The Unorthodox Website Blog

Today, September 29th, is my favorite performer’s 73rd birthday, Jerry Lee Lewis, who performs in UK again in late October, two London shows. I’m also seeing him in Paris in November.

Today is also the 17th anniversary of the death of my partner, George Miller. I try to think of it as his 17th birthday on the Other Side, but of course it is always a sad day for me, bringing back painful memories.

I’m just back from the Kings of Rock’n'Roll Weekender at Sand Bay Holiday Village in Somerset. I enjoyed most of the performers, but it was the most disorganized, chaotic Weekender I’ve ever been to.

The camp itself had a restaurant which was total chaos. A mixture of self-service and waiter service, where you had to be served with first and last courses, but could if you wish get up and serve yourself with the main course.

The son of an American friend of mine is in Bolivia working at a school. He seems to be something of a liberal ‘leftie’ to use American parlance, or ‘progressive’ to use a more universal term. In a recent letter to his mother he used the phrase ‘the tyrant of the North’ and then described how USAID is used to make Bolivians dependent on the USA. Aid has always been a way of controlling the developing world; just look at how the World Bank, IMF, etc. dictate privatization policies in return for loans and aid. Not just saddling these poor countries with huge interest-gathering debt, but also making sure their natural and human resources are exploited by the American dominated multi-nationals.

No longer can these developing countries turn to the Soviet bloc for aid, as that has collapsed.

There is constant realignment on the British political scene. This is not always obvious, as for many decades the House of Commons has been dominated by two political parties, the Conservatives and Labour, who have both formed many governments over this period. But the realignments have involved the emergence of the Social Democrats some decades ago, who later joined with the Liberal Party to become the Liberal Democrats, and the resultant lurch to the Thatcherite right of the Labour Party, which has now become informally known as New Labour. It bears very little resemblance to old Labour, seeking to pander to the property owning, get-rich-quick middle-class ‘yuppy’ type voters, and abandoning its traditional working-class base.

The ‘first past the post’ electoral system used in Britain, and also in the USA, ensures strong governments with large majorities, but often based on minority votes. This is because most votes are completely wasted under this very undemocratic system.

Although the podcast interviews have stopped for the time being, things have been going on behind the scenes.

After-life researchers are seeking empirical evidence that the ‘Diana’ entity is indeed who she says she is, though the numerous interviews still available on the Internet (see http://www.archive.org/details/DianaSpeaks or http://www.sessionswithspirit.info/) already provide considerable evidence from voice patterns, phraseology, emotions, intimate knowledge of Diana’s life and the very energy of the Diana personality that it is her.

I am very pleased to report that one of the new developments is that the ‘Diana’ entity via her voice channel, Andrew Russell-Davies, has talked over the phone with a materialization medium who is, with others, seeking empirical proof as to whether it really is her or not.

I can’t say exactly how this evidence will be obtained, but these materializations are repeatable experiments occurring regularly, so there are many possibilities.

I really feel there is currently no political party of the Left I feel happy about joining.

What is needed is some sort of re-alignment of leftwing politics in this country. Ideally, this would involve a shift to the Left from the Labour Party itself, or alternatively the Party splitting into two, with the leftwing finally deciding it is time to launch a real Labour Party based on Socialism, since New Labour is now guided not by Karl Marx’s ideas but by the ideology of Margaret Thatcher. Even the Cooperative Party (part of the Labour Party of course) seems under the control and influence of New Labour politicians like Gordon Brown, rather than influenced by the ideas of Robert Owen who started the cooperative movement.

Outside of the Labour Party, we have the various ultra-leftist parties, which can be categorized into three sub-groups.

I am now narrowing down my choices to probably two: remaining outside all political parties/groupings, or joining the Cooperative Party.

Both the CPB and CPGB have failed, so far, to answer my questions. The Cooperative Party does not need to answer or clarify anything for me: I know they are committed to multi-party democracy with genuine free elections, and that they will promote the Cooperative movement, which I see as one of the main forms of Socialist public  ownership in the future.

Yes it would mean I’d be expected to vote Labour in elections, but the same is true of the CPB which puts up very few candidates of its own.

But I still haven’t decided whether to join any political grouping. I’d like, for instance, to see what direction Labour goes in after losing the next General Election, or after dumping Gordon Brown as leader.