David Cameron, right from the outset never had the authority to terrorise the population and others like Hitler did.  Britain has functioning democratic forms and factions.  The police have a code of conduct which they are supposed to abide by, as do prisons, schools, the law courts and so forth.  Britain has civilised European neighbours, as well as the European court, the World Court of Justice, the United Nations, the Hague, the International Criminal Court, and so on.  If David Cameron even attempted Hitler’s terror, he would soon be removed from his position and thrown in prison.  

Instead David Cameron does enough to terrorise the wretched poor, and attempts to justify such actions, as not to fall foul of the law.  Corporate television media and the mainstream press is already under virtual control of corporate groups and to a lesser extent, the Government.  The BBC, is state controlled, to varying degrees.  Under this Government Chris Patten was the chairman of the corporation, a man who was a Conservative Member of Parliament and a crazed Thatcherite.  When cuts were announced they mentioned the BBC as being a “government department”.  Greg Dyke, lost his job at the BBC because he had an independent voice.  Dissident voices in the BBC is strictly forbidden.  

Instead of creating gas chambers, labour camps, death squads and so on, David Cameron instead has created economic genocide, forcing people into a hellish poverty, taxing the poor, forcing the desperate out on the streets, cutting money to education, the social services, annihilating the N.H.S, privatising public services, the N.H.S is no longer about helping people, it is about big private power accruing stupendous profits and persecuting the poor who use the service.  Education is no longer about education; it is about greed.  The “free schools” are a perfect example of this, as are the top-up in tuition fees,  and Toby young, who does not call himself a madman, certainly sounds like one when he propagates these free school policies.  The welfare state is no longer about protecting the vulnerable, it is about liquidating and privatising the lot of it. Foreign aid is no longer about helping deprived and poverty-stricken countries, but has more to do with foreign investment and trade deals, many prisons are now privatised, as is much of the probation service, even the police.  Everything has been privatised apart from terrorism and that has been nationalised.  David Cameron then, plays the part of Adolf Hitler.

Ian Duncan Smith parades around like he is a moral crusader.  His job: to help the poor and impoverished, in fact he is playing the part of Joseph Goebbels himself.  He introduced a “bedroom tax” to tighten the noose on the miserable poor, he has capped benefits which is pushing many young people onto the streets, forcing the disabled, the clinically depressed on job seeker’s Allowance, the Universal Jobmatch has been setup to monitor people and get access to their online activity which is illegal under European and international law, this Orwellian idea was introduced without a hint from the media, the miserable poor are also being forced to pay council tax too.  The young are bearing much of the attacks.  The Goering sadist has  a favoured discrimination law, against is the young, which is why, if you are under 35, you get a pittance of money to pay your rent if you are out of work, so little in fact that if you don’t work, it is at home with your parents or on the streets, or perhaps they can go to hostels with maniacs, drunkards, heroine addicts and scoundrels.  Ian Duncan Smith is the Propaganda Minister in all but name, inducing people that he doing his best to help the poor, when in reality he is giving them a death sentence.  

George Osborne, has a kind of evil lurking within him.  Instead of death squads butchering people on the streets, George Osborne who plays the part of Heinrich Himmler, employs economic death squads.  VAT rose to 20%, as to force the poor to pay more tax, and the rich paying less, cut income tax for the wealthy, but not for the poor and creating tax havens for the millionaires.  

Cutting public services is a form of terror, of oppression, of ethnic cleansing.  Every on the nefarious government is based on money, capital and stupendous profits.  Anybody not fitting in with this framework is eliminated from society, that roughly is what fascism does.  Hitler eliminated Jews, blacks, Slavs, the sick, the infirm, the disabled and so on.  George Osborne playing the part of Himmler does not have the support of gassing and torturing people so instead he uses economic warfare as a viable alternative.  We are all in it together, so the saying goes.  They somehow justify economic warfare, something this Himmler calls cuts.

At least 100 billion pounds a year is lost through tax evasion/avoidance.  That would pay off the deficit and the cuts would be unnecessary.  In their first five-year term they spent around 20 billion terrorising Afghanistan alone, the imperial family are paid huge amounts of money, stolen from the taxpayer of course.  Bankers bonuses and extortionate wages are acceptable, yet the wretched poor and their lavish lifestyles are not.  Billions a year are spent on neo-liberal institutions like the European Union, the IMF and the World Bank, not to mention terrorist organisations like NATO.

