tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42884832284193309842024-02-21T13:03:29.967+00:00David Lindsay 2020Standing for Parliament in North West Durham at the next General Election. No party affiliation. Freelance journalist, available for work. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Accepts PayPal. #VoteDavidLindsayDavid Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.comBlogger237125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-80414521035480198192021-03-29T22:21:00.004+01:002021-03-29T23:26:08.970+01:00My Parliamentary Candidacy Has Been Resumed<div style="text-align: justify;">As of today, my parliamentary candidacy at North West Durham has been resumed. Not that it ever really stopped. It now incorporates a challenge to either or both of my accusers to stand against me. I have already had the moral victory over them, since they have failed in their attempt to force me to commit suicide. In this age of Keir Starmer, David Evans and Assaf Kaplan, then one of them could have the Labour nomination for the asking.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although unless you are Holy Weeking the old-fashioned way, or even if you are, then raise a glass tonight to the deceased credibility of my oldest and bitterest enemy, who once thought that he was going to be Prime Minister, but who now stands exposed as a delicate flower on the fainting couch, his preciousness matched only by his petulance. It is impossible to see how anyone will ever take him seriously again. I have been ahead of that game by 20 years, since I never, ever have taken him seriously.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not that either Precious or my other accuser is my reason for returning to the electoral fray. The margin of victory at North West Durham was 1,144. With three years’ notice, then I could take more votes than that. More than the margin of victory between the Conservatives and Labour, or vice versa. Of course I could. The Brexit Party no longer exists, and Watts Stelling is very unlikely to give it a fourth go, in his seventies. The <i>de facto</i> Conservative majority is therefore about five thousand. It might still be worth a punt, though.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A punt to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. To build on Brexit as a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under the direction of a more democratic State, and to develop a fully independent and a peaceable British foreign policy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To exercise the leading role in the pursuit of economic equality of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class, and the leading role in the pursuit of international peace of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class and the youth, insisting that the working class in Great Britain was indivisible. (The Northern Independence Party is an intentional joke. A whippet as its emblem? Really?)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To celebrate the fact that Britain was ethnically diverse down to every ward, that Britain was home to people from every inhabited territory, that Britain had a large and growing population of mixed ethnic heritage, and that Britain was therefore the world centre of the liberation struggle of the Global South, accepting no definition of anti-Semitism beyond, “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” To use that celebration against the central role of the City of London, and of its network of tax havens under British sovereignty, in the oppression of the Global South.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To insist on an approach to climate change which protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encouraged economic development around the world, which upheld the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children, which held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And to reverse deindustrialisation at home, while bringing an end to the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars abroad, as two of the many policy implications of the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex, implications that also included action on men’s health and on fathers’ rights. (There is no “rape culture” in schools that have barely been open in a year. Teenagers have bad sex, and they often regret it.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This list is not exhaustive.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As to today, it turns out that there is no defence to a charge of harassment. If someone is prepared to testify that she perceives herself to have been harassed, then the magistrate is obliged to convict. How very carceral and statist feminism has become, demanding endless new criminal offences of which it was impossible to be acquitted and which carried draconian sentences. The liberation movement that exists to have men locked up on the mere say-so of women. Or, in this case, of a woman and of an old woman. But the law as written does not specify sex, and two can play that game.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My guilty pleas today are the law, because acquittal of the charges on the sheet was by definition impossible. But they are nothing more than that. My guilt is <a href="https://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2021/03/clergy-watch-day-65.html" target="_blank">actively disbelieved</a> by the people on whose respect depends the ability of one my accusers to do her job, but that job was how she knew about the existence of a criminal offence of which mere accusation was conviction.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although just how common are acquittals these days? Someone needs to look into that. Proponents of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill are among those who need to consider that the only function of the courts in this country is for the State to convict and sentence the people whom the State had charged. Your chance of being found not guilty is effectively nil, and there are charges acquittal of which is impossible because the law has been written that way.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Add to that this morning’s revelation, at least to me, that a suspended sentence could be activated by conviction, even in the form of a guilty plea, of an offence that had occurred before that sentence had been imposed, or even before the trial that had occasioned that sentence. Specifically, it can be so activated by a guilty plea to a charge of which acquittal was impossible. As of today, my parliamentary candidacy at North West Durham has been resumed.</div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-40293235161906980332021-03-28T21:41:00.003+01:002021-03-28T21:41:21.444+01:00Back In The Game<div style="text-align: justify;">When I turn up at Peterlee Magistrates’ Court tomorrow morning, then the moral victory will be mine, since my accusers will have failed in their attempt to force me to commit suicide. Moreover, if my trial went ahead, then, regardless of the outcome, my parliamentary candidacy at North West Durham would be resumed there and then, incorporating a challenge to either or both of my accusers to stand against me. In this age of Keir Starmer, David Evans and Assaf Kaplan, then one of them could have the Labour nomination for the asking.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not that my accusers are my reason to consider returning to the electoral fray. The margin of victory at North West Durham was 1,144. With three years’ notice, then I could take more votes than that. More than the margin of victory between the Conservatives and Labour, or vice versa. Of course I could. The Brexit Party no longer exists, and Watts Stelling is very unlikely to give it a fourth go, in his seventies. The <i>de facto</i> Conservative majority is therefore about five thousand. It might still be worth a punt, though.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A punt to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. To build on Brexit as a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under the direction of a more democratic State, and to develop a fully independent and a peaceable British foreign policy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To exercise the leading role in the pursuit of economic equality of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class, and the leading role in the pursuit of international peace of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class and the youth, insisting that the working class in Great Britain was indivisible. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To celebrate the fact that Britain was ethnically diverse down to every ward, that Britain was home to people from every inhabited territory, that Britain had a large and growing population of mixed ethnic heritage, and that Britain was therefore the world centre of the liberation struggle of the Global South, accepting no definition of anti-Semitism beyond, “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” To use that celebration against the central role of the City of London, and of its network of tax havens under British sovereignty, in the oppression of the Global South.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To insist on an approach to climate change which protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encouraged economic development around the world, which upheld the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children, which held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And to reverse deindustrialisation at home, while bringing an end to the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars abroad, as two of the many policy implications of the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex, implications that also included action on men’s health and on fathers’ rights. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This list is not exhaustive.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As to tomorrow, the use of my existing convictions as character evidence against me is a circular argument, since the allegations made against me by one of my accusers were used as character evidence against me at that trial. After my having been convicted on the basis of those allegations, it is now proposed to try those allegations on the basis of that conviction. Round, and round, and round it goes. Her further allegation against me was made only after I had pointed out that logical fallacy. It was nothing but an attempt at back-covering, and I was never charged in relation to it, seriously damaging her credibility.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At my previous trial, she withdrew under cross-examination her central allegation against me, something for which I have never been arrested, and which has never even been mentioned to me by anyone else, before or since. Yet that shocking and deeply distressing allegation was what provoked an obvious mental health crisis on my part, as professional analysis of the material has now confirmed. Again, then, she has little or no credibility.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nothing to link me to any anonymous letter relating to her has ever been produced, and again my previous conviction cannot be used to suggest a pattern of such behaviour, since that conviction was obtained on the basis of the allegation that I had sent that letter. In any case, that would itself be a specific criminal offence, and again I have never so much as been arrested for it. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is in fact she who is Scottish, whereas I have never lived in Scotland, nor have I been there in some years. She would have been far better placed to have had it sent than I would have been, and that in the runup to a trial at which it was to be presented as evidence of similar behaviour. What has been found to link me to that letter? My fingerprints? My DNA? My handwriting? There is absolutely nothing. It is irrelevant that the stamp was bought in Durham, since there is a Post Office here in Lanchester, and of course that is the one that I use. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My second accuser has set his allegation in the context of numerous other lurid allegations against me. But none of those is on the charge sheet. Since several of them are of very serious criminal activity, all of which I entirely deny, then I submit that they should be disregarded, since they would have to be tried at Crown Court, which they never have been. Indeed, I have never been arrested for any of those, either.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This action is an abuse of process by a longstanding political opponent who has spent over a decade aspiring to the Labour nomination for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, which I contested as an Independent in 2019. That nomination is now available. Nothing would better curry favour with the people who ran the Labour Party in the North East in general, and in County Durham in particular, than to land me with another criminal conviction. They truly hate me, and so does he.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the root of the specific blog post in this case, which was deleted after less than 12 hours (mostly overnight) and which certainly never appeared on any “local news site” or whatever he suggests, is a recent leaked report into the staff of the Labour Party, which revealed that he, who was the party's London Regional Director at the time, employed the infamous Angry Black Woman trope against Diane Abbott. He has been racially abusing me for nearly 20 years, and now his true character stands exposed. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to put that on record in open court. The impending Forde Report into racism in the Labour Party is universally expected to name him, which goes to the heart of his character and credibility.