The fuss this morning from the Remain camp and their propagandists at the BBC is that Boris Johnson compared the EU to Hitler! Did he really? Any more than Tony Benn did in 2007

Tony Benn talking sense in 2007. I wonder what Jeremy Corbyn thought of this at the time.

The fuss this morning from the Remain camp and their propagandists at the BBC is that Boris Johnson compared the EU to Hitler! Did he really? Any more than Tony Benn did in 2007

Tony Benn - Democracy in Europe from 2007

I didn't agree with Tony Benn about much, but on the EU and it's lack of democracy he was spot on.

Jenny Tonge reveals more about Jeremy Corbyn and his 'friends'

Another line from that Jewish News article http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/anti-israel-peer-jenny-tonge-may-defect-to-corbyns-labour/ struck me:

'Lady Tonge said she had known Mr Corbyn for a long time, sharing support for Palestine and meeting Hamas leaders on a joint trip to Gaza.

"I marched alongside Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn, one on either side. I went to Gaza with Jeremy Corbyn and we met Hamas leaders together. We go back," she said.'

Of course they met Hamas together. Why wouldn't British politicians want to meet homophobic, genocidal, anti Semitic Islamist terrorists.

Ed Miliband - a retrospective (part 1)

I was browsing through my blog looking for pieces about Ed Miliband, there's over 200, and I came across this one from 2008, entitled 'Democracy Gordon Brown style'. What's interesting is the appearance of both Ed Miliband and his brother David, both happy to toe the line that the Lisbon Treaty was not the same as the 'abandined' EU Constitution. Here's what I wrote at the time:

 'Gordon Brown is as fundamentally dishonest as Tony Blair was and his behaviour over the EU Treaty is nothing short of disgusting. Gordon Brown was part of the team that wrote the last Labour manifesto, you remember the one that promised a referendum on the EU Constitution. Yes I do realise that that was only promised to draw any advantage that might accrue to the Conservatives if they promised a referendum. Then Gordon Brown reneged on this promise by claiming that the Treaty was not the same as the Constitution. He and other Labour politicians love to quote Angela Merkel when she said that the Constitutional process had been abandoned. It has, but that does not matter a bean as all that was abandoned was the process of rep;lacing all the existing European Treaties with a new Constitution. This process has been replaced with a new amending treaty that moves us to the same place as we would have been with the Constitution but by amending the existing treaties instead. As Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the architect of the abandoned European Constitution, admitted

"Looking at the content, the result is that the institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty….are found complete in the Lisbon Treaty, only in a different order and inserted in former treaties.." He made clear that the purpose of the rewritten Treaty was to make people think the new version did not merit being put to the people in referendums. "Above all, it is to avoid having referendums thanks to the fact that the articles are spread out and constitutional vocabulary has been removed," he added. 

An Angela Merkel quote that the Labour liars refer to less often comes from her speech in June 2007 to the European Parliament and runs "The substance of the Constitution is preserved, that is a fact". '

Note that Ed Miliband wouldn't answer whether he'd read the Treaty, I think it's pretty obvious why.

Also look from 1:55 and see how Ed Miliband truly is a rebel, he's put his jacket collar up: what a rebel? No, what a dork!

Also remember that when Labour Party members  pine for David Miliband that he was as happy as his dork of a brother to give away British powers and diminish democracy.

One of Tony Benn's views that the pro-EU BBC won't be repeating

Tony Benn hits out at unelected EU officials, something the BBC will not allow to be heard if they can help it.

Margaret Thatcher: Public anger at BBC bias: Viewers hit out at lengthy coverage of poll tax and miners' strike | Mail Online

One excerpt from this Daily Mail piece struck me http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306564/Margaret-Thatcher-Public-anger-BBC-bias-Viewers-hit-lengthy-coverage-poll-tax-miners-strike.html

'One of Thatcher's arch critics – former Labour MP Tony Benn – was one of the first invited to speak on BBC 5 Live and BBC World Service and was given free rein to criticise Lady Thatcher.
He said: 'Margaret Thatcher taught us the meaning of class war, we have paid a very heavy price for it.

'She used the power she had to make war on the miners and the trade union movement . . . and it was a very divisive period as Prime Minister, but you have to recognise that was what she believed and that meant she was not just fooling and she did in a sense open up the meaning of the phrase 'class war" as she used her power to make war on trade unions and the majority of the population.''

Didn't the Labour government that Tony Benn was a part of close more coal mines than Mrs Thatcher's government?

The useful idiots of the past and who are the useful idiots of today; Tony Benn?

A few weeks ago I heard a very interesting radio programme on BBC Radio 4 about the useful idiots who propagandised on behalf of Communist Russia in order to protect the name of Communism:

'refers to Western journalists, travellers and intellectuals who gave their blessing – often with evangelistic fervour – to tyrannies and tyrants, thereby convincing politicians and public that utopias rather than Belsens thrived.'