This economic warfare, an extension of class warfare is successful because the British electorate are far more docile today than at any other time in history.  Not until large amounts of the population sign petitions, write letters of complaint, demonstrate in their tens of thousands, will things change.  The church, charity organisations, volunteer groups, NGOs, influential public figures all have a duty to speak out against these social Darwinist designs.   George Osborne has a lot in common with Heinrich Himmler.  Osborne likes his favoured brand of death squads, in the form of economic terrorism.

William Hague acted as Cameron’s bulldog, fighting his battles abroad.  His boss had no idea what to do abroad.  William Hague playing the part of Herman Goering.  This man bent Cameron’s ear on bombing Libya, destroying the country’s infrastructure.

A stupendous amount of Conservative members of Parliament have been keen to exit the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union completely.  Reasons for these things are seldom reported in the mainstream and corporate television media, but the reasons are obvious.  The Government believed there were too many rights, too many liberties democratic freedoms and human rights.  They would like to curtail them which is why they wish to pull away from such institutions.  

William Hague as Goering, acted as a hawkish anti-European.  Pulling out of the European court means the lack of maternity rights, paternity rights, worker rights, dismantling the labour laws, for example making it easier for employers to sack people.  It is about squashing people’s rights slowly.  The European Court of Human Rights exists to make sure countries like Britain do not violate and flounder international law. In Ecuador, during this time and and indeed after it, prisoners, all prisoners have the democratic right to vote, and so they did, most of which voted for Rafael Correa.  In Britain, such luxuries remained outrageous.  Margaret Thatcher outlawed prisoners’ voting rights in the 1980s.  David Cameron, in parliament, even went so far as to say “it makes me feel physically ill”, giving prisoners the vote, ignoring the European Court.  If the law is broken by the general population, they go to prison if the crime is serious enough, when government do it they get fines issued by the European Court. 

When the Conservatives were in opposition Liam Fox was the shadow Health Secretary, but even by his standards, his social Darwinism went too far: he wanted to create an American-based healthcare system based on insurance.  In other words, if you are poor, you will not get any access to healthcare treatment, David Cameron put Andrew Lansley is his place, five years later when they were elected lansley unveiled his horrific ideas for the NHS.  labour started the privatisation project under Blair, but he would take it much further than that.  He was comfortable giving four-fifths of the NHS budget, 80 billion pounds to general practitioners, coercing them to act as accountants.  They then would use this money to buy the patient's’ treatment.  It was based on competition,and the Mps could, if they wished, make financial gains by such transactions, and private companies would bid on patients’ treatment, the lowest bidder wins, which means the most inadequate treatment.  These reforms were so “complicated”, nobody understood them.

An apartheid system has been created in Britain.  But it is worse than that.  It is Social Darwinism in its purest form.  The rich have the greatest healthcare in the world; the poorest the worst.  Yet it is always accepted.  Britain is in the grip of fascism, and this does not come in the form of Tory Ministers but the free market itself.  It is not gas chambers, death squads and the like.  For the idea is simple, to quote a  Greek communist, “die, or be killed”.

5th-10th March, 2013

postscript

Since this was written a great deal more has happened and this warfare has reached sporadic levels.  In August of 2015 I signed a petition with some 300,000 others to get data released from the government.  This data was on deaths of welfare recipients after being declared fit for work: 10, 600 died after the first six-weeks.  Yes, ten-thousand-six-hundred people.  But it gets worse.  As a direct consequence of the government's actions over 81,000 welfare recipients died.  One young man, Mark Walsh, had starved to death.  After the police came to his bedsit they found half of a banana in his fridge.  He had starved because he was no longer able to get a taxi to shop for food, as he was physically disabled.  The government reduced his money to just £40 a work, and he had no family or friends and died alone.  This is one case of very many.  This is not a welfare program; it is a eugenics program.  A social darwinist experiment to eradicate degenerates and useless and worthless beings.  What has been created is year zero: there exists only work and death.  Who is to blame: you and me and everybody else in this pitiless and worthless country.  

"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed."

Adolf Hitler

the "Chronic Outsider"

Mike Leigh refers to himself as a "chronic outsider". Will Self, the writer, called Leigh "a great artist". Both these statements are probably true. Mike Leigh was born in Salford in 1943, and since the age of 17 has lived in London and for the entirety of his working career he has been largely ignored in his own country. This is unsurprising and people should not be shocked how the country's artists' are treated, if they are not writing, directing and saying the things that are moderate enough for people not to get too concerned about, they are just ignored. If they gain unwanted attention then they, whoever that will be, shall be denigrated, criticised, and in the midst of this it will mainly be propaganda and lies. Mike Leigh, however is ignored.