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Furthermore, he is now Head of Media Relations UK for HSBC, bankers to the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. If he wanted to talk about character, then I would be more than happy to call people who would testify to the character of the man who made his living laundering the reputation of the bank that laundered money from such sources. In fact, I would be more than happy to do so even if he were not prepared to talk about my character. I would be delighted to talk about his. For example, there was the time when his brother-in-law tried to murder me. He was running the office of a Cabinet Minister at the time, so I was too frightened to report it to the Police, as he had known that I would be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Head of Media Relations UK for the biggest bank in the world, former London Regional Director of the Labour Party, former Head of Press and Media for the Labour Party, former Chief of Staff to the Government Chief Whip: the idea that he could be harassed by little old me is even more laughable than the suggestion that I could harass a former Police Officer who was now a Safeguarding Officer. They both deserve to be laughed out. And each of their accounts has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.</div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-89989113085969547562020-10-11T20:09:00.002+01:002020-10-11T20:09:52.081+01:00The Lanchester Manifesto<div style="text-align: justify;"><ol><li><a href="https://lanchesterreview.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-lanchester-declaration.html" target="_blank">We reaffirm the Lanchester Declaration.</a> The currency-issuing power of the State is such that the entire benefits system should be replaced with a Universal Basic Income no lower than anyone already received in benefits, undergirding the Jobs Guarantee, and paid through the Treasury, thereby making possible the abolition of the Department for Work and Pensions. It is time to implement Theresa May’s original Prime Ministerial agenda of workers’ and consumers’ representation in corporate governance, shareholders’ control over executive pay, restrictions on pay differentials within companies, an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme including greatly increased housebuilding, action against tax avoidance including a ban on public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, a cap on energy prices, a ban or significant restrictions on foreign takeovers, a ban on unpaid internships, and an inquiry into Orgreave.</li><li>We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end. We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents. We need rent controls, action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty, repeal of the Vagrancy Act, and the outlawing of practices such as “poor doors”.</li><li>Including high speed rail, but not restricted to it, the renationalised rail service should be the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, free at the point of use, and extending to every village. Returned to public ownership, there should be a National Grid for water, with water and energy free at the point of use, within an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and around this country’s vast reserves of coal and lithium. The State should ensure both the manufacture in this country of the vehicles that could be run on that domestically produced electricity, and the universal availability of charging points. Legislation should annul all convictions and other adverse court decisions arising out of the three Miners’ Strikes since 1970, as well as Clay Cross, Shrewsbury, and Wapping, while also securing justice for the victims of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme scandal.</li><li>Enactment of the NHS Reinstatement Bill should be accompanied by the abolition throughout the United Kingdom of prescription charges, of eye and dental charges, and of hospital car parking charges, as well as by the creation of the National Care Service. The Fifth of July, the anniversary of the creation of the National Health Service, should be the United Kingdom’s National Day, with Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day also public holidays throughout the United Kingdom. Apprentices and trainees should enjoy the same benefits as their peers in further and higher education, and vice versa. Higher education should be fully funded all the way to doctoral level, with lifelong access. The training and other standards for the private sector to match should be set by national and municipal public ownership. Parents are the first educators of their children. The Relationship and Sex Education curriculum should conform to the Science curriculum. Independent schools provide views such as ours with a platform denied by state schools. </li><li>We should require the approval of the House of Commons for changes to interest rates, introduce a Glass-Steagall division between investment banking and retail banking, extend the Freedom of Information Act to the City of London, and conform its municipal franchise to that of local government in general. All tax havens under British jurisdiction should be closed, non-domiciled tax status should be abolished, the Big Four accounting firms should be broken up, auditors should be banned by Statute from selling extras, and they should have unlimited liability. Crown immunity should be abolished. Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Partnerships should be required to have at least one member who was a natural person resident in the United Kingdom. The State should buy a stake in every FTSE 500 company, large enough to secure Board-level representation, for the exercise of which both the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be accountable to the House of Commons. After any investment in public services, the dividends would be distributed equally to everyone by the Treasury. Public bodies and public contractors should be required to buy British wherever possible, and to buy local wherever possible. Employment rights should begin with employment, and apply regardless of the number of hours worked. There should be a four-day working week by 2100. Our people should be active in the trade unions appropriate to their jobs where applicable, or otherwise in <a href="https://unitetheunion.org/why-join/membership-types/community-membership/" target="_blank">Unite Community</a>. The unions are crucial to the necessary mutualisation of the gig economy. Every part of this country should be on the Belt and Road, and we should encourage the building of one or more Bering Strait crossings, as part of a wider and deeper realignment with the BRICS and other emerging economies on the understanding that “development is the new word for peace”. The principles of the Antarctic Treaty should be extended to Outer Space. </li><li>We should end this country’s poisonous relationship with the Gulf monarchies. Instead of NATO, we need bilateral nonaggression treaties with all other European countries including Russia, with the United States, and with Canada. We need nonaggression treaties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, and preferably with each of their members bilaterally. There should be no foreign military bases on British soil, but justice for Harry Dunn, and self-determination for the Chagossian people. We stand with Julian Assange. Instead of Trident, an extra £70 billion should be given to each of the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force. Military force should be used only ever in self-defence and with the approval of the House of Commons. BAE Systems should be renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, with a ban on all sale of arms abroad, and with a comprehensive programme of diversification.</li><li>There should be a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, a Coroner’s Inquest into the Manchester Arena attack, a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, an action to challenge the legality of the bombing of Syria after the confirmation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that no nerve agent had been used at Douma, an action before the International Criminal Court against those who had brought slavery back to Libya, and an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland inviting it to exercise its declaratory power against those who had waged war on Iraq in 2003. The present British funding of the White Helmets and of the “Free Syrian Police” should be diverted to our own emergency services. The Integrity Initiative, the Institute for Statecraft, and the 77th Brigade, should all be disbanded. The Statute Law should specify that aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country’s own, with the money thus saved remaining within the International Development budget, and with the 0.7 per cent target intact, but with a ban on the funding of offences against the sanctity of life.</li><li>Parliament should legislate that the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration was intentional killing. Funds should be diverted to palliative care, to the hospice movement, and to research on adult and cord blood stem cells. We need to ban Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, empower local authorities to limit the number of gambling venues, insist on the use of that power, end gambling on television, end the advertising of gambling other than at venues such as casinos and betting shops, and ban gambling with credit cards. There should be no further deregulation of Sunday trading. We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so on. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. Peter Hitchens’s <i>The War We Never Fought</i> should be taught in schools. </li><li>Families need fathers. All aspects of public policy should take account of the urgent social and cultural need for highly paid, highly skilled, high status employment as the economic basis of paternal authority, and thus of the paternal responsibility. We need a legal presumption of equal parenting, the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit were being paid to mothers, the restoration of the requirement that providers of fertility treatment take account of the child’s need for a father, the repeal of the ludicrous provision for two persons of the same sex to be listed as a child’s parents on a birth certificate, paternity leave available up to a set maximum at any time until the child was 18 or left school, and a foreign policy that did not entail tearing fathers away from their children in wars. We need to give any marrying couple the right to register their marriage as bound by the divorce law that obtained prior to 1969, give any religious organisation the right to specify that any marriage that it conducted would be so bound, give existing married couples the right to re-register their marriages as being so bound, and remove the restriction of civil partnerships to unrelated couples. The whole concept of gender self-identification should be banished. </li><li>We need to make it a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would remove any conceivable excuse for prostituting oneself. We need a criminal offence of sexual activity with any person under the age of 18 who was more than two years younger than oneself, with a maximum sentence equal to twice the difference in age, abolition of different rules for “positions of trust”, and a ban on abortion or contraception for those under 18 at least without parental knowledge and consent. We need the replacement of the existing categories of sexual assault with aggravating circumstances to the general categories of offences against the person, such that the sentences could be doubled. There should be no anonymity either for adult defendants or for adult complainants. We need to rule out the legal possibility of being a specifically sexual assailant below the age of consent, and specify that intoxication was a bar to sexual consent only insofar as it would have been a bar to driving. We need to end the blocking of progress into paid or voluntary work even though one had been acquitted. C5 notices should be outlawed. </li><li>We need to reverse the erosion of trial by jury and of the right to silence, reverse the existing reversals of the burden of proof, abolish conviction by majority verdict, extend throughout the United Kingdom the Scots Law requirement for corroborating evidence, require that the prosecution present its case within 12 weeks of charge, and require judges to instruct juries to convict only and specifically beyond reasonable doubt. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would give everyone the “stake in society” to be a juror. We need to abolish the Crown Prosecution Service, restore the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, abolish the admission of anonymous evidence other than from undercover Police Officers, exclude the possibility of conviction on anonymous evidence alone, restore the protection against double jeopardy, and end the secrecy of the family courts, the right to cross-examine in which ought not to be removed by mere accusation. There should be nothing like identity cards or control orders, including to vote, where photo identification requirements would heavily favour our opponents over our people. We need the abolition of Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, and of stipendiary magistrates sitting alone. We need to repeal the Civil Contingencies Act, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, the Official Secrets Acts, one-sided extradition arrangements, and the provision for “no win, no fee” litigation. We need to restore and extend Legal Aid, and return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with Police Forces at least no larger than at present, and with police stations at the heart of their communities. MI5 should be disbanded in favour of highly specialised Police Officers. There should be “investment in youth services, mental health and social care, education, jobs and housing: key services to support the most vulnerable before they come into contact with the criminal justice system.” </li><li>We should transfer each Royal Prerogative to seven, eight or nine of nine Co-Presidents, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top nine elected; in practice, at least one of those would protect traditional values, unlike any institution in living memory. Candidates for the House of Commons should have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, but there should be no nationality requirement for voting, thereby giving Americans and Israelis equality with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, while strengthening Christian witness. If the number of Commons constituencies were to be reduced to 600, then the whole country should elect an additional 50 MPs, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected. Two sets of 50 Senators should be elected from among self-nominees, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected at the end. In one case, electors and candidates would have to be British citizens resident in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens resident in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. There would be a minimum age of 21 to vote, and of 30 to stand. In the other case, electors would have to be resident in the United Kingdom, but there would be no nationality requirement. It is already possible to stand for Parliament from anywhere in the world, so there would be neither a nationality requirement nor a residency requirement to be a candidate. There would be a minimum age of 16 to vote, but, recalling posthumous sons who inherited peerages at birth, there would be no minimum age to stand. In either case, there would be no deposit, and any casual vacancy would be filled by the next highest scoring candidate who was willing and able. In each Commons constituency, there should be precisely one candidate, of any party or none, who subscribed to the Lanchester Declaration and to this Lanchester Manifesto.