Agenda 2019

Ken Loach and Kwasi Kwarteng on Channel  4 News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V7Iaycp5IU There are many patronising, uncaring and ignorant Tories filling the conservative benches in the Commons and many more to be found in their constituency clubs and tea rooms around the country. Kwasi Kwarteng is just one. The refusal to accept the reality of "Food-bank Britain", he dismisses with the comment, "I think there is some hardship" followed by "Ken is just telling a story" and then draws a comparison with other writers who have commented on social injustices for ma ny years. Patronising, uncaring and ignorant Kwarteng resorts to the now well worn distortion that the conservatives have won a mandate from the British people in an election where the increasing use of Food-banks (by people driven to desperation by welfare cuts and sanctions incidentally) was a main issue in the Labour party campaign,and Labour lost that argument. Th...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/02/spirit-45-ken-loach-nhs-history Ken Loach documentary about Labour's programme of nationalisation following the second world war, and the subsequent media vilification of union workers Clement Attlee in Limehouse, in July 1945, ahead of Labour's victory.   The Clement Attlee government of Nye Bevan, Manny Shinwell, Herbert Morrison and the rest, has usually been considered as the achievement of the Labour Party vision for society in Britain. Throughout my career in the Labour Party and the broader labour movement, it has been my view that the 1945 government should have been the starting point for social change in this country, not the limit of working peoples ambitions for themselves and their families. Over the years since then, we have witnessed a relentless dismantling of the welfare state and a rejection of the concept of public (not private) good in social and economic matters. This  descent has accelerated dr...