It is a story that I know well but one that does deserve repetition because I don't think that many people do know  how so many on the left of western politics covered up the evil of communist Russia, and indeed China as well.

What struck me when listening to the programme was how those who criticised Russia were the ones that were disbelieved and whose careers suffered at the time whilst those that supported the evil regimes were rewarded:

'In 1952 Doris Lessing, a British writer who has since won the Nobel Prize for Literature, was part of a delegation visiting the Soviet Union.
Her memories of the trip are clear and unforgiving:
“I was taken around and shown things as a ‘useful idiot’... that’s what my role was. I can’t understand why I was so gullible.”
She was not the only one. The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and American journalist Walter Duranty were some of those people who also visited the Soviet Union.
They mingled with political leaders, were escorted into the countryside by Joseph Stalin’s secret police, and returned home to speak and write of ‘a land of hope’ with ‘evils retreating before the spread of communism’.
However as stories mounted of mass murder and starvation in parts of Russia and the Ukraine, reporters such as Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge investigated and reported on ‘the creation of one enormous Belsen’.
Duranty responded with an article in the New York Times headed ‘Story of the famine is bunk’, and got an exclusive interview with Stalin.
Soon after, Jones died and Muggeridge’s career nose-dived. Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer.'

I didn't hear the second part but was struck by the BBC's own summary:

'The journalist and historian Jonathan Mirsky, who has written extensively on China, describes former leader Chairman Mao as:
“He had an enormous impact on China – but he was a monster… and…responsible for the deaths of 40 million people.”
But the veteran British politician Tony Benn argues that Mao played a significant role in building China's global importance and economic power - and that his actions - both good and bad - must be seen in historical context.
From Mao’s China, General Pinochet’s Chile, Apartheid-controlled South Africa, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to President Ahmadinejad’s Iran, why – and how – have so many supposedly intelligent people been manipulated by dictators into saying good things about bad regimes?'

'Historical context'? 'HISTORICAL CONTEXT'! Mao's regime killed around 50 million people but the BBC's hero Tony Benn thinks Mao's actions must be seen in 'historical context'. Maybe someone could ask Tony Benn what 'historical  context' justified the killing of 50 million people in communist China? Does Tony Benn also think that the millions of deaths ordered by Lenin and Stalin and the suffering in the gulags has to be seen in 'historical context'? What about the seven million Jews killed by Hitler's Nazis in Germany; do they have to be seen in historical context'? At this point Tony Benn would no doubt lean back and suck on a metaphorical pipe and tell you that he fought against Nazism during the second world war. Indeed you did Mr Benn, indeed you did but you still say that the deaths of millions more people needs to be seen in 'historical context'!

I wonder who the useful idiots of today are? Those who believed that the 'Arab Spring' would end other than with Islamist regimes perhaps.

The judgement of Ed Miliband

‘I loaded the bullets in, aimed, fired and shot down that Zionist’

The words of Ed Miliband's staff member Joseph 'Seph' Brown. The story is that in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, 'Seph' uttered the words ‘I loaded the bullets in, aimed, fired and shot down that Zionist’ while pretending to wield a machine gun during a protest. Apparently Jewish students were somewhat baffled at the sight of the LSE’s Anti-Racism Officer going all Rambo, felt intimidated and complained. Ed 'less Jewish than David'* Miliband's team are reported to have decided this was merely ‘silly behaviour’ and are keeping ‘Seph’ on the campaign in a ‘Web Ed’ capacity.

One of Ed Miliband's other advisers recently described Ed (off the record, of course) as being ‘less Jewish’ than his big brother.

I have never liked Ed Miliband, he always struck me as arrogant and smug, this makes me like him even less.

Don't forget that it was Ed Miliband who was reported in Hansard to have said "The hon. Gentleman knows that we have published our own home energy efficiency plan for 700 million households to be insulated by 2020" - 700 million households by 2020, what were Labour's real plans for immigration!

It was Ed Miliband who the BBC reported pre the 2009 Labour conference said Mr Brown was "the right leader".

It was Ed Miliband who in September 2009 told Andrew Marr that "There's no danger of power cuts in the next decade."

It was Ed Miliband who pushed the Climate Change Act through Parliament this landing the UK with a £1 trillion bill to no useful purpose.

And here is Ed Miliband in all his smug glory in 2008 managing to be even more shifty than David Miliband... and who quite clearly had not read the Lisbon Treaty

Tony Benn - words and actions

'Tony Benn always asks five questions when he meets powerful men.

Those questions are “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?”'

Now I've haerd Tony Benn make this sort of claim in various interviews over the years so I was intrigued to be pointed at his 2003 interview with Saddam Hussein. Here are Tony Benn's questions:

'Mr President, may I ask you some questions. The first is, does Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction?