</li></ol></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>David Lindsay</b>, Lanchester, County Durham</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Mark McNally</b>, Consett, County Durham</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Please contact </span><a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com" style="text-align: left;">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a><span style="text-align: left;">.</span></div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-48449668152556996232020-09-16T22:24:00.004+01:002020-09-18T22:51:56.568+01:00Crowdfunding My Parliamentary Candidacy<div style="text-align: justify;"><i><a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/r4unw9-david-lindsay-for-parliament" target="_blank">Please give generously:</a> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My broad political philosophy is set out <a href="https://lanchesterreview.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-lanchester-declaration.html">here</a>, and some more specific policies are set out <a href="https://lanchesterreview.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-lanchester-manifesto-signatories.html">here</a>. I seek to defend family and community values by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was born in 1977. At various times since 1999, I have served as a Parish Councillor, as a primary school governor, as a comprehensive school governor, as a governor of a college of the University of Durham, and as a governor of one of the largest NHS Foundation Trusts in the country. I have a long record of working with people of all political parties and none. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I stood for Parliament as an Independent at very short notice in 2019, and I could have more success with the far more notice that was now available. If I had raised £30,000 by the end of March 2021, then I would spend £20,000 of it before the beginning of the official campaign in late 2024, and the remaining £10,000 during that campaign. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I am in it to win it. If I had failed to raise £30,000, then any money raised would be given to charity. Of course, any money above the target would also be spent on the campaign. I will contest the seat where the most people had offered to sign my nomination papers during the course of this fundraiser.</div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-75184452509690532332020-09-14T17:08:00.018+01:002020-10-05T16:28:23.412+01:00The Lanchester Manifesto; Signatories Welcome<div style="text-align: justify;"><i>If you would like to sign this, then please contact <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com" style="text-align: left;">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a> by 5pm on Saturday, 10th October:</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ol><li><a href="https://lanchesterreview.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-lanchester-declaration.html" target="_blank">We reaffirm the Lanchester Declaration.</a> The currency-issuing power of the State is such that the entire benefits system should be replaced with a Universal Basic Income no lower than anyone already received in benefits, undergirding the Jobs Guarantee, and paid through the Treasury, thereby making possible the abolition of the Department for Work and Pensions. It is time to implement Theresa May’s original Prime Ministerial agenda of workers’ and consumers’ representation in corporate governance, shareholders’ control over executive pay, restrictions on pay differentials within companies, an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme including greatly increased housebuilding, action against tax avoidance including a ban on public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, a cap on energy prices, a ban or significant restrictions on foreign takeovers, a ban on unpaid internships, and an inquiry into Orgreave.</li><li>We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end. We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents. We need rent controls, action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty, repeal of the Vagrancy Act, and the outlawing of practices such as “poor doors”.</li><li>Including high speed rail, but not restricted to it, the renationalised rail service should be the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, free at the point of use, and extending to every village. Returned to public ownership, there should be a National Grid for water, with water and energy free at the point of use, within an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and around this country’s vast reserves of coal and lithium. The State should ensure both the manufacture in this country of the vehicles that could be run on that domestically produced electricity, and the universal availability of charging points. Legislation should annul all convictions and other adverse court decisions arising out of the three Miners’ Strikes since 1970, as well as Clay Cross, Shrewsbury, and Wapping, while also securing justice for the victims of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme scandal.</li><li>Enactment of the NHS Reinstatement Bill should be accompanied by the abolition throughout the United Kingdom of prescription charges, of eye and dental charges, and of hospital car parking charges, as well as by the creation of the National Care Service. The Fifth of July, the anniversary of the creation of the National Health Service, should be the United Kingdom’s National Day, with Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day also public holidays throughout the United Kingdom. Apprentices and trainees should enjoy the same benefits as their peers in further and higher education, and vice versa. Higher education should be fully funded all the way to doctoral level, with lifelong access. The training and other standards for the private sector to match should be set by national and municipal public ownership. Parents are the first educators of their children. The Relationship and Sex Education curriculum should conform to the Science curriculum. Independent schools provide views such as ours with a platform denied by state schools. </li><li>We should require the approval of the House of Commons for changes to interest rates, introduce a Glass-Steagall division between investment banking and retail banking, extend the Freedom of Information Act to the City of London, and conform its municipal franchise to that of local government in general. All tax havens under British jurisdiction should be closed, non-domiciled tax status should be abolished, the Big Four accounting firms should be broken up, auditors should be banned by Statute from selling extras, and they should have unlimited liability. Crown immunity should be abolished. Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Partnerships should be required to have at least one member who was a natural person resident in the United Kingdom. The State should buy a stake in every FTSE 500 company, large enough to secure Board-level representation, for the exercise of which both the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be accountable to the House of Commons. After any investment in public services, the dividends would be distributed equally to everyone by the Treasury. Public bodies and public contractors should be required to buy British wherever possible, and to buy local wherever possible. Employment rights should begin with employment, and apply regardless of the number of hours worked. There should be a four-day working week by 2100. Our people should be active in the trade unions appropriate to their jobs where applicable, or otherwise in <a href="https://unitetheunion.org/why-join/membership-types/community-membership/" target="_blank">Unite Community</a>. The unions are crucial to the necessary mutualisation of the gig economy. Every part of this country should be on the Belt and Road, and we should encourage the building of one or more Bering Strait crossings, as part of a wider and deeper realignment with the BRICS and other emerging economies on the understanding that “development is the new word for peace”. The principles of the Antarctic Treaty should be extended to Outer Space. </li><li>We should end this country’s poisonous relationship with the Gulf monarchies. Instead of NATO, we need bilateral nonaggression treaties with all other European countries including Russia, with the United States, and with Canada. We need nonaggression treaties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, and preferably with each of their members bilaterally. There should be no foreign military bases on British soil, but justice for Harry Dunn, and self-determination for the Chagossian people. We stand with Julian Assange. Instead of Trident, an extra £70 billion should be given to each of the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force. Military force should be used only ever in self-defence and with the approval of the House of Commons. BAE Systems should be renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, with a ban on all sale of arms abroad, and with a comprehensive programme of diversification.</li><li>There should be a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, a Coroner’s Inquest into the Manchester Arena attack, a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, an action to challenge the legality of the bombing of Syria after the confirmation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that no nerve agent had been used at Douma, an action before the International Criminal Court against those who had brought slavery back to Libya, and an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland inviting it to exercise its declaratory power against those who had waged war on Iraq in 2003. The present British funding of the White Helmets and of the “Free Syrian Police” should be diverted to our own emergency services. The Integrity Initiative, the Institute for Statecraft, and the 77th Brigade, should all be disbanded. The Statute Law should specify that aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country’s own, with the money thus saved remaining within the International Development budget, and with the 0.7 per cent target intact, but with a ban on the funding of offences against the sanctity of life.</li><li>Parliament should legislate that the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration was intentional killing. Funds should be diverted to palliative care, to the hospice movement, and to research on adult and cord blood stem cells. We need to ban Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, empower local authorities to limit the number of gambling venues, insist on the use of that power, end gambling on television, end the advertising of gambling other than at venues such as casinos and betting shops, and ban gambling with credit cards. There should be no further deregulation of Sunday trading. We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so on. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. Peter Hitchens’s <i>The War We Never Fought</i> should be taught in schools. </li><li>Families need fathers. All aspects of public policy should take account of the urgent social and cultural need for highly paid, highly skilled, high status employment as the economic basis of paternal authority, and thus of the paternal responsibility. We need a legal presumption of equal parenting, the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit were being paid to mothers, the restoration of the requirement that providers of fertility treatment take account of the child’s need for a father, the repeal of the ludicrous provision for two persons of the same sex to be listed as a child’s parents on a birth certificate, paternity leave available up to a set maximum at any time until the child was 18 or left school, and a foreign policy that did not entail tearing fathers away from their children in wars. We need to give any marrying couple the right to register their marriage as bound by the divorce law that obtained prior to 1969, give any religious organisation the right to specify that any marriage that it conducted would be so bound, give existing married couples the right to re-register their marriages as being so bound, and remove the restriction of civil partnerships to unrelated couples. The whole concept of gender self-identification should be banished. </li><li>We need to make it a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would remove any conceivable excuse for prostituting oneself. We need a criminal offence of sexual activity with any person under the age of 18 who was more than two years younger than oneself, with a maximum sentence equal to twice the difference in age, abolition of different rules for “positions of trust”, and a ban on abortion or contraception for those under 18 at least without parental knowledge and consent. We need the replacement of the existing categories of sexual assault with aggravating circumstances to the general categories of offences against the person, such that the sentences could be doubled. There should be no anonymity either for adult defendants or for adult complainants. We need to rule out the legal possibility of being a specifically sexual assailant below the age of consent, and specify that intoxication was a bar to sexual consent only insofar as it would have been a bar to driving. We need to end the blocking of progress into paid or voluntary work even though one had been acquitted. C5 notices should be outlawed. </li><li>We need to reverse the erosion of trial by jury and of the right to silence, reverse the existing reversals of the burden of proof, abolish conviction by majority verdict, extend throughout the United Kingdom the Scots Law requirement for corroborating evidence, require that the prosecution present its case within 12 weeks of charge, and require judges to instruct juries to convict only and specifically beyond reasonable doubt. