Great Britain fought WW2 in a Multi-Nation, Multi-Culture, Multi-Ethnic, Multi-Colour, Multi-Language force. No one did it alone. No one does it alone. As then we’re better together.
The Fantasy That Is Brexit Is An Ambush.
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Great Britain fought WW2 in a Multi-Nation, Multi-Culture, Multi-Ethnic, Multi-Colour, Multi-Language force. No one did it alone. No one does it alone. As then we’re better together.
The Fantasy That Is Brexit Is An Ambush.
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 15:56 in Brexit / Bremain, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
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"The insignificant
For example
Putin
Trump
Farage
Pol Pot
Widdecombe
Wilders
Xi Jinping
Boris Johnson
Le Pen
Victor Orban
Kim Jong-un
Are of no account;
But their followers
Are of interest.”
“Why so?”
“Because after thousands
Of years they have
Learned
Nothing. That
Isn’t easy to do.”
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 19:09 in Poetry | Permalink | Comments (4)
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In 1948, given the biggest share
Of Marshall Aid
GB wasted it
Clinging to Empire
While Germany invested
In Industrial Modernisation.
North Sea oil revenue?
GB wasted it
On tax cuts
While Norway invested it
With a North Sea Oil Sovereign wealth fund
(Now the world's largest)
For its people
Who because of that
Are now more secure
Than ours.
In answer to
The 2007/2008 US-made crash?
GB chose austerity
And more austerity
(Top down? You must be joking!)
And none of this
None of this
None of this
Had a jot to do
With the EU
So, the wilfully ignorant
GB lashing out response is Brexit
After all
We beat the Germans
All On Our Own
In two world wars
(really? All on our own?)
Then beat 'em again
In the '66 world cup
For twenty years, thanks to Rupert Murdoch and other robber barons, Brits have been taught to hate the EU (for things it hasn't done) by The Sun, The Mail, The Express (newspapers) and their ilk; but isn't it really Germany we hate, for doing what GB should have done after WW2 but didn't? And is it perhaps that, still with the hubris of Empire, we hate mirrors even more than we hate the Germans?
*
["Britain received more than a third more Marshall Aid than West Germany - $2.7 billion as against $1.7 billion. Britain pocketed the largest share of any European nation"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/hist…/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml]
*
["Had Thatcher been a truly visionary politician, she would have established a wealth fund for the oil windfall, not squandered it on tax cuts and current spending."
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/04/thatcher-and-north-sea-oil-–-failure-invest-britain?fbclid=IwAR0OF5zyvez7FtEXx3gMmlssK-PnHbxaoqTxfruYmGjwQyozVaaUHmTGH0A]
*
[In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything
After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.
[https://www.nytimes.com/…/…/europe/uk-austerity-poverty.html]
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 09:47 in Brexit / Bremain, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 12:15 in Brexit / Bremain, Politics | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Cos homo sapiens
Is a lazy
(intellectually)
Wilfully ignorant
Species
We look
For easy answers
And cos we want easy
Answers
We made, make and remake
God
(The easy answer to
and for
everything)
And cos we hate most
To be found
Guilty
Responsibility isn’t our bag
So what we make, we say we found
Cos what we find
Was left behind
By something or someone else:
God
So we
Can’t be
Responsible for it
Nor for what we say it says
Nor for what we say it does
Nor for what we say it demands
And thus we achieve our primary goal:
To be blameless
Best of all
On its behalf
As faithful servants
We can demand
Others behave
In the way we say
God demands
And on God’s behalf
We penalise those
Who disobey it/us
And still remain
Blameless
The perfect path to éminence grise
Political power
While we claim, as always,
To be merely
“Believers"
Posted by Labi Siffre at 12:31 in Atheism / Antitheism / Theism / Religion / Belief, Poetry, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 16:54 in Brexit / Bremain | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Theresa May says, "No government could give a blank cheque to commit to an outcome without knowing what it is.”
That is exactly what she and her government did on the 29th of March 2017 when they invoked Article 50.
UK citizens must fight, democratically, to revoke Article 50.
It is Parliament's duty to protect citizens, especially the vulnerable, not to slavishly kowtow to their whimsical view that the EU is responsible for our problems of austerity and serious shortage of resources (cash) leading to the 5th or currently 6th richest nation having a health and social care system not fit for purpose, a seriously depleted police force and a council cashflow inability to fill potholes.
Our problems of austerity and our serious shortage of resources (cash) were caused by the relaxation of USA & UK banking rules by President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; yes, history has a very very very long reach. These relaxations led to roulette bank practices which in turn lead to the 2008 crash, from which we and other nations are still recovering and because of which, UK governments CHOSE austerity. None of this is due to the EU.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47689415
Incidentally: Under European Parliament and Council Directive 2004/38/EC, EU member states can repatriate EU nationals after three months if they have not found a job or do not have the means to support themselves.
Unlike other EU member states, the UK does not use this directive. Why not?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/31/britain-take-back-control-immigration-eu-directive-brexit?
Posted by Labi Siffre at 08:46 in Brexit / Bremain, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
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On the contrary, evidence strongly suggests that there have been few, if any, terrorist attacks by atheists in the past forty years. Even so called “militant” atheists choose debate and computer keyboards, not guns.
In the past forty years, terrorism has been almost exclusively religious-terrorism inspired by and wielded in the cause, defence and name of religion.
Claims that "terrorists do not represent our religion" and all religions are "religions of peace" are the craven responses of hubris ridden, self-aggrandisers claiming, with no evidence, that there is a perfect, all powerful supernatural being which above all else loves and justifies them, personally; the subtext being that If everything is God's will, humans (especially believers) conveniently cannot be guilty of anything.
