LOWER THAN VERMIN......

Tomorrow I am heading out on the early train from Halifax so I can join in the TUC rally against the cuts coming up on Wednesday. Around £84 billion of them so I believe.
While millions of workers face the prospect of pay cuts and redundancy, our local Liberal Democrats are fighting another battle.
On Friday, they held a public debate on the issue of AV. AV - Alternative Vote - was only months ago described as a "miserable little conpromise" by the despicable Nick Clegg. Now it is touted as the first importnat step towards a "fairer" democracy.
I was asked to fight Labour's corner at the debate and - to be honest - AV is not an issue I wouls lay m y life down for. It's not PR. It gives no greater voice to the smaller parties. It means even more gound is likelyt o be ceded to the centre. But my word the local Lib dems were burning with righteous zeal. Extraordinary, really.
Extraordinary that a Party which has reneged on almost every election pledge, which has sold its soul to get in bed with Cameron, has backed marketisation of our universities and NHS, has sold millions of voters down the river, has the brass neck to bleat about "fairness."
At the last election AV would have delivered 20-odd more Lib dems and 20-odd less Tories. Safe Labour seats would stay Labour and most constiteuncy MPs are elected on an average 47 per cent of the vote. In short it makes naff all difference and no way Jose are the Tories going to allow a vote on PR.
Strangely, NOT ONE Liberal Democrat backed an amendment by Green MP Caroline Lucas to allow PR as an option in the forthcoming referendum. So how dare they lecture the rest of us.
Like most people on the left of centre, I am incandescent with rage at the conduct of the Lib Dems. They deserve annihilation at the next local elections. Judging at the rate at which people are coming back to Labour, they are going to get it. Deservedly so.

RAMSAY MAC WOULD BE PROUD....

But most Labour Party members are surely horrified - if not surprised - at the spectacle of Frank Field, John Hutton, Alan Milburn and David Blunkett all getting into bed with the ConDem "National Government" . Milburn and Hutton, arch-Blairite to the core, were inevitably going to jump ship as they quit Parliament the minute Opposition and the absence of fat Ministerial salaries went. Blunkett, centrist though he might have become, is rather more of a disappointment. The word loyalty clearly means nothing to these people in their pursuit of wealth, power and influence. The sad thing is that two of them are still, in name only, Labour MPs.