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would give everyone the “stake in society” to be a juror. We need to abolish the Crown Prosecution Service, restore the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, abolish the admission of anonymous evidence other than from undercover Police Officers, exclude the possibility of conviction on anonymous evidence alone, restore the protection against double jeopardy, and end the secrecy of the family courts, the right to cross-examine in which ought not to be removed by mere accusation. There should be nothing like identity cards or control orders, including to vote, where photo identification requirements would heavily favour our opponents over our people. We need the abolition of Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, and of stipendiary magistrates sitting alone. We need to repeal the Civil Contingencies Act, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, the Official Secrets Acts, one-sided extradition arrangements, and the provision for “no win, no fee” litigation. We need to restore and extend Legal Aid, and return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with Police Forces at least no larger than at present, and with police stations at the heart of their communities. MI5 should be disbanded in favour of highly specialised Police Officers. There should be “investment in youth services, mental health and social care, education, jobs and housing: key services to support the most vulnerable before they come into contact with the criminal justice system.” </li><li>We should transfer each Royal Prerogative to seven, eight or nine of nine Co-Presidents, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top nine elected; in practice, at least one of those would protect traditional values, unlike any institution in living memory. Candidates for the House of Commons should have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, but there should be no nationality requirement for voting, thereby giving Americans and Israelis equality with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, while strengthening Christian witness. If the number of Commons constituencies were to be reduced to 600, then the whole country should elect an additional 50 MPs, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected. Two sets of 50 Senators should be elected from among self-nominees, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected at the end. In one case, electors and candidates would have to be British citizens resident in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens resident in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. There would be a minimum age of 21 to vote, and of 30 to stand. In the other case, electors would have to be resident in the United Kingdom, but there would be no nationality requirement. It is already possible to stand for Parliament from anywhere in the world, so there would be neither a nationality requirement nor a residency requirement to be a candidate. There would be a minimum age of 16 to vote, but, recalling posthumous sons who inherited peerages at birth, there would be no minimum age to stand. In either case, there would be no deposit, and any casual vacancy would be filled by the next highest scoring candidate who was willing and able. In each Commons constituency, there should be precisely one candidate, of any party or none, who subscribed to the Lanchester Declaration and to this Lanchester Manifesto.</li></ol></div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-33340031618980553472020-09-06T18:40:00.005+01:002020-09-06T21:39:19.014+01:00A New Weekly Magazine<div style="text-align: justify;">I am setting up a weekly magazine of news and comment. It has a name, but I am not publishing that on here, as, since he is nothing if not time rich, Oliver Kamm would have a field day. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With only the same online presence as <i>Private Eye</i>, which seems to do all right commercially, it will feature, on its odd-numbered pages, a weekly column by each of around 20 regular contributors, plus around five guest articles, giving a voice to the old Red Wall areas. Those areas tend to have relatively low levels of Internet use, meaning that this magazine ought to sell well here. Among others, we have already secured what would be the only Haredi columnist in the national media.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kamm has had me kicked of Twitter, as is apparently within his power, so I am having to come on here to ask for 14 of those weekly columnists to be Nigel Farage, George Galloway, and a supporter of each of theirs from each of the Red Wall areas of of North Wales, the West Midlands, the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East, and the North West. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In principle, we already have someone from the pro-Galloway camp in all but one of those areas, although we do not yet have the man himself, and several of the others will not quite say yes until he does. We know who we want from the pro-Farage camp in the West Midlands, but beyond that we are entirely open to offers. Please contact <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The even-numbered pages will feature popular news stories relating to sport, television, music, and so on, plus advertising. Public relations stuff, if you like, but that would get the readers, especially if we made offers of exclusivity to the biggest clubs, programmes, acts, and so forth. Details are available to Mr Farage and to Mr Galloway. For the right to publish whatever they liked within the law, the word limit, and the English language, and provided that it were exclusive content, then we expect to charge a fixed sum per page per annum; again, details of that sum are available to Mr Farage and to Mr Galloway. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We expect each regular columnist to be paid a fixed sum per annum, and each guest columnist to be paid a fixed fee per time. Newsprint is far cheaper than it used to be, so 15,000 copies could be produced for well under £2000, and probably for less than £1500. Obviously, we would wish to aim a lot higher than that. But that does give a guide to the figures. We expect a retail price of one pound. As the magazine became commercially successful, then the pay would increase accordingly. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A think tank that I am to direct is to own half of this project, although of course it will be editorially independent. An additional investor is therefore sought. Again, please contact <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>.</div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-27111364876284079092020-09-06T18:39:00.007+01:002020-10-08T19:45:40.417+01:00The Lanchester Declaration<div style="text-align: justify;"><ol><li>The Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that had begun with the Budget of December 1976. The Prime Minister’s two closest advisers are Dominic Cummings and Munira Mirza, while Claire Fox has been raised to the peerage. If they can make it, then so can we. “A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling; it is also necessary for rebelling,” since, “a fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of revolution.” God has revealed all that the Holy Roman Church professes Him to have revealed. Each and every individual human life is absolutely sacred from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death. That principle is the foundation of all morality. We struggle against evils that include direct abortion, indirect abortion at least except where any other course of action would result in the loss of both lives, euthanasia, assisted suicide, destructive experimentation on embryonic human beings, human cloning, human-animal hybridity, “saviour siblings”, capital punishment, and unjust war, if any war be just, but certainly including total war, preemptive war, the international trade in arms, and the manufacture, possession or use of nuclear, radiological, chemical or biological weapons. Their victims are disproportionately working-class people and people of colour. Therefore, we struggle against evils that include poverty, racism, sexual promiscuity, pornography, eugenics, marginalisation of people with disabilities, lack of due respect for old age, refusal to celebrate the infinite beauty of every human being as the image and likeness of God, refusal to respect the dignity of parents as the first educators of their children, classification of human beings solely or primarily as economic units, and policies likely to give rise to armed conflict. Their victims are disproportionately working-class people and people of colour.</li><li>Since there cannot be a politically chosen “free” market in general, but not in drugs or prostitution, so there must not be a “free” market in general. In order to uphold the sanctity of life, it is necessary to secure economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class, which has always been at least two fifths Tory. In the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and the youth. Unity must therefore be maintained within and between the working class and the youth, including against any separatist tendency in England, Scotland or Wales. We are not “For the Many, Not the Few”. We are “For Everyone”. We reject class conflict in favour of “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”. Ours is a broad social movement towards institutional hegemony, a celebration of the national-popular, and an organic and self-organising working-class culture that includes worker-intellectuals, free of “the enormous condescension of posterity”. The working class and the youth could not fulfil their leading role if they were in a state of stupefaction.</li><li>Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity. Equality and diversity must include economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt. We have never not been “cancelled”, and we need no lectures on “cancel culture” from those who have always silenced us but who now bellow that they themselves are being silenced.</li><li>Brexit is a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States, with no use of military force except in self-defence, if at all. With an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation, the leading role in building One Nation belongs to the people and places whose votes have decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, of the 2017 General Election, and of the 2019 General Election, namely the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that are either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them. Since there cannot be the unrestricted movement of goods, services and capital but not of people, so there must not be the unrestricted movement of goods, services or capital.</li><li>The issuing of currency is an act of the State, which is literally the creator of all money. A sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself. All wars are fought on this understanding, but the principle applies universally. The State also has the fiscal and monetary means to control inflation, means that therefore need to be under democratic political control in both cases. That is what both fiscal policy and monetary policy are for: to encourage certain politically chosen forms of behaviour, and to discourage others. They are not where the State’s money comes from. Nothing is “unaffordable”, every recession is discretionary on the part of the Government, and there is no such thing as “taxpayers’ money”. Armed with this understanding, and shielded by a strict statutory division between investment banking and retail banking, large amounts of central government credit, at low interest rates and over a long term, must be used for public works. Those would then pay for themselves many times over, ably assisted by pro-business tariffs and subsidies, by a pro-business National Bank to promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation, by collective bargaining and trade union representation, by cooperative and mutual ownership, and by reconceived models of public ownership. British elite interests, among others, subverted such an economic order in the American Republic. We do not speak for the declining British elite. We speak from and to the rising British people.</li><li>Any approach to climate change must protect and extend secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, encourage economic development around the world, uphold the right of the working class and of people of colour to have children, hold down and as far as practicable reduce the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and refuse to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. We regret the defeat of the miners in 1985. The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. We celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That expansion and development must now include space exploration, fuelled by, and fuelling, fusion power. Life is the geological force that shapes the Earth, and the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere, not least by the uniquely human phenomenon of economic growth, so that human mastery of nuclear processes is beginning to create resources through the transmutation of elements, enabling us, among other things, to explore space and to exploit the resources of the Solar System. God has given Man dominion over the beasts, thus over the land, and thus over everything on and under the land. God has given Man dominion over the fish, thus over the waters, and thus over everything in and under the waters. God has given Man dominion over the birds, thus over the sky, and thus over everything in the sky, as far up as the sky goes, and the sky goes up a very long way. That dominion is entrusted so that we might “be fruitful and multiply”. Entrusted as it is to the whole human race, its purpose is, “To increase the power of Man over Nature, and to abolish the power of Man over Man.”