Why The Tories Think They Must Govern.

Liberty is a slippery thing it would seem. It is especially so if you happen to suffer from Toryism. To a Tory freedom is about being free to be as greedy as you like. Rich people have to be free - poor people have to be "governed". There has been much talk this week because of the death of Margaret Thatcher that Britain was becoming "ungovernable" in the 1970's. What the Tories mean by this, apparently, is that ordinary working people were becoming far too vocal in their demands to be treated with respect. This was bad for two reasons. First it meant that the Tories, always in love with their own voices, were finding it increasingly difficult to dominate all discussion and debate. Secondly, being treated with respect meant that ordinary people might get paid what they are worth for the jobs they do. This was bad for business. Company executives and shareholders were finding it increasingly difficult to get their hands on as much money as possible and it had to stop. Thatcher, therefore, decided to smash the Unions, set Britain "free" and make it "governable" once again. And it all went swimmingly. The Unions were smashed. Wages were forced down. Prices were forced up. Public industries were stolen from the people and given to various corporate criminals. Britain became "governable" once more. Now it is the corporate world that is ungovernable and you would think, therefore, that the government would take action to bring it to heel again. Unfortunately not. When Tories talk about Britain being "ungovernable" they mean that ordinary people have to lose their freedom so that the Tories and their mates can be free to steal, scrounge and appropriate whatever they can get their sticky fingers on. Business for them cannot be "ungovernable" because rich people have a divine right to be as nasty and vicious as they like. You only have to look at Margaret Thatcher and her unspeakable family to see that business is business and why it is important to them that you must be "governed". Now the rich are free and the poor are once again being governed while the economy, starved of the demand it needs to thrive, is plumbing new depths. So the next time a Tory starts pontificating about "freedom" you'll know what he or she are actually talking about.

Thatcher Insults The Country One Final Time.

Some of you may have noticed that Margaret Thatcher died this week. The Tories immediately turned to plan B which involved rewriting history, loud claims that she "saved the nation", ignoring all evidence that she was widely loathed and demanding that everyone should show respect. Unfortunately respect for others, alive or dead, was not one of Margaret Thatcher's strongest attributes and it's something that the present Tory party has no concept of at all. The criticism that has been heaped upon her was certainly no worse than that heaped on Michael Foot by the Tories when he died. Despite this various dough-faced Tories have lectured us all that her memory should be respected on the basis that she was a "conviction politician." So was Bin Laden. Can you imagine defending him on the basis that "you might not agree with his policies, but you have to respect his achievements"? Having been told that she saved the nation from - well us basically - do the Tories really believe that we should celebrate the growing divide between the haves and the have nots that she so assiduoulsy encouraged? It was she who set the bankers free to rob us all, privatised publicly-owned industries so they could pick our pockets and gave us the freedom to be as poor as she wanted us to be. Now, as a final insult to the people of Britain, we find out that her £6 million mansion in London was actually owned by a shadowy off-shore company and that, therefore, there will be no inheritance tax to pay. What else could we expect? It is a mean and shabby end to a mean and shabby life.

Tories: Mad, Bad And Dangerous To Know.

The Tory party has always been like Lord Byron - mad, bad and dangerous to know. Just how bad they were in the 1980's is only now beginning to emerge in the wake of the findings over the Hillsborough disaster. The realisation that the Thatcher government coluded with the police to hide what really happened there has led to a closer look at the entire period and, in particular, the violence that accompanied the miner's strikes. Evidence is beginning to emerge that the police deliberately ambushed striking miners and provoked violent confrontations to add credence to the Tory propaganda against them. This was followed, as it was after Hillsborough, by industrial-scale doctoring of the evidence and wholesale perjury by the police. The charge that the police were merely "Maggie's Boot Boys" is now beginning to look more and more accurate and puts the whole Thatcher administration into a very sinister light. Her period in power is now beginning to look less like a government and more like a right-wing coup d'etat. Cameron seems to have similar ambitions but, unlike Thatcher, is more afflicted with Tory madness than Tory badness. Where she was steely-eyed, Cameron is cowardly, where she was a master tactician, Cameron is incompetent and where she had all the instincts of a dictator, Cameron is simply stupid. Which is why, as the "Telegraph" reported today, he is reeling from crisis to crisis and is plainly out of his depth. Cameron would dearly love to be like Thatcher but suffers from a lack of any ability to be so. Unfortunately Tory failure, incompetence and lack of any discernable talent for government is completely indistinguishable from Tory success - both are disasterous for Britain,

Tories Attack British Entrepeneur.

The Tory party is besides itself with rage today because an entrepeneur has identified a need in free-market Britain and decided to fill it. Despite being an outstanding example of the kind of "wealth creator" that the Tories are always banging on about, they think that his merchandise is "tasteless and inappropriate." Why? Because the T-shirts that Colin Hampton is producing points out that "A generation of Trade Unionists will dance on Thatchers grave." Taste, of course, is a matter of - well, taste - but is it also inappropriate? It would be it terms of Margaret Thatcher still being alive, but the wrapper of the T-shirt clearly says that it is to be opened only after Mrs.Thatcher actually dies. It is, essentially, an emergency product similar to the fire axes in public builders - "Break glass in case of fire." Nor is it inappropriate in terms of the truth - a generation of Trade Unionists will almost certainly dance on her grave given half the chance. What is tasteless and inappropriate is big businesses stealing our national assets, charging us through the nose for goods and services and then refusing to pay their fair share of taxes. What is tasteless and inappropriate is tax cuts given to the wealthy while the charity Save the Children is having to divert money from Africa to feed the starving children of Britain. Even more tasteless and inappropriate are the Tory plans for a state funeral for the most devisive, vicious, narrow-minded and completely wrong-headed Prime Minister in the history of Britain. Perhaps they should take a leaf out of Colin Hampton's book and sell tickets to all those Trade Unionists who wish to dance on her grave - that would almost certainly pay off the deficit.