A reader in the USA, though full of praise for Socialist View asks: “There is one thing I’d like to query. How is it you regularly highlight President Bush’s gaffes? If this is a British journal how come you don’t focus on British politicians and their lack of eloquence? Or are British politicians models of fluency?”
In reply, we highlight President Bush’s gaffes for two reasons. Firstly, he is an elected leader, and as we reject the concept of leadership, believing that workers are more than capable of sorting out their own affairs, he serves as an excellent example of the folly of trusting in leaders. Secondly, we find his gaffes amazing and amusing – though admittedly it is not amusing to have such an imbecile at the head of a military superpower, with his finger on the nuclear trigger. As for your query regarding the eloquence of British politicians, we must confess that we have a right bunch of gloopy bastards running British Capitalism plc from their executive meeting places in the Houses of Commons. One such is John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister and Member of Parliament for the Hull East constituency.
On Thursday, 4th July, Mr Prescott appeared on the BBC Question Time programme, and baffled the audience with a barrage of mind-boggling waffle. Below is a partial transcript of the answers he offered the audience.
On the question of cheap housing for nursing in the wake of rising property prices he said, “ The massive rise in house prices has caused us very real difficulties. We have put extra money available to meet some of those requirements, but the scale is far greater quite frankly, and we are now looking very seriously now at how you can actually do more that what we’re doing at the moment. Because the whole quality of life affected by public services are being affected by that, and if you want to provide houses, you can’t just provide it by simply giving the subsidies between the market price and what people can afford. We’ve got to do something much more effective than that. There’s going to be a statement by Gordon Brown on our public expenditure, then a number of statements flow from that. Let us wait and see. I’d like to see a step up and hopefully I’d be able to promise you that.”
Asked to explain the government’s stance on ID cards, Bulldog Prescott blurted: “We’re in, in fact, a situation where we’re going to try, consult about things. The piece I mean about the illegal trafficking that goes on, in immigration in some places, tremendous fraud that goes on, it will be used in those circumstances to help that. There is card benefit. Everyone knows how much we get caught on our credit cards and things like that. It can help with things like that, but a judgement hasn’t been made. But let me be clear. Forty-three people have some identity in a passport. Thirty-eight million people, I think, are the ones who have driving licence, so that’s an awful lot of our population and I must say, when I was a seaman, I had to have an ID card for ten years.”
Of course, Prescott is not alone in expressing such waffle. It’s a fair bet that the majority of MPs in the House of Commons, caught unawares, would struggle to answer the simplest of questions. Indeed, so afraid is the government of being caught on the hop that the questions asked at Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons are actually put to the Prime Minister three days in advance.
Not only doe British MPs speak a load of twaddle, they are first class liars, hence the socialist quirk: How do you know when MPs are lying? Answer: When their lips move. Moreover, they are amongst the most disingenuous people in the country.
Back in 1999, Michael Meacher had this to say to a fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference: “One of the things I would argue for over the question of second homes- and let me say I am someone who has a second home so I am not denigrating the possession of a second home [is that] people like me who are privileged should not be in the position to rob other people of a home which is a basic right.” It was later revealed that Mr Meacher had in fact 9 homes (he boasted he had 12) valued between £250,000 and £500,000.
At that same conference, incidentally, Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, said to the assembled faithful: “We will be giving the police the money they need to recruit 5,000 more officers.” However, Alan Milburn MP had written to Straw three days earlier saying: “I must stress…the package does not provide for 5,000 additional officers. There should therefore be no reference to this.”
And, forgive us for dwelling on that year, but only weeks after this, an all party committee of MPs condemned Labour’s Stephen Byers MP for his “regrettable habit” of giving “potentially misleading information” – a skill Mr Byers has perfected to a fine art these past three years.
But to your initial question: why do we highlight George Bush’s gaffes? Again, because here is the most powerful man in the world, the No. 1 representative of US Capitalism basically telling the workers of the world ‘hey, this is what you get when you vote for capitalist politicians.’ Or in his own words:
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier — so long as I'm the dictator." —George W. Bush, 19/12/200
Most of today's papers run with the story about John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, telling tax inspectors they can use satellites to spy on householders’ attempts to improve their homes. Prescott would have tax inspectors use satellite imagery to find out who has built garages and conservatories, or extended their kitchen, in order that the mendicants can have their council tax, inheritance tax or capital gains tax increased.