</li><li>If a scientific fact as basic and as obvious as biological sex can be denied, then so can any other scientific fact, to the ruin of human progress. It is contrary both to whole history of human experience, and to the plain facts of biological science, to suggest either that sexual orientation is fixed, or that “gender” is “fluid”. “Sex is a biological fact, and is immutable. There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life by almost everyone.” No one is “born in the wrong body”. Women-only spaces must be defended, including in sport. The “gender reassignment” of children and adolescents must be resisted. We fight for a legal presumption of equal parenting, and for due process of law, including the presumption of innocence. We seek to rescue such issues as men’s health, fathers’ rights, and boys’ educational underachievement, from those whose policies have caused the problems in the first place. We resist the increasing criminalisation of male youth as such. And we harness the righteous rage against deindustrialisation, and against the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars, on the part of the young men who have discovered for themselves the traditional Great Books and the various schools of heterodox economics. Those Books and those schools have always been fundamental to the radical change of which those young men are now the vanguard, just as similarly formed young men were the vanguard of the American Revolution.</li><li>It is wrong to tell Israelis to “go home” when the State of Israel was founded in the year that the <i>Empire Windrush</i> docked at Tilbury. The <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> sufficiently defines anti-Semitism as “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews”. The IHRA Definition is a denial of BAME, migrant and refugee, and therefore working-class, experience redolent of the Windrush scandal and of the fire at Grenfell Tower. In curtailing criticism of a foreign state, the IHRA Definition is incompatible with national sovereignty. The denial of the ancient indigenous Christian presence in the Holy Land, where it created modern Palestinian identity, contributes significantly to the worldwide persecution of Christians. The Palestinian Christians’ ancestors predated the Israelite Conquest, they founded Jerusalem, and they became Christian when or before the Roman Empire did. One’s attitude to the Palestinian struggle is the litmus test of one’s attitude to the specific phenomenon of white violence against people of colour throughout the world, including in Britain.</li><li>Britain has links to every inhabited territory. It would be incompatible both with national sovereignty and with equal citizenship to privilege some foreign states over others. “What kind of internationalism says that we must give priority to an Indian over a Frenchman, an Australian over a German, a Malaysian over an Italian?” Global Britain must have “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none,” since, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.” British elite interests, among others, subverted such an approach on the part of the American Republic. We do not speak for the declining British elite. We speak from and to the rising British people. Christian witness in Britain today depends on communities with roots in Africa and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. The mixed-race population, and the BAME presence in every locality, give every family a stake in the liberation struggles of the Global South. The Red Wall belongs to the global network of internal colonies, and of potentially revolutionary villages that surround the cities both literally and geopolitically.</li><li>We seek direct representation on public bodies, in the media and in academia, alongside our own media and our own educational programmes. Of all parties and none, we encourage our people to seek election. If Dominic Cummings and the Revolutionary Communist Party can make it, then so can we.</li></ol></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>David Lindsay</b>, Lanchester, County Durham</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Mark McNally</b>, Consett, County Durham</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Please contact </span><a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com" style="text-align: left;">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a><span style="text-align: left;">.</span></div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-87468568579142999672020-09-06T18:39:00.004+01:002020-09-06T18:39:57.094+01:00George Galloway Should Stand For Durham County Council<div style="text-align: justify;"><i>This has been sent to various local and national newspapers:</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dear Sir, </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Roger Liddle is an active member both of the House of Lords and of Cumbria County Council, so George Galloway could certainly be an active member both of Durham County Council and of the Scottish Parliament. In 2017, it took 749 votes to win a Chester-le-Street West Central seat on that Council, and 854 for the Leader of the Council to top the poll. Turnout was 1,870. Galloway would get that just by being on the ballot paper.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The defeat of that Leader would be heard from the souks to the favelas, from the Dalit colonies to the Rohingya camps, and from Kashmir, to Crimea, to the scattered outposts of Diego Garcia. Armed with an impeccably local running mate in order to stop the target from slipping through, Galloway is just the man to do this. We would need only to get him registered to vote in County Durham, and preferably in Chester-le-Street, in time to be a candidate on 6th May 2021.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Eric Joyce once described Galloway as having stepped beyond what was “reasonable and acceptable for Labour MPs”. Any Labour electoral opponent of Galloway’s, including the present Leader of Durham County Council, has therefore been endorsed by Joyce.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yours faithfully,</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>David Lindsay</b>, Lanchester, County Durham; <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Lee Walls</b>, Chester-le-Street, County Durham</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Nathan Allonby</b>, Consett, County Durham</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Norman Bolton</b>, Consett, County Durham</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Michael45759951"><b>Michael Parker</b></a>, Crook, County Durham</div>David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-58239354525133522992020-05-04T13:34:00.001+01:002020-05-04T13:34:05.170+01:00Become a Founder Member of The Centre<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Signatories to the following are sought by Friday 15th May:</i> </div>
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The Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that began with the Budget of December 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It upholds family and community values by seeking to secure economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.<br />
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In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class. In the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and to the youth. Unity must be maintained within and between the working class and the youth, including against any separatist tendency in England, Scotland or Wales.</div>
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Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity.<br />
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Equality and diversity must mean economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law and the presumption of innocence.</div>
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We stand for One Nation, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation. Brexit is a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States, with no use of military force except in self-defence.<br />
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In building One Nation, the leading role belongs to the people and places whose votes have decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, of the 2017 General Election, and of the 2019 General Election, namely the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that are either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them.
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Binary and immutable biological sex is a scientific fact. Women’s spaces must be defended. Such issues as men’s health, fathers’ rights, and boys’ educational underachievement, must be rescued from those whose economic and other policies, including their warmongering foreign policies, have caused the problems in the first place.<br />
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BAME Britain is now young, increasingly mixed-race, often in its second or subsequent generation to have been born in Britain, connected to every inhabited territory on the planet, found in every town, and well on the way to being found in every village. The <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> defines anti-Semitism as “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews”. That definition is sufficient.</div>
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We take the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development. That is fully compatible with the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past.<br />
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We insist that any approach to climate change must protect and extend secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions. It must encourage economic development around the world. It must maintain the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children. It must hold down, and as far as practicable reduce, the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest. And it must refuse to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.</div>
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The Centre will eventually hold three conferences per year, and it will publish the papers from those conferences. One conference will be held outside London, one in London, and one outside Britain. Initially, these will form a three-year cycle, with the first conference to be held in the North West Durham parliamentary constituency.<br />
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Please contact the Director of The Centre, David Lindsay, on <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>.</div>
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<i>For those interested, the crowdfunding page is <a href="https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-centre">here</a>, or please feel free to contact me for other ways of contributing.</i></div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-10301036752545595112020-02-20T16:21:00.001+00:002020-02-22T16:23:36.385+00:00The 2020 Vision<div style="text-align: justify;">
Politically, the last four and a half years have belonged to those who have suffered the most, under all three parties, since the Callaghan Government’s turn to monetarism in 1977. They made Jeremy Corbyn the Leader of the Labour Party, they decided the EU referendum for Leave, they reelected Corbyn, they deprived Theresa May of her overall majority, they delivered the scale of the Brexit Party’s victory at the 2019 European Elections, and they have given an overall majority to Boris Johnson because Corbyn had abandoned his 2017 commitment to Brexit. Had he not done so, then Labour would now be the largest party in a hung Parliament.</div>
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It is clear that the workers, and not the liberal bourgeoisie, are now the key swing voters. Yet the metropolitan liberal elite, and its allies in the right-wing Labour machine that controls several trade unions and almost the whole of Labour local government, are well into the coronation of Keir Starmer. But here along the old Red Wall, we have not exchanged one one-party state for another. The Conservatives must face the competition in which they profess to believe. Therefore, ours is the 2020 Vision of a new political party, a new think tank, a new weekly newspaper, a new monthly cultural review, a new quarterly academic journal, and much else besides. Each of those projects is distinct, and anyone interested in any one or more of them should feel free to contact me on <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>.</div>
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<b>A New Political Party: The People’s Voice </b></div>
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/The-Peoples-Voice-311498246432754/?modal=admin_todo_tour">The People’s Voice</a>
will soon be registered as a new political party. Initially on the Brexit Party’s model of a Leader and supporters, the constitution of The People’s Voice will require a transition to internal democracy by a specific date, or else the party will be dissolved. <a href="https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/david-lindsay-for-parliament">I am already its Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham.</a> In 2024, parliamentary candidates for The People’s Voice will have lived throughout the previous 10 years in the constituencies that they wished to represent or in immediately adjacent constituencies, and they will have annual incomes not higher than £25,000. Such candidates will also be required to sign the following statements.</div>
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<b>First:</b> “I am committed to upholding family and community values by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Economic inequality is incompatible with democracy, since it gives the rich far greater political power than the poor, whose votes are thus effectively negated. I would vote to bring down any Government that had used military force other than in self-defence. In the struggle for the universal good that is economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class. In the struggle for the universal good that is international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and to the youth. Those struggles are fundamental and integral to each other, and the anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggle, which is indivisible in itself, is fundamental and integral to each and both of them. I am not “For the Many, Not the Few”. I am “For Everyone”. I reject class conflict in favour of “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”.”</div>
