GOODBYE TO GRIMMER......

Tonight kids from Calder High School are out protesting and surrounded by an absurd number of police as the nationwide demonstrations demonstrate that sometimes direct action is the only way of making your voice heard. I applaud their determination and am greatly cheered that they are getting so much coverage.
Things move fast these days and after careful consideration I have decided that it is a goodbye to this blog.
I nearly made four years - but my time is limited and i simply don't have the time to write considered long posts on a regular basis.
Instead, I'm concentrating on Facebook and twitter as a more effective way of getting ideas across as and when events occur.
Thanks to all who have contributed over the years.It is time for action, not words, as anger grows against this wretched Coalition. And, hopefully, we really are in it together.......

THE ROYAL WEDDING ..........

Funny how at times of economic hardship those toffs can always be relied upon to come up with a feelgood solution to current crises.
It worked in 1981 so obviously they are going to do it again. Yep. Another Royal Wedding..
Almost 30 years on from the circus that was Charles and Diana we are back in a land rife with unemployment and Tories hell-bent on making the lives of millions as miserable as possible.
But let's forget all that and raise a glass .... er, No.
Last time round I held a "Toast The Royal Couple" party at my little flat in Penge which involved photocopied invites - complete with knives and forks.
I wish neither ill and am not of the Ekaterinburg Tendency.
However, at atime when thousands are facing serious poverty, the thought of the guff which will be spouted by the media all over again is truly, truly nauseating.
I hope the next generation does better than mine did - and gets a Republic ASAP
Next thing you know we will be fighting with the Argies

TURNING UP THE VOLUME......

Not much time for blogging recently as too busy trying to hang on to employment and in many ways the sheer scale of the onslaught against working people makes Twitter a much easier option.
I have tweeted my anger at Labour MPs defending the odious and indefensible Woolas, support for the students on yesterday's anti tuition fees demo.
Today, we have the appalling spectacle of "Quiet Man" IDS turning up the volume and outlining his reforms to welfare benefit. Punitive beyond belief, and front page fodder for the Mail, where news editors will be beside themselves with glee, it is time we reminded ourselves of a very salient fact.
Around £10billion a year goes UNCLAIMED in welfare benefits
Benefit fraud costs an estimated £1Billion
Tax dodging and evasion by the filthy rich earns them at least £120 billion a year.
As the new labour ultras commend IDS on his "courage" I am reminded of that old song which says "It's the rich wot gets the pleasure.. and the poor wot gets the blame."
And, when Ed Miliband comes back from paternity leave, it's time he started cracking down on the pronouncements from Douglas Alexander and the shameful way some in the PLP have treated Harriet Harman for standing firm on Woolas.
Blackley MP Graham Stringer, a man who used to tirelessly fight -racism as leader of Manchester City Coumncil, should be ashamed of himself for supporting the xenophobic ex-MP for Oldham East.

NOT OXBRIDGE MATERIAL.....

I was amused earlier today when a local Lib Dem tried to have a go at me on Twitter by asking where I went to University.
Amused is probably not the word. Sickened, definitely, by the attempted, ill-judged sneer and the total quiescence with which the Liberal Democrats have colluded in the most disgusting destruction ever of the life chances of thousands of young people.
A tiny cohort of working-class kids get to Oxbridge. As I pointed out, in so much as I could in 140 words, I was one of them at a time when higher education was free.
Even so, I remember my mother worrying whether we could afford the cost of food and accommodation - how we would manage and hiw I would manage surrounded by students from vastly more privileged backgrounds. . But as someone forced to leave school at 14 in the 1930's she was determined I would get to Cambridge - the first in my family EVER to go to university
There would be no question of that now. None at all. Nor, probably, of a university place anywhere else for children like me. But let's forget Oxbridge for a minute.
The very idea that fees of £6000 a year - for starters - everywhere - are "fair" is obscene, Orwellian doublespeak and utterly disgusting.
The £9000 which Oxbridge and other elite universities will charge closes the door for thousands of kids but is chickenfeed to those who pay £20,000 plus per year for public school education.
I am listening on PM to Vince Cable defend this indefensible policy with a breathtaking pomposity and pusillanimity which I hope will motivate Lib dems across the country to tear up their Party cards and join next week's demo in London against a rise in tuition fees which all Lib dem MPs publicly pledged they would fight.
Yes, New Labour opened the door to this wholesale betrayal by allowing tuition fees in the first place, That was six years ago.
At the time, dozens of Labour MPs rebelled against the Govt line and did their best to stop it. Aided, one recalls, by the Conservatives . How times change.
Cable talks of the "national interest." The only "interest" the Lib Dems are supporting is self-interest. They will righlty be punished soundly at the next election.
Tragically, a generation is going to be punished because of their wilful abandonment of every principle of fairness and decency.
Ed Miliband is right. This Government is one of "broken promises." Labour must now promise a fair policy on education and fight on behalf of those who will protest next week.
And those who now fear they will never get the chance to get to university in the first place.