More craven still is the subtext which more than implies that theists, the religious, those who believe in God, by definition cannot BE terrorists. Convenient indeed.
"Terrorists Don't Have A Religion”? On the contrary, in our lifetime they are rarely, if ever, without one.
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 15:20 in Atheism / Antitheism / Theism / Religion / Belief | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 17:41 in Brexit / Bremain, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
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The US Electoral College makes
The USA less
Democratic than the UK of GB's
Parliamentary Democracy
Though the UK's First Past The Post
System makes the UK less
Democratic than any nation employing
The Single Transferable Vote
The most democratic hope
***
How Democratic Are We?
Find out here: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 12:01 in Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Expect little applause
For facts or fact based
Evidence; superstition
Usually wins
The popular vote
Or it is perhaps that
An age of reason
Followed by ages of superstition
Intellectual laziness and lashing out
Is as inevitable as "Boom & Bust”:
"The Economic Cycle”
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 21:23 | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Taught that if you smile the fools
Think you honest he learns
They don’t care that he lies
That he's a crook
As long as he gets them
What they want:
Revenge for not having
Been born
Like him:
Privileged
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 11:21 in Poetry, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
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That God needed
To create
Proves
God doesn’t exist
No matter how clear this is
Human absurdity
(Theism)
Persists
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 21:47 in Atheism / Antitheism / Theism / Religion / Belief | Permalink | Comments (0)
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A truck is fundamental to the success of your business
But you can’t afford one.
So your parents buy a second-hand truck and give it to you
So you can improve your business/earnings/status/wealth.
A year later, your business a success because of the truck,
There’s a knock on the door and it’s the police.
They tell you the truck you have was stolen
And has to be returned.
Your parents say, “But we bought that truck in good faith!”.
Still the police and the law and morality tell you and your parents
The truck has to be returned to its rightful owner.
And so it is with the wealth and resources of Colonialism.
"But that’s different!”, you say,
And I agree:
The difference is
The truck was stolen
But the rightful owners weren’t killed
(Or used as forced labour) by the thieves
And still the truck, legally and morally,
Has to be returned.
+
[“Solatium”? Look it up.]
+
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 23:02 in Politics | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Shakespeare would have rated Donald J. Trump (a known racist and sexual predator: voted, as such, to the Presidency of the United States of America), Brexit (the United Kingdom of Great Britain voting to cast aside its influence, respect, income and the wellbeing of it’s people) and Robert Mugabe (Caesar surprising the knife wielders by wearing a Kevlar vest under his toga [for the moment] his supposed assasins watching helpless as he carries on regardless) all this, Shakespeare would have rated as too far-fetched even for his pen.
Posted by Labi Siffre at 21:13 in Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 12:44 in Poetry | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 12:06 in Brexit / Bremain, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
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If you believe God helps you win a sports match or race or competition, how DARE YOU blame those who believe God gifts them with paradise for murdering civilians.
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 13:06 in Atheism / Antitheism / Theism / Religion / Belief | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I'm "Brexit Wary" and every piece of research I do makes me more so.
Posted by Labi Siffre at 13:41 in Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
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"We Only Kill Black People” the police officer said
"He was joking" some claimed
But here’s the thing
I don’t hear any black people laughing
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 13:49 in Black, USA | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Americans are anguished
Societies divided, riven, in need
Of balm
To smooth troubled waters
Heal US communities and
Avoid mass employment
Of what so many Americans own:
Automatic weapons, bazookas, mortars,
I suggest
Beside each monument to the confederacy
Raise a monument to Malcolm X
or
Harriet Tubman
or
Martin Luther King
As democratically elected Potus Trump,
Limboing under the belly of a poisonous snake,
Would tweetingly sing, "Problem solved
… easy!’
Ring-a-ding-hoping for the emergence of
An alt-right, fourth Reich, blood soaked, Breitbart,
Final solution BLING!
Way to go! Way to go!
Way to go Trump!
Way to go Scotus hungry Republican party!
We got one black President
Just one
And in outraged, white manhood threatened response
You’ve made a killing
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 08:51 in Poetry, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Enemies are an important part of our history
Should we commemorate them
With statues?
Of Adolf Hitler, for example?
Would that be socially, culturally, educationally helpful
Or harmful?
Robert E. Lee
Hero of the Confederacy
Was a Black people’s enemy
Should Americans oppose
Only statues of the enemies of white folks?
An intriguing sequel to the (updated
For the sake of inclusivity) declaration
That all people
Are "created equal"
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 12:43 in Poetry, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Available to listen to until August 27th 2017
Posted by Labi Siffre at 12:45 in Arts, Heterosexism / Racism / Sexism / Homophobia / LGBT / Gay / Heterosexual / Homosexual, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)
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And so in this the children
Wiser than their parents see
Their future blocked
By their elders' fears
The children denied a voice
By gerrymanderers offering scapegoats and
A good old days that cannot come;
That river they promise ... has moved on
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 11:55 in Brexit / Bremain, Poetry | Permalink | Comments (0)
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A Statement Of The Obvious that we British, in our collective arrogance and wilful ignorance, seem incapable of grasping:
The rules of a club I join then wish to leave are made by the club not by me.
re Brexit: "Just a polite reminder to British exceptionalists that our only decision will be whether to accept or reject whatever the EU27 offer us." ~ Seb Dance UK MEP
In our collective defence, the Single Market and Customs Union (and so much more required for an informed referendum vote) were rarely (never?) mentioned by the instigator, PM David Cameron, nor by "The Brexit 5", Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan-Smith, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and their Brexiteer fellows.
Quick, someone call a statistician. Sorry, we can't ... they're experts!
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Posted by Labi Siffre at 07:39 in Brexit / Bremain | Permalink | Comments (0)
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