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<b>Secondly:</b> “I welcome the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union as providing a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States. I welcome the Conservative Party’s moves in those directions. I speak for people who would be more than happy to bypass the Liberal Establishment and the right-wing Labour machine so as to work with Conservatives and others in order to secure direct representation on public bodies, in the media, and elsewhere. I refuse to recognise racists, Fascists or opportunists as the authentic voices of the accepted need to control immigration. I unreservedly support the Chagossian cause. I stand with Julian Assange.” </div>
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<b>Thirdly:</b> “I regret the defeat of the miners in 1985. We need an approach to climate change which protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encouraged economic development around the world, which upheld the right of the working classes and of non-white people to have children, which held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. We must celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That expansion and development must now include space exploration, fuelled by, and fuelling, fusion power. Life is the geological force that shapes the Earth, and the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere, not least by the uniquely human phenomenon of economic growth, so that human mastery of nuclear processes is beginning to create resources through the transmutation of elements, enabling us, among other things, to explore space and to exploit the resources of the Solar System.”</div>
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<b>Fourthly:</b> “Sex is a biological fact, and is immutable. There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life by almost everyone. No one is “born in the wrong body”. I reject the ludicrous theory of gender self-identification, and I will fight to my last breath to defend women-only spaces, as well as against the “gender reassignment” of children and adolescents, and as well as against the silencing of free speech on these issues. One such issue is basic fair play in women’s and girls’ sport. It is contrary both to whole history of human experience, and to the plain facts of biological science, to suggest either that sexual orientation is fixed, or that “gender” is “fluid”. If a scientific fact as basic and as obvious as biological sex can be denied, then so can any other scientific fact, to the ruin of human progress.”</div>
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<b>Fifthly:</b> “I support a legal presumption of equal parenting, and I support due process of law, including the presumption of innocence. I seek to rescue such issues as male suicide, men’s health, and fathers’ rights, from those whose economic and other policies have caused the problems in the first place. I oppose the increasing criminalisation of male youth as such. I identify strongly with the rage against deindustrialisation, with the rage against the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars, and with a growing number of young men’s closely connected discovery for themselves of the traditional Great Books and of the various schools of heterodox economics. Those Books and those schools have always been fundamental to the radical change of which those young men are now the vanguard. I stand with Julian Assange.”</div>
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<b>And sixthly:</b> “It is wrong to tell Israelis to “go home” when the State of Israel was founded in the year that the <i>Empire Windrush</i> docked at Tilbury. There are now fourth generation Israelis. The definition of anti-Semitism in the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> is perfectly sufficient: “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” The Liberal Establishment has imported the New York practice of branding as “anti-Semitic” any uppity black or other criticism of its hegemony and hypocrisy, be that its hypocrisy towards integration at home or towards white settler colonialism abroad. Anyone may convert to Judaism, so that Jews are no more a “race” than Christians or Muslims are. Therefore, anti-Semitism is a form of religious bigotry, and not, in itself, a form of racism. That Hitler thought otherwise is not an argument. The IHRA Definition is a denial of Black And Minority Ethnic, refugee and migrant experience, such as leads to the Windrush scandal and to the fire at Grenfell Tower. As a denial of the ancient indigenous Christian presence in the Christian Holy Land, it contributes significantly to the worldwide persecution of Christians. Since BAME and migrant communities tend to be working-class, there is also a clear connection to the injustices at Shrewsbury, Orgreave, Hillsborough, and, again, Grenfell Tower. The expulsion of 700,000 people from Palestine on ethnic grounds in 1948 was as much a racist endeavour as any of the several other mass expulsions of the same period, notably those from the new states of India and Pakistan, and those of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe. Israel was founded by anti-British terrorists of exceptional viciousness, and Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War as an act of anti-British revenge. Every critique of the divisive and anti-democratic role of “community leaders” is applicable to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to the Jewish Leadership Council, to the Community Security Trust, to the Campaign Against Antisemitism, to the Chief Rabbinate, and to the Senior Rabbinate. I aspire to a single state throughout the former British Mandate of Palestine, a state in which human and civil rights would be constitutionally protected while everyone had precisely one vote.”</div>
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<b>A New Think Tank: The Centre</b></div>
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The Centre is to be our new think tank, “To develop, formulate and articulate the broadly based opposition and alternative to the violent, extremist and anti-democratic ideologies of neoliberal economic policy, identitarian social policy, neoconservative foreign policy, and anti-industrial Malthusianism, strongly asserting that that opposition and that alternative constituted the real centre ground of British and wider politics.” The eventual intention is to hold three conferences per year, one initially at Durham, one in London, and one at an international location.</div>
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<b>A New Newspaper: <i>The Weekly Standard</i></b></div>
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<i>The Weekly Standard</i> will feature, on its odd-numbered pages, a weekly column by each of around 20 regular contributors, plus around five guest articles. The even-numbered pages will feature popular news stories relating to sport, television, music, and so on, plus advertising. We intend to make offers to the biggest clubs, programmes, acts, and so forth, for the right to publish whatever they liked within the law, the word limit, and the English language, and provided that it were exclusive content. Newsprint is far cheaper than it used to be, so 15,000 copies could be produced for well under £2000, and probably for less than £1500. Obviously, we would wish to aim a lot higher than that. We expect a retail price of one pound. There is also the possibility of a new fortnightly satirical magazine, to be published in the weeks that <i>Private Eye</i> was not. </div>
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<b>A New Monthly Cultural Review: <i>The Wall</i></b></div>
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The areas that choose the Government deserve to have our cultures known to each other, to the country, and to the world. With a network of contributors across Wales, the Midlands, the North, and beyond, <i>The Wall</i> will make a leading contribution to that long-overdue process.</div>
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<b>A New Academic Journal: <i>The Great British Quarterly</i></b></div>
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<i>The Great British Quarterly</i>’s peer-reviewed articles will give a voice to the rural working class, and to the industrial and former industrial communities that were either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them. A voice to those who cherished free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law. A voice to those who sought a fully independent British foreign policy, with a critical and sceptical approach to intelligence and security agencies. A voice to those who found that the definition of anti-Semitism in the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> was perfectly sufficient. A voice to those who acknowledged the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex. And a voice to those who celebrated the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past.</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-19886406870357593282019-12-13T16:49:00.001+00:002019-12-13T16:49:08.037+00:00Five Years in Which To Organise<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Congratulations to Richard Holden, who was acquitted in minutes of an obviously false charge that should never have come to court. As I would have been in April, had the prosecution not caused the discharge of the jury by causing its comically incredible star witness to disappear overnight in Minnesota halfway through his testimony by videolink. And as I would be in March, if they proceeded with the fourth attempt at a trial.</i></div>
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<i>So I look forward to working with Richard over the next 59 months. And then to spending the sixtieth month unseating him. While you have to play the game until the final whistle, of course I always knew that I was going to come bottom of the poll, and as soon as Watts Stelling entered the fray then I knew that I was going to lose my deposit. But the next General Election is not going to be a snap one, nor is it going to be only two and a half years after this one. See, instead, <a href="https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/david-lindsay-for-parliament">here</a>:</i><br />
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The result of the 2019 General Election has given us five years in which to organise for the next one. The Brexit Party will no longer exist in 2024, when Watts Stelling will also be unlikely to contest a fourth General Election. Therefore, I remain the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham. One of my Campaign Patrons is Councillor Alex Watson OBE, who led Derwentside District Council for many years, who chaired the North East Regional Assembly, and who chaired the English Regional Network. My other Campaign Patron is Davey Ayre, who is a legendary local trade unionist. In 2019, I was proposed as a parliamentary candidate by Alderman Clive Robson BEM, who is a former Deputy Leader of Durham County Council.<br />
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I was born in 1977, and I have lived in North West Durham since 1982. I was an elected member of Lanchester Parish Council from 1999 to 2013, a governor of Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School from 1999 to 2007, and a governor of Saint Bede’s from 2000 to 2008. In April 2017, I was elected unopposed as one of Derwentside’s public governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.<br />
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Richard Holden talks about a more inclusive politics than Laura Pidcock’s, but I intend to identify a number of projects on which to campaign in each of the former District Wards, equal to the former number of District Councillors, and as the MP I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local people.<br />
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Since I believe in family values, with parents as the first educators of their children, I also believe in economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends. Therefore, I support Brexit, Modern Monetary Theory, the Universal Basic Income, publicly owned utilities, the abolition of NHS charges, the extension throughout the United Kingdom of the Scottish model of free personal care, and, as a disabled person, hugely expanded public transport, free at the point of use.<br />
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I am pro-business, being in favour of a strict Glass-Steagall division between investment banking and retail banking, with democratic political control over monetary policy, and with large amounts of central government credit, at low interest rates and over a long term, to build great national projects that would then pay for themselves many times over. I support pro-business tariffs and subsidies, and a pro-business National Bank to promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation. Public bodies and their contractors must be compelled to buy local goods and services. We need very low, or if possible zero, business rates on independent shops. And we need a windfall tax on the supermarkets, to fund agriculture and small business. This would all be possible outside the EU Single Market and Customs Union, and beyond Boris Johnson’s “level playing field”.<br />
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I support rural working-class representation, fathers’ rights, mass classical education, lifelong learning for its own sake, and the same benefits for apprentices and trainees as for students. As a mixed-race person, I support immigration controls. I support Julian Assange, the British coal and steel industries, nuclear power, the Belt and Road Initiative, putting Tony Blair on trial for Iraq, and putting David Cameron and Nick Clegg on trial for Libya.<br />
