The Unorthodox Website Blog

In the past couple of weeks I’ve played some of my old vinyl. I have a considerable collection of 1950s-style rock’n'roll (also traditional Country Music). I’m also slowly acquiring a CD collection. None of this stuff do I play that often, finding so many other things to do when I’m at home. TV and the computer taking up much of my spare time. I tend to play Country audio cassettes I made up years ago when on long train/coach journeys or sunbathing. I haven’t adopted the fad of everyone under 40 to go around permanently with earphones/Ipods, oblivious to the world around them, and I haven’t traded in my record player, CD player or audio cassette player for an I-pod. The technology, time, know-how and hassle required to transfer my considerable vinyl, CD and audio cassette tracks to an I-pod would just not be worth the effort – I’ve had enough trouble trying to transfer VHS stuff to DVD.

My partner, who transited to Spirit in 1991, would have been 67 today. As usual on anniversaries, I wrote him a posthumous letter. In the letter I wrote in the past hour or so, I suggested he might try a new way of communicating. In the past he has answered questions in these letters very quickly, showing me where things were hidden in the flat, for instance.

Today was no exception. He has communicated to me in various ways since his transition, and only recently via two different methods he advised that an outbreak of eczema was caused by my developing sensitivity to shellfish, and also that the place where my friend Steve was moving to (in two days time actually) had a connexion with Bexhill. When I rang Steve, he said without prompting they were moving just off the Bexhill Road.

I just wanted to write a blog thanking all the people, and animals, who have helped me over the years. It is impossible to name them all even if I could remember, but some readily come to mind.

My mother, now in her 96th year, who brought me up in very difficult circumstances.  I needed constant hospital treatment and operations as a child, and her marriage to a violent, frequently drunken and abusive husband broke up when I was only 6. In later years, as I grew up into a teenager and into my twenties, she had to cope with my involvement in politics and the peace movement, my joining in demonstrations which got me arrested, and culminating in my becoming a fanatical Stalinist, plastering my bedroom wall with Soviet/Maoist posters, creating a secular altar to Communism and insisting on putting a ‘Vote Communist’ poster in the window of the flat we shared.

The spirit of Diana (former Princess of Wales) has recorded another interview with American channeler Rose Campbell, conducted thru Diana’s voice-channel Andrew Russell-Davis, an Englishman living in Germany. The interview was conducted over the phone, and can be heard by scrolling down to the May 2010 podcast at the bottom of the following page: http://www.dianaspeaks.info/CurrentMessages.html

In the interview Diana welcomes the new coalition government led by David Cameron and his deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, then goes on to discuss with Rose the problem of teenage violence and related subjects.

I don’t agree with everything they are saying, and Diana, Rose and Andrew are fully aware of my reservations particularly about compulsory military service. I think the last thing violent teenage gang-members need is to have guns, bayonets and even more lethal weapons put into their hands and sent out to places like Afghanistan where they might well think it would be fun to rape and kill a few innocent civilians which would no doubt be dismissed as ‘collateral damage’.

As I said, things changing very quickly. Nick Clegg now announced as Deputy Prime Minister, whatever that means in practice. This coalition certainly gives the Liberal Democrats a much higher profile since they are now in government, albeit as very much the junior partner in a coalition, but it could be a double-edged sword as they’ll have to take a share of the flak for unpopular policies the government adopts.

On the issue of Trident renewal, the LibDems have predictably had to give way, with just a review on the cost. But let’s face it, we were never going to get like-for-like replacement of Trident scrapped by either a Tory-LibDem or a Labour-LibDem coalition.

However events could force a re-think. The mounting cost and increasing irrelevance of Trident could well bring about a change in policy. And above all Barack Obama could pull the plug at any time.

Things have been changing daily the past few days, it’s a job to keep up. So a coalition has now been agreed between David Cameron and Nick Clegg, still to be approved by their party hierarchies but this seems likely.

The difficulty with a Labour-LibDem coalition or pact was always the maths – it would not give such a government a majority in the House without the support of Nationalists and the one Green MP.

The difficulty with the Conservative-LibDem coalition will be their differing policies in various areas.

The main point, however, is political reform, particularly of the voting system. We don’t yet know the details of the agreement. All we know is that there is to be a fixed term parliament. Even this is in doubt in the current situation, since the coalition could come apart and then a new election might become a necessity.

The Liberal Democrats now have a rare chance to obtain a fairer voting system for the British people, and break the monopoly of the two-party domination of government which has continued for too long.

The current late-day offer by the Tories, on realizing a deal might be cut with Labour now Gordon Brown has announced he will resign by the Autumn, is in my view just not good enough. A referendum on the Alternative Transferable Vote is a half-hearted measure given grudgingly. If we are going to have a referendum it should include the three options now being discussed:

• Keep the present first-past-the-post system
• Change to the Alternative Transferable Vote (where candidates are numbered by voters in order of choice, and the ones with lowest votes eliminated)
• A fully proportional system, where seats are allocated strictly according to the number of votes cast for each party.

The Labour Party’s offer is much better, switch to an Alternative Transferable Vote system for the next General Election, and put to the electorate in a referendum whether they want to go the whole hog to a PR system.

This was a discussion I had with a friend during the General Election when I said one reason I was voting for Lib-Dem councillors was that Party’s commitment to social housing. My friend expressed the opinion that social housing was dead in the water and on its way out.

This may appear to be the case to those on council or housing association waiting lists for years with little or no hope of ever getting a home that way. It is not the case for everybody, nor is it the same all over the country.

In Glasgow, for instance, where my partner’s relations live council housing is very much alive, and there is very little trouble even single people getting council homes. I myself live in a council flat, and new tenants have moved in the flat next door twice over the past few years. So even in London council homes are still being allocated to people.

I’ve gotten the best outcome I could realistically have hoped for under the very unfair electoral system we have. That is a hung parliament, with the Lib-Dems effectively deciding the nature of the next government.

Cameron has offered the Lib-Dems virtually nothing in exchange for them supporting his Party’s program. The offer will undoubtedly be rejected by Clegg and his colleagues.  Electoral reform, or at least a referendum on it (not just another ineffective Parliamentary Committee) is the minimum price for Lib-Dem support, and even then there are so many differences on other issues, not least the EU.

What will eventually happen, after days or even a week or more, is that Labour will form a government with support from the Lib-Dems and other smaller parties such as the one Green MP, Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the SDP and Alliance MPs from Northern Ireland.

The EU is by no means perfect. It is, basically, a union of capitalist nations in Europe. For this reason most leftwing parties oppose membership of the EU and adoption of the Euro. They claim the EU outlaws public ownership.

In actual fact this is not the case. The EU has laws against monopolies, but this is as much directed against corporate mergers as against State monopolies.

In any case it is clear that public ownership is not outlawed in the EU. Many railways, post office/mail networks, etc. in the EU remain State owned and controlled. Also there are many cooperatives and mutuals within the EU, which is another form of public ownership.

My view, and experience, is that a lot of legislation coming from Brussels has been very liberating and progressive. This is not so much due to the EU itself, as to the fact that most European countries were far in advance of Britain when it came to matters such as equality and human rights.