He called his 1977 play, Abigail's Party, a play about "vacuous lifestyles".  When he says this one thinks of Chekhov, and we can not help thinking about characters such as Astrov, Chebutykin or Vanya.  

"Those who live a century or two after us", says Astrov in Uncle Vanya, "and despise us for leading lives so stupid and tasteless, perhaps they'll find a way to be happy, but for us-there's only one hope for you and me, and when we're resting in our graves we may have visions. Even pleasant ones perhaps. Yes, my dear fellow in our whole district there are only two decent, civilised people-you and I. But ten years or so of this contemptible, parochial existence have completely got us down. This poisoned atmosphere has poisoned our blood and we've become as second rate as the rest of them."

The two men, Astrov and Vanya, have led "vacuous lives", but that is not to say they are not people without substance, this is not the case, and the same applies with many of Mike Leigh's characters, in fact a common theme in his films, just like we see in Chekhov, are wasted lives. Abigail's Party is the only one of Mike Leigh's works I can think of where "high culture" is briefly shown. And we see this through Lawrence. He plays Beethoven's 5th Symphony, dying from a heart attack during this process, he also, quite vitriolically showcases his Shakespeare books to his guests. When Beverley, his wife, insists on putting a record on of Demis Roussos, the Egyptian Greek pop singer, Lawrence calls him "that caterwauling Greek". During the play which takes place in a single scene, Lawrence remains the "chronic outsider", the cultural differences remaining apparent to everyone. He asks one of the guests at the party if they "know James Galway". Galway was an Irish flute player. He then proceeds to speak to the same guest, Sue:

"I think that musicians and artists are very lucky people. They are born with one great advantage in life...Most people just drift through life without any real aims. They are weak. You've got to get up and do something about it...people always seem to be against you...but it's certainly an uphill battle"

Here Lawrence's passion for high culture is blended in with the idea of wasted lives, and as Leigh says, "vacuous lives", it is clear Lawrence admires and at the same time envies the artist; he is an estate agent, and it is not even implied but it is clear he is, along with the other characters in the play, unhappy with life. But Lawrence in particular resembles Astrov more than the others, because he has, perhaps something about him the others do not have. He is vitriolic, he is passionate; the characters in Abigail's Party are uncomfortable in their own peculiar way. Lawrence though knows he is leading a "vacuous life", the others don't. He attempts to prompt stimulating debate and conversation, and it is not even his failure when he fails; it is theirs. He is aware of his contemptible position in life, the others are happy to lead their lives of insignificance without realising it. The irony of course is that Lawrence knows all this

Shortly after he asks Tony, another guest at the party, if he knows Shakespeare, without much of a response, he once again turns to Sue, as she is the only one that seems to be capable of any sort of culture outside the Demis Rousoss' and Tom Jones' of the world. Shakespeare is, "part of our heritage of course. It's not something you can actually read", and he puts the book away. That last sentence is important, because, as is clear, nobody is interested and nobody reads Shakespeare in these circles certainly, regrettably Mike Leigh would never visit matters of culture again.

Mike Leigh's best and most iconic work of the 1980s is Meantime. The director has a talent for being political and not being political at all. In Alan Bleasdale's Boys From the Blackstuff the word Thatcher is used sparingly, if at all. Yet it worked, as was clear the men it portrays have their souls tormented, their spirit broken and their lives totally shattered. To watch the series and not to feel empathy, compassion or anger, would merit a serious case of psychopathy. People watching it know, whether they say it or not, are battered and bruised as a direct result of Thatcherism, these people, the working classes that is, would be designated by the by the Prime Minister as "the enemy within", however, that was still to come. The Boys from the Black stuff was made between 1980-82.

Meantime, shall we say, is a little less subtle than Bleasdale's emotional drama. The Leigh film is set around the Pollack family and every one of them are unemployed and it is clear none of them will get jobs; in fact barely anybody works, and one would come to realise there is little work available. It is in this 1984 drama where we see the real insignificance of people's lives. There is no hope, not even a glimmer of it, their lives are so vacuous and empty that there appears to be no solution but more of the same cycle of unemployment and misery. This is a product of Thatcherism: no hope, only poverty, squalor and destitution.

If there is any hope in the film it comes from Mark Pollack. When he is at the job centre, he shows he is something more than a working class victim of Thatcher's tireless class war:

Job centre employee.  Done any work in the past two weeks?