...

I have another which has been raised: do you have links with Al Qaeda?

...

In relation to the inspectors, there appears to be difficulties with inspectors, and I wonder whether there's anything you can tell me about these difficulties and whether you believe they will be cleared up before Mr Hans Blix and Mr Elbaradei come back to Baghdad?

...

May I broaden the question out, Mr President, to the relations between Iraq and the UN, and the prospects for peace more broadly, and I wonder whether with all its weaknesses and all the difficulties, whether you see a way in which the UN can reach that objective for the benefit of humanity?

...

There are people who believe this present conflict is about oil, and I wonder if you say something about how you see the enormous oil reserves of Iraq being developed, first for the benefit of the people of Iraq and secondly for the needs of mankind.

...

There are tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people in Britain and America, in Europe and worldwide, who want to see a peaceful outcome to this problem , and they are the real Americans in my opinion, the real British, the real French, the real Germans, because they think of the world in terms of their children. I have ten grandchildren and in my family there is English, Scottish, American, French, Irish, Jewish and Indian blood, and for me politics is about their future, their survival. And I wonder whether you could say something yourself directly through this interview to the peace movement of the world that might help to advance the cause they have in mind? '

What no “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?”; why not?




Thanks to Harrty's Place and commenters for the spots.

How are the Labour leadership elections going? (02.06.10 17:30 update)

As of 17:30 update today:
Diane Abbott - 3 (+ 1) - Diane Abbott sees another nomination during the day and yes she has managed to persuade herself to nominate herself. Obviously Diane Abbott is a very persuasive woman. Just 30 more nominations needed Diane...

Ed Balls - 33 (no change) - still no nomination from Gordon Brown, can he not decide who to damn with his vote?

Andy Burnham - 18 (no change)

John McDonnell - 7 (no change)

David Miliband - 58 (+ 1) - keeping ahead of his younger, even smugger, brother

Ed Miliband - 47 (+ 2) - smuggly racking up the nominations as well as Tony Benn's support (see below)


Ed Miliband has received the backing of Tony Benn, now that must be welcome! Actually if Ed Miliband is looking for votes from the left as a counter to his brother's support amongst Blairites, then Tony Benn's approval will only help. In 2007 Tony Benn supported John McDonnell but has decided to swap his support to the Miliband that worked in his office some years ago. Amongst all sensible people Tony Benn's support would be most unwelcome but to anyone who believes the pro Benn propaganda that has spewed from the BBC and indeed Tony Benn himself for years, this must seem almost as welcome as support from Nelson Mandela. The mere fact that Tony Benn has been on the wrong side (in my opinion) of most arguments since 1951 is neither here nor there. Is Ed Miliband taking left wing votes from Ed Balls? Are we to see an Ed on Ed fight?

Which is the least trustworthy?

David Miliband or Ed Miliband, tough choice isn't it? You can also "enjoy" the equally viable Hilary Benn.

I know I have posted this video before but since David Miliband is accused of wanting to be our Prime Minister, I think it only right that the public see him in all his glory.

Another unbiased BBC presenter

Jenni Murray is having her diaries serialised in The Daily Mail and I found these bits online.

"I, though, was Left-wing, and found (Tony) Benn utterly charming. I opened the programme with a long history of his credentials."

"Norman Tebbit - the rottweiler of the Conservative Party - known for tearing inadequate interviewers limb from limb... while we gave each other a combative turn during the interview..."

So do the BBC consider it fine for "left-wing" Jenni to open a programme with Tony Benn with a "long history of his credentials" and to have a "combative" approach to an interview with Norman Tebbit? BBC pro-left wingers at every turn.

One rule for us, one rule for them

I have blogged before about the current attitude amongst Labour Ministers that the laws they bring in to make our lives just that little bit less pleasant do not apply to them.

Last week I read that the Hilary Benn's family home seemed to have escaped the coastal path that had encroached upon all other houses on the coast in the vicinity. Today I read in the Telegraph that the Conservatives are to raise questions in the Commons as to why the sea wall outside this same house was repaired last autumn, whilst Hilary Benn's department was proposing to abandon a nearby historic harbour to the sea.

Why won't people realise that Tony & Hilary Benn were/are Labour politicians and we owe them a lifetime of gratitude and care for what they have done for us.

I agree with Tony Benn!?

First Jeremy Corbyn and now Tony Benn, I may have to re-evaluate my politics! Tony Benn - "“Members of Parliament are lent the powers of their constituents and they have to return those powers undiminished at the end. It is not for Members of Parliament to give away the powers that were lent to them, because they don’t belong to Members of Parliament but to the electorate.”" Watch Tony Benn talking sense here, well most of the time...