ISRAEL /PALESTINE – THERE CAN BE NO MILITARY SOLUTION

“There must be red lines. The importance of the ceasefire debate is to address that issue, and to insist that in devastating Gaza and imposing collective punishment Israel has crossed a line…The devastation of Gaza will probably create a new generation of Palestine resistance and, given the paucity of any political alternatives, may well drive many towards organisations even more nihilistic and extreme than Hamas…There can be no military solution to the conflict…The starting point for any political solution is the acknowledgement of Israel/Palestine as a shared land of 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians, and the need for equal rights for both, whether within a single state or two states.

‘To hold everyone’s humanity – that is the task of the hour’, wrote Jewish writer and activist Joshua Leifer”.

Kenan Malik, The Observer.

ADDENDUM: NETANYAHU IS A DEVIOUS DISASTER

“Netanyahu liked the idea of the Palestinians as a house divided – Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza – because it allowed him to insist that there was no Palestinian partner he could do business with. That meant no peace process, no prospect of a Palestinian state and no demand for Israeli territorial concessions…In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: ‘Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas…This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank’.”

Jonathon Freedland, The Guardian.

FURTHER ADDENDUM: THIS BRINGS US TO SIR KEIR STARMER

“Starmer, the former human rights lawyer, pledged his support for Israel, even as it broke international human rights law. As his own party began to protest, Starmer’s team dismissed it as grumbling from a few Muslim malcontents and continuity Corbynistas. Posters went up in Luton and Birmingham, naming Labour councillors who had acquiesced in their leader’s views and advising local people not to vote for them any more…The Labour leadership had no grasp of grassroots’ feelings.”

Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian.

“THERE HAS TO BE A VISION OF WHAT COMES NEXT. IN OUR VIEW, IT HAS TO BE A TWO-STATE SOLUTION”. JOE BIDEN

There’s an urgent need to establish the borders of an independent Palestine to block Israel’s grinding colonisation of the West Bank. The Palestinian state would only comprise some 22% of the historic Palestine of 1947, when the UN voted for a partition. Even today, Arabs account for roughly half of the population of the area covering Israel, West Bank and Gaza.

But since the Oslo discussions in 1993, Israel has unilaterally (against the UN) increased the number of settlers in the West Bank from some 110,000 to almost 500,000. And Netanyahu’s Government wants to double that number!

What follows Netanyahu remains to be seen, but the delusion that Israel can manage the occupation by caging the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and then largely ignoring them, has been exposed as a delusion. The two-state solution is the answer, as per Biden.

Based on an article by Chris Mc Greal, former Guardian correspondent in Jerusalem.

WHAT WE HAVE IS NOT HONEST POLITICS BUT “MAGICAL THINKING”

“Jam today, austerity tomorrow after the next election – that was the thrust of Hunt’s Autumn Statement… Hunt is loading a further round of painful real-term spending reductions on to public services, but after the General Election… But no one really expects the next Government (Labour or Tory) to be able to stick to the spending envelope outlined by Hunt. It is magical thinking. But magical thinking from which there is little electoral incentive for Labour to deviate. Voters deserve a return to a politics that is honest about the trade-offs we face as a country: without finding to improve our public infrastructure. Britain will long be locked into a painfully low-growth future”.

The Observer, Editorial.

MESSAGE TO RACHEL REEVES – LABOUR’S MAJOR TASK SHOULD BE REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH, RATHER THAN FIXATION ON GROWTH

“There is no reason why millions should live in squalid conditions and be expected to make do on poverty wages. Spending power should be restored to essential public services, which have been starved of funds because of a spiteful neo-liberal ideology that prioritises the needs of ‘economy’ over the people. The fact that thus economy only works for the privileged minority is never questioned. Incidentally, increasing the spending power of the economically disenfranchised majority will itself be a great boost to economic growth.”

Derrick Joad, The Observer.

POSTSCRIPT

Well over a century ago, Joseph Chamberlain MP, who was not a socialist or even Labour (he was a Liberal and father of Neville Chamberlain) went much further than Starmer and Reeves: “My aim in life is to make life pleasanter for the great majority; I do not care if it becomes in the process less pleasant for the well-to-do minority”.