Mark. Yeah. I've been working for the police. Giving them various information on robberies, and murders, no, that was the week before last. This week I'm spying on dole office workers, determining their movements between twelve and two in the afternoon.

Job centre employee. You don't make our job any easier you know.  

Mark. We are not talking about your job, we're are talking about our jobs.

Job centre employee. Can I have my pen please?

Mark. Our pen!

Mark is astutely aware, much unlike the others in the film, of the putridity of his situation, and he is rebelling against it. When his brother is offered a job by his aunt, he makes sure he doesn't succeed. He tells him "don't go" and when Colin asks why not, he responds by saying "it ain't good for you". Some families inevitably in time of extreme hardship pull-together, help each other out and whatever else. The Pollack family do not do this; it is not their way. Mark calls his parents by their first names; he disregards and disrespects them that much. His mother is incapable of affection, as is his father, the only geniality that exists is between the two brothers. Mark, resembles Lawrence, he is the only one not just in the Pollack family but in the whole film, who knows what is happening, and it is true, only he is capable of doing anything productive in their lives, for the others, if their was any hope, it has gone, never to return. Such are the perversities of Thatcherism. 

His relationship with his father is more hostile than any other characters in the film. He calls him "dad" once, every other time her refers to him as "Frank", which of course is his name. In one scene, which I think captures the spirit of Mark's astute ideas, which we seldom see, well they are hardly ideas, but we can interpret them to be as such:

Frank. You want money, get out and earn it.

Mark.  What, like you?

Frank. I've done my stint mate, don't you worry.

Mark. What, on the never-never?

Frank. What's that supposed to mean?

Mark.  You don't own nothing.

Frank.  Of course I do.

Mark.  What?

Frank. You're sitting on half of it.

Mark.  What, this chair?

Frank. Yeah.

Mark.  How can one chair be half of a three-piece suit?

Frank.  Always gotta have a chat in here, eh?

Mark.  You don't own this chair, you own this flat, you don't own nothing.  

Frank owns nothing and Mark knows it. Nobody owns anything in the Pollack family, nobody works in the family, in fact the only person that works is John, the husband of Mark's aunt. But again that is the theme of his 1991 film Life Is Sweet, which is a contrast between the lower-middle classes and the working classes. Auntie Barbara and John represent the middle class, and Frank and his wife, Mavis, resent them because they have what they want. There is just no spectrum of hope; and the other thing dragging Mark back is the environment he belongs to; the thing who put them in this sorrowful state in the first place, of course is Thatcherism.

The "chronic outsider" in Life Is Sweet, if it is anybody, can only be Nicola. Her sister, "Nat" works, as do her parents, she however, does not and neither does she want to. She has an eating disorder, she wastes her life by moseying around the empty house through the day, but unlike Mark, she has a supportive family. In Meantime Mark's parents do not smile once, Nicola's can't stop smiling, they are lower-middle class but by no means well off. Nicola comes out with phrases almost like a child, calling people Tories, capitalists, racists. We never really see her go out. She languishes in that room of hers. She is capable of so much more but is so lethargic, it seems impossible for her to achieve anything. She wants to but is unable to do so.

We rarely see Nicola being serious about herself and the world. We see this a few times. The person she spends time with outside of the family is someone I will refrain from calling her boyfriend, but we see him twice, and they have sex. He is not somebody that perhaps is an ideal match for a girl such as Nicola, or indeed any girl but he attempts to challenge her ideals and views. This does not entirely help her a great deal because he is hardly subtle, sensitive or pleasant about it. In fact he calls her obnoxious names and hits her on her head:

Nicola's Lover. What do you care about?

Nicola.  Eh?

Nicola's Lover. You got these fucking books upstairs: women who love men too much, men who hate women, women who love and women in love, women's ruin the female eunuch, have you read any of that crap?

Nicola. What's it to you?

Nicola's Lover. Have you?

Nicola. Course.

Nicola's Lover. And what have you learned from it?

Nicola. That I'm a feminist.

Nicola's Lover. And what's a feminist?

Nicola.  Oh come on.

Nicola's Lover. No, no, no, what does it mean?

Nicola.  Stop being antagonistic.

Nicola's Lover. I'm not being antagonistic, I'm trying to have an intelligent conversation with you. Are you capable of that? Eh? I don't think you are, are you? Really bit vacant, ain't you? Bit of an air-head. Nothing going on. Bit dumb. Bit dizzy. Dimbo bimbo. Dumb blondster, ain't you?