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I oppose Trident, NATO, Saudi Arabia, all of the currently illegal drugs, all aspects of the sex industry (I was the first journalist to try and expose the links between Harriet Harman and the Paedophile Information Exchange), gender self-identification, and any approach to climate change that endangered industrial and scientific progress. The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. Which people, exactly? Even the resources of the Solar System must not be beyond our reach as a species. The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism silences Black And Minority Ethnic, refugee and migrant voices, and that way lies Windrush and Grenfell Tower. It also betrays the ancient indigenous Christians of the Holy Land, and that way lies the ongoing worldwide persecution of Christians.<br />
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I can be contacted on <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>.<br />
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<i>Please give generously. Very many thanks.</i></div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-43250515337685480822019-09-23T23:57:00.001+01:002019-09-23T23:57:30.686+01:00Prevent This<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>I’ve got the key to the door, never been 42 before. But among the birthday cards today was also the following:</i></div>
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Dear Mr. Lindsay,</div>
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As the holder of a politically protected position within Durham County Council that makes it impossible for me to identify myself, it gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Council has finally referred you under the Prevent Strategy. Your extremist views on Brexit, economics, NATO, Trident, antisemitism, Julian Assange, abortion rights, transgender rights, the right to die, so-called “fathers’ rights”, Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Yemen, sexual offences, drugs, immigration, climate change, and a wide range of other issues have no place in our County. You are a professional misogynist, transphobe, antisemite, religious fundamentalist, ally of dictators and climate change denier who bases himself on the Left for recruitment purposes as a well-known radicaliser of young men and teenage boys. Some of us have been fighting for this referral for a very long time. The relevant authorities will be in touch. David Lindsay MP? David Lindsay in HMP, more like.</div>
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<i>Now, I have had all sorts of funny stuff over the last two and a half years. But this one might be worth keeping an eye on. Bring it on, say I. My election literature is already going to say “Banned From Twitter”.</i><br />
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<i>Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need</i> our <i>people to hold the balance of power in it. <a href="https://off-guardian.org/2019/07/05/the-peoples-voice/">A new party is now in the process of registration.</a> After nearly 30 years of suggestion, speculation, and even a sort of preparation, I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham. The crowdfunding page is <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/david-lindsay-for-north-west-durham-mp">here</a>, and buy the book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1798543257?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860">here</a>. Please email <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>. Very many thanks.</i></div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-57462218294117850952019-09-05T21:40:00.001+01:002019-09-05T22:55:49.407+01:00It Pays To Advertise?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Bang on its 400-word limit, this was sent to</i> The Northern Echo<i>’s</i> Consett and Stanley Advertiser<i>, which is not shy of publishing contentious letters for the benefit of every household, free through the door. But as we await the full fanzine treatment for Trigger as soon as the General Election is called (and for Kevan Jones, but he is not my concern), this has not been printed:</i></div>
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I am the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham. My Campaign Patrons are Councillor Alex Watson OBE, who led Derwentside District Council for many years, and Davey Ayre, a legendary local trade unionist. I was born in 1977, and I have lived in North West Durham since 1982. I was an elected member of Lanchester Parish Council from 1999 to 2013, a governor of Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School from 1999 to 2007, and a governor of Saint Bede’s from 2000 to 2008. I am one of Derwentside’s elected public governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust. I was elected unopposed. I first appeared on television in defence of Shotley Bridge Hospital in 1997.</div>
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There is going to be another hung Parliament. The price of my support for any Government would be the necessary support for a number of projects in each of the former District Wards equal to the former number of District Councillors, together with justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants whose pay Durham County Council had cut by 23 per cent, together with not less than the level of hospital provision in Consett in July 2019, and together with the implementation of the plan for the rail service that had been advanced by <i>The Northern Echo</i> in June 2018.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Conservative candidate won 34.5 per cent in 2017. Labour holds fewer than half of the County Council seats in North West Durham. The Liberal Democrats cut the Labour majority in half in 2010. An Independent kept his deposit both in 2005 and in 2010. Therefore, I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local people. I would also appoint a Political Advisor from within each of the Independent, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat blocs.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is nothing left-wing about Laura Pidcock. She is not a supporter of Brexit, Modern Monetary Theory, the Universal Basic Income, Julian Assange, Chris Williamson, the County Durham Teaching Assistants, the revival of the British coal and steel industries, or putting Tony Blair on trial for Iraq. Nor is she an opponent of Trident, NATO, Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, gender self-identification, or the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. I am all of those things. I can be contacted on <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>. Very many thanks.<br />
<br />
<i>Oh, well. The crowdfunding page is <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/david-lindsay-for-north-west-durham-mp">here</a>, and buy the book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1798543257?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860">here</a>.</i></div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-16853763569223116682019-09-02T15:48:00.003+01:002019-09-02T15:48:46.204+01:00Echo Chamber?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>This has not made it into</i> The Northern Echo<i>, but here it is:</i><br />
<br />
Dear Sir,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Laura Pidcock is unsuitable to be the Member of Parliament for North West Durham. The Conservative candidate won 34.5 per cent in 2017. Labour holds fewer than half of the County Council seats. The Liberal Democrats cut the Labour majority in half in 2010. An Independent kept his deposit both in 2005 and in 2010.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is nothing meaningfully left-wing about Ms Pidcock. She is not a supporter of Brexit, Modern Monetary Theory, the Universal Basic Income, Julian Assange, Chris Williamson, the County Durham Teaching Assistants, the revival of the British coal and steel industries, or putting Tony Blair on trial for Iraq. Nor is she an opponent of Trident, NATO, Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, gender self-identification, or the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am all of those things, while at the same time I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local people. I would also appoint a Political Advisor from within each of the Independent, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat blocs. I can be contacted on <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Yours faithfully,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
David Lindsay</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham<br />
<br />
<i>The crowdfunding page is <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/david-lindsay-for-north-west-durham-mp">here</a>, and buy the book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1798543257?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860">here</a>. Very many thanks.</i></div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-6502241082948307292019-09-02T15:48:00.001+01:002019-10-24T22:12:10.043+01:00Dedication<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>A number of people have asked to quite how many people my very short new <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1798543257?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860">book</a> was dedicated. Well, you would find out if you bought it. But here is in fact the dedication:</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<i>This book is dedicated to my Campaign Patrons, Alex Watson and Davey Ayre; to my stalwart constituency supporters, Norman Bolton and Michael Parker; to my newfound comrades, Nathan Allonby and Toby Kelsey; to the Honourable Gentlemen, Kelvin Hopkins and Chris Williamson; to the County Durham Teaching Assistants; to </i>The Word<i> and </i>OffGuardian<i>; to their Editors and thus mine, Alan Davies and Kit Knightly; to the fearless Paul Embery and Eddie Dempsey; to the ever-stimulating Giles Fraser and Piers Corbyn; and to those who joined me in the Basket of Deplorables by signing the following letter, which was sent to several newspapers, and which was published in the </i>Morning
Star<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">’s weekend edition of 12th and 13th November
2016:</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The American Democratic Party has been defeated in the
person of the most economically neoliberal and internationally neoconservative
nominee imaginable. From the victory of Donald Trump, to the Durham Teaching
Assistants’ dispute, the lesson needs to be learned. The workers are not the
easily ignored and routinely betrayed base, with the liberal bourgeoisie as the
swing voters to whom tribute must be paid. The reality is the other way round.
The EU referendum ought already to have placed that beyond doubt.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
There is a need to move, as a matter of the utmost urgency,
away from the excessive focus on identity issues, and towards the recognition
that those existed only within the overarching and undergirding context of the
struggle against economic inequality and in favour of international peace,
including cooperation with Russia, not a new Cold War.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
It is worth noting that working-class white areas that
voted for Barack Obama did not vote for Hillary Clinton, that African-American
turnout went down while the Republican share of that vote did not, and that
Trump took 30 per cent of the Hispanic vote. Black Lives Matter meant
remembering Libya, while Latino Lives Matter meant remembering Honduras.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The defeat of the Clintons by a purported opponent of
neoliberal economic policy and of neoconservative foreign policy, although time
will tell, has secured the position of Jeremy Corbyn, who is undoubtedly such
an opponent. It is also a challenge to Theresa May, to make good her rhetoric
about One Nation, about a country that works for everyone, and about being a
voice for working people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<b>David Lindsay, George Galloway, Neil Clark, Ronán Dodds, James
Draper, John Mooney, Mietek Padowicz, Aren Pym, Adam Young<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<b><i>Ecce quam bonum et
quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum.</i></b></div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-3534614314942345582019-08-23T22:52:00.001+01:002019-08-23T22:57:59.912+01:00Crowdfunding My Parliamentary Campaign<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i><a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/david-lindsay-for-north-west-durham-mp">Here:</a> </i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham. My Campaign Patrons are Councillor Alex Watson OBE, who led Derwentside District Council for many years, and Davey Ayre, a legendary local trade unionist. I was born in 1977, and I have lived in North West Durham since 1982. I was an elected member of Lanchester Parish Council from 1999 to 2013, a governor of Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School from 1999 to 2007, and a governor of Saint Bede’s from 2000 to 2008. I am one of Derwentside’s elected public governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust. I was elected unopposed. I first appeared on television in defence of Shotley Bridge Hospital in 1997. At around that time, I was the first journalist to try and expose the links between Harriet Harman and the Paedophile Information Exchange.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is certainly going to be another hung Parliament. The price of my support for any Government would be the necessary support for a number of projects in each of the former District Wards equal to the former number of District Councillors, together with justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants whose pay Durham County Council had cut by 23 per cent, together with not less than the level of hospital provision in Consett in July 2019, and together with the implementation of the plan for the rail service that had been advanced by <i>The Northern Echo</i> in June 2018. In Lanchester, the three projects would include proper flood defences, and the restoration of full bus services. In Weardale, I would require the Sixth Form provision on which the former MP had said a lot but delivered nothing.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Conservative candidate won 34.5 per cent in 2017. Labour holds fewer than half of the County Council seats in North West Durham. The Liberal Democrats cut the Labour majority in half in 2010. An Independent kept his deposit both in 2005 and in 2010. Therefore, I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local people. I would also appoint a Political Advisor from within each of the Independent, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat blocs.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I believe in economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends. Therefore, I support Brexit, Modern Monetary Theory, the Universal Basic Income, mass classical education, publicly owned utilities, Julian Assange, Chris Williamson, the British coal and steel industries, nuclear power, the Belt and Road Initiative, a British Glass-Steagall Act, democratic political control over monetary policy, the abolition of NHS charges, and putting Tony Blair on trial for Iraq. I oppose Trident, NATO, Saudi Arabia, all of the drugs that are currently illegal, and the so-called sex industry. The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. Which people, exactly? Instead of a halt to industrial and scientific progress, even the resources of the Solar System must not be beyond our reach as a species. Gender self-identification denies the basic scientific fact that is biological sex. As a mixed-race person, I support immigration controls. The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism silences Black And Minority Ethnic, refugee and migrant voices, and that way lies Windrush and Grenfell Tower. Being disabled, I support hugely expanded public transport, free at the point of use. I support fathers’ rights. I am a practising Catholic. <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1798543257?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860">My pamphlet <i>The People’s Voice</i> is available on Amazon.</a> I tweet <a href="https://twitter.com/davidaslindsay">@davidaslindsay</a>. I can be contacted on <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>.</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-76894417415289401082019-08-12T15:46:00.000+01:002019-08-12T15:46:11.447+01:00The People’s Voice<div style="text-align: justify;">