(Tel’s view is that Joe sounds like a CLPD member).

INSIGHT INTO BIRMINGHAM’S BUDGET CRISIS

Birmingham City Councillor, Phil Davis (Chair of the Licensing and Public Protection Committee) had this to say to The Guardian – “The £4 billion funding crisis in the country’s overall local government, sets the real context. Birmingham has lost 11,000 staff and £1 billion in government grant since 2011. This loss of capacity has damaged essential services and the council’s ability to manage. From 2012, the newly elected Labour council successfully paid off a billion-pound equal-pay debt inherited from the previous Tory-Liberal Democrat administration. Labour also pulled the city out of a hugely expensive information technology scheme called Service Birmingham… After 10 years of drastic staff and service reductions in Birmingham, the latest dose of Tory austerity can only damage statutory services.”

IMPORTANT POINTS TO NOTE IN THE DEBATE CONCERNING REFUGEES/ASYLUM SEEKERS

• In order to claim asylum in the UK, a person has to actually be here, on UK soil. It can’t be done at an embassy or online, and there is “no asylum visa”.
• Since they have been forbidden to work while seeking asylum, most, asylum seekers have no UK references or deposits, when landlords, not unreasonably, request both. Thus a considerable number become street homeless. Furthermore, cash-starved councils, however willing, cannot provide accommodation they don’t have.
• Labour governments enacted all four major pieces of legislation banning racial descrimination (1965, 1968, 1976, 2000). But Blair’s government brought the border inland to define eligibility to services. And built three new detention centres for migrants and asylum seekers.

Professor Robert Moore, The Guardian.

• “Rather than taking a stand to win support for moral and workable policies, politicians and commentators generally prefer to exploit public anxieties, that they themselves have nurtured as an alibi for the pursuit of even more brutal policies.”

Kenan Malik, The Observer.

Note, fear of Farage – “He can move numbers, he can move polls, he can move people.”
Tory MP.

• “It is clear that ministers ignored warnings about Rwanda’s suitability for a migration deal, and that the Home Office made mistakes in trying to carry out the plan”.

Daniel Trilling, The Guardian.

Note the words of Sir Thomas More in the film “A Man For All Seasons”:

“This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast… and if you cut them down do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”

• “The European Social Survey, which has sampled attitudes every two years since 2001, reported that British views on immigration and its economic and cultural impact, have changed over the past two decades, becoming significantly more favorable after 2016.”

INSIGHT INTO MIGRATION

Net migration to the UK in the 12 months to the end of June this year was 672,000. This is co-existing with a tight labour market, with nearly a million jobs vacancies. Net immigration has remained high, though fewer EU workers are now part of the UK labour force. The skill set of the non-EU immigrants is different and their participation in the labour market is lower. Many are students (and dependants) who are vital to UK universities. Plus refugees e.g. from Afghanistan, Ukraine. Also those from Hong Kong with overseas passports.

EU migrants came to the UK to work and there were jobs available. Some EU migrants are still coming. “The Government will make things worse by tightening the conditions under which migrant workers can come to the UK, e.g. by raising the qualifying salary level for worker visas and major restrictions on dependents… Firms etc already struggling to recruit may find it even harder, thus damaging the economy and its recovery prospects”.

This article is based on an analysis by The Sunday Times‘ economist, David Smith.

THE DECLINING SNP

“The SNP’s accounts confirm that SNP membership has fallen by 30,000 in the past two years and now stands at 74,000. Income from membership fell from £2,516,854 in 2021 to £2,286,944 in 2022. Donations were down from £695,351 in 2021, to £368,538.”
Private Eye

YOU’VE JUST GOT TO LAUGH!

Given the Tories’ abject failure on the economy, the NHS, the education system, the environment, water quality and so on, how can the Tories condemn those people who turn to nitrous oxide (i.e. laughing gas )?!!

Extract from a letter in the national press