 

Nicola isolates everyone around her. We see Nat at the pub with her friends, she engages in banter with her parents; her mother, Wendy, helps Aubrey, an absurd but joyous Mike Leigh creation, with the opening of his new restaurant; Andy, her father, goes to the pub with an old friend, not a very pleasant one, it must be conceded, but with Nicola, there is none of that. Instead, she spends her days eating copious amounts of chocolate only to regurgitate it. Lawrence was stuck in a hapless environment, where he was trapped; Mark was from a family that impresses no one and thus was his downfall. With Nicola, the circumstances are somewhat different. She has loving, benevolent, caring parents, a concerned sister, but still, she is isolated, alone, caged, unable to escape and create a better world, a better life for herself. She is lost, trapped, ensnared, and is so irrational, nobody can possibly speak reason to her. We see her life ebbing away before our eyes.

Life is sweet is a comedy, we may even call it a dark comedy, but like the other two Mike Leigh works highlighted, it is a comedy of sorts. The best and most important scene in the film however contains no comedy. It is revealing, emotional, thought-provoking and insightful. In this short scene, we understand Nicola, empathise with her, some of us may even cry tears for her. After the scene is over, once alone, she cries; she wants help but is incapable of asking for it. We want her to give in and confess her feelings to her mother, however, this never happens. But after the pivotal scene, there is hope, perhaps. She could change, could she? In this scene then Nicola's mother, whilst doing the household chores, enters her daughter's room:

Nicola. I am happy

Wendy. You've lost all your friends. I don't see them knocking on the door anymore.

Nicola. I don't want friends, they disappoint you.

Wendy. I mean you say you want to change the world. You're supposed to be political but I don't see you doing anything about it.

Nicola. I am political and shut the door.

Wendy. How are you political?

Nicola. I read the paper, I watch the news. I'm more political than you.

Wendy. Oh blimey Nicola. We can all watch the telly. You should be out there helping the old aged-pensioners or going on marches or whatever.

Nicola. Marches are a waste of time, it's boring.

Wendy. If you put your money where your mouth is you should be joining one of these socialist what's it groups. Or the nuclear disarmament whatever but you don't.  All you do is sit here in this room staring at the walls and tweaking and twitching

Nicola. And you're so perfect?

Wendy. No. I'm not perfect but I haven't given up. I'm still out there fighting and I tell you what Nicola, every time I look out that window and I see that rusty old caravan sitting there do you know what it says to me? It says to me there's a man who hasn't given up either. Who's still out there fighting, looking for his dream.

Nicola. Well it says to me there's a man who's getting greedy.

Wendy. Greedy? Your Dad? He's the most unselfish man I've ever met. Do you know he's up at six o'clock every morning, slogging his guts out in a job he hates, which is more than you do and he still comes home at the end of the week with sod all.

Nicola. I'm not prepared to be exploited

Wendy. Exploited? You're not prepared to work full stop.

Nicola. You've accepted Nat as a plumber and you didn't like that at first.

Wendy. No I didn't. I didn't like it but I can see now I was wrong because she's happy

Nicola. I don't know what I want to do yet.

Wendy. Oh don't you? Well you had your chance Nicola. When you were seventeen when you were at the college doing your three A levels you were going great and then suddenly you stopped. You stopped eating, you stopped everything, you ended up eight weeks in the hospital.

Nicola. Well you put me there. I didn't want to go.

Wendy. Oh for God's sake Nicola you were at death's door.

Nicola. You were trying to control my life.

Wendy. You were dying -

Nicola. No I wasn't.

Wendy. Yes you were.

Nicola. I'd know if I was dying.

Wendy. Doctor Harris told us you had two weeks to live. You didn't know that did you?

We can pose an argument and claim all working class families are dysfunctional. The Pollack family are dysfunctional, no other argument will do. This family however are different. They do not have a lot of money but they are happy, barring Nicola. They do not have much but nevertheless are happy. It is clear the Pollacks are victims of Thatcherite thuggery but Nicola and company are also victims to the perversities of the nation state. The workers of the family, who get paid a pittance, do not believe in idleness and meanwhile, have their well-earned money robbed by the state, translated benevolently as taxes. But for Lawrence, Mark and Nicola, they are everywhere. We read them in Chekhov, Beckett, Kafka, Gogol, Steinbeck. They are victims; perhaps Joyce's Stephen Dedalus was correct when he said "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". They are, after all, “chronic outsiders”.