“I don’t agree with it.” Rod Liddle</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The next British General Election will certainly result in another hung Parliament. In this eagerly anticipated pamphlet, David Lindsay powerfully makes the case for his membership of that hung Parliament in general, and specifically for his election as the Member of Parliament for his home seat of North West Durham, where he has lived since 1982.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
David Lindsay is a local, experienced and inclusive candidate whose radically practical policies are grounded in his radically traditional values. In passing, he demolishes the ongoing abuse of the criminal justice system to try and silence The People’s Voice. Based in Lanchester, County Durham, David Lindsay tweets @davidaslindsay.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Buy the book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1798543257?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860">here</a>.</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-78873382727251400412019-07-29T17:06:00.001+01:002019-07-29T17:06:34.621+01:00"We Therefore Endorse"?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i>The following has just been sent to the people described:</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Being a straightforward matter, the following will be sent to the local and national media at 12 noon on Monday 5th August 2019. One trusts that the other MPs for County Durham, and the Chief Whip, will forward it to all other Labour MPs in good time, and that the Councillor for Lanchester will forward it to all other Labour Councillors:</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Dear Sir,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We endorse the parliamentary candidacy of Laura Pidcock at North West Durham against David Lindsay and against the Conservative Party. Since each is on 30 per cent, any could be the First Past the Post. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
David Lindsay is a supporter of Brexit, of Modern Monetary Theory, of the Universal Basic Income, of Julian Assange, of Chris Williamson, of the coal industry, and of putting Tony Blair on trial over the war in Iraq. He is an opponent of Trident, of NATO, of Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, of gender self-identification, and of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. He is a sympathiser with Fathers 4 Justice. He is a practising Roman Catholic. He is a defender of shooting and fishing. He is a mixed-race advocate of immigration controls. He would have Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Independents on his staff. He is still fighting Durham County Council over the Teaching Assistants. He is a friendly critic and a critical friend of George Galloway. We therefore endorse Laura Pidcock.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The invitation to sign this letter was extended to all Labour members of the House of Commons, to all Labour members of Durham County Council, and to all Labour members of Lanchester Parish Council.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Yours faithfully,</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-75623186991616915872019-07-24T18:27:00.002+01:002019-08-12T15:48:14.279+01:00All Systems Go<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is clear from this afternoon's appointments by Boris Johnson that the General Election campaign has now begun. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Anyone in a position to help my candidacy at North West Durham (campaigning, funding, signing nomination papers, telling us what the issues are in each community, anything), please email <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Very many thanks, and spread the word.</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-2148703299853506642019-07-06T15:28:00.002+01:002019-07-06T15:28:22.955+01:00The People’s Voice<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://off-guardian.org/2019/07/05/the-peoples-voice/">My latest for <i>OffGuardian</i> announces that a new party is in the process of registration.</a></div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-27284213807006645322019-03-12T14:52:00.002+00:002019-03-12T15:38:29.634+00:00Then Here I Am<div style="text-align: justify;">
Never bet on anything these days, but it does look as if Theresa May is going to lose tonight, although she will still be able to claim some kind of victory since at least it will probably be a smaller defeat than it was last time. I have been sceptical of talk of an impending General Election, and I still am. But who knows? Therefore, we need to be ready for one at any moment.<br />
<br />
“David Lindsay has generated a
brilliant reconciliation of the conflicting strains of the Labour Tradition and
is worthy of the closest attention.” <i>Dr
Maurice Glasman, Lord Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill; Senior
Lecturer in Political Theory and Director of the Faith and Citizenship
Programme, London Metropolitan University; founder of Blue Labour.</i></div>
<div class="xmsonormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="xmsonormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Current orthodoxy – both in
economic policy and right across the board – has so manifestly failed us that
we desperately need some fresh thinking and a different way of looking at our
problems. That is precisely what David Lindsay provides.” <i>Professor Bryan Gould, Labour MP for Southampton Test, 1974-1979;
Labour MP for Dagenham, 1983-1994; Shadow Cabinet Member, 1986-1994; Leadership
Candidate, 1992</i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Before Red Tory and Blue Labour
there was David Lindsay. He was arguably the first to announce a postliberal
politics of paradox, and to delve into the deep, unwritten British past in
order to craft, theoretically, an alternative British and international future.
It is high time that the singular and yet wholly pertinent writings of this
County Durham Catholic Labour prophet receive a wider circulation.” <i>Professor John Milbank, Professor in
Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham.</i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Those commendations were written in
2012. The next General Election will certainly result in another hung
Parliament, regardless of who led any party, but simply because of what is now
the shape of the three polities across which it will be held: England and
Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. One MP will therefore be able to make a
huge amount of difference. Here in North West Durham, it has become a
commonplace that the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and I are each on 30
per cent support, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="xmsonormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I have no interest in being a paper
candidate. But I will stand if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a
serious campaign. Anyone in a position to help, however much or little, please
contact <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>. I am a local, experienced and inclusive candidate whose
radically practical polices are rooted in radically traditional values. Those may be read about in some detail <a href="https://davidlindsay2020.blogspot.com/2018/11/here-i-stand.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
That will also comprise the first half of my next book, of which the following has already been written: “I warm to its spirit. It represents an important strand of thinking and feeling in our country which we ignore at our peril.” Those are the words of Professor Robert Skidelsky FBA, Lord Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy in the University of Warwick, author of <i>Keynes: The Return of the Master</i>, and co-author of <i>How Much is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life</i>.<br />
<br />
I have nothing against the present MP personally, and she may or may not be the Labour candidate next time. But at the turn of 2017 she had never set eyes on North West Durham, and there was no local involvement whatever in her selection as a candidate. She has never expressed any of the opinions articulated here. Indeed, she has expressed very few political opinions altogether. Hers is a certain mood or tone, rather than any specific programme or philosophy.<br />
<br />
She was still in school when I was first introduced as “the man who should have been our MP”. Once Labour has imposed an all-women shortlist, then it has imposed one forever, and the Conservatives will usually also insist on a woman where that is the case. But this constituency has had a woman MP since 1987, a very rare record indeed, so what injustice is supposedly being addressed here? Yet here we are. Politicised young men, of whom there are so very many, my candidacy is your only chance of ever becoming the Member of Parliament for North West Durham in due course. Anyone, my candidacy is the only chance that any son or grandson of yours might ever represent this seat.<br />
<br />
This is probably also my only chance. I am 41. By the time of a General Election on 5th May 2022, the last possible date, I would be 44. To give some context, Tony Blair was four days short of his forty-fourth birthday when he became Prime Minister. Never say never, but if I had already been defeated once, then I would take an awful lot of persuading to give this another go when I was nearly 50. So if you like anything set out in the link above, or even if you would just like any of it to be on the agenda, then here I am. Very many thanks.</div>
</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-26623325568610996222018-12-12T20:04:00.001+00:002019-01-25T18:15:44.288+00:00Ready And Willing, I Just Need To Be Made Able<div style="text-align: justify;">
Theresa May will bring back no other deal than this. At that point, the DUP will at least abstain rather than save her Government from the Motion of No Confidence that Jeremy Corbyn will then table. The Government will therefore lose, and there will be a General Election.<br />
<br />
That will lead to another hung Parliament, meaning that one MP will be able to make a huge amount of difference. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, <a href="https://davidlindsay2020.blogspot.com/2018/11/here-i-stand.html">if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign</a>. By common consent, Labour, the Conservatives and I are each on 30 per cent support, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. Please email <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>. Very many thanks.</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-10516427462942254842018-11-14T17:56:00.003+00:002019-09-02T17:27:00.884+01:00Here I Stand<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
“David Lindsay has generated a brilliant reconciliation of the
conflicting strains of the Labour Tradition and is worthy of the closest
attention.” <i>Dr Maurice Glasman, Lord Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford
Hill; Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Director of the Faith and
Citizenship Programme, London Metropolitan University; founder of Blue Labour.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Current orthodoxy – both in economic policy and right across the board
– has so manifestly failed us that we desperately need some fresh thinking and
a different way of looking at our problems. That is precisely what David
Lindsay provides.” <i>Professor Bryan Gould, Labour MP for Southampton Test,
1974-1979; Labour MP for Dagenham, 1983-1994; Shadow Cabinet Member, 1986-1994;
Leadership Candidate, 1992.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Before Red Tory and Blue Labour there was David Lindsay. He was
arguably the first to announce a postliberal politics of paradox, and to delve
into the deep, unwritten British past in order to craft, theoretically, an
alternative British and international future. It is high time that the singular
and yet wholly pertinent writings of this County Durham Catholic Labour prophet
receive a wider circulation.” <i>Professor John Milbank, Professor in Religion,
Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Those commendations were written in 2012, before Donald Trump and Jeremy
Corbyn, before Brexit and the <i>gilets jaunes</i>. Each of those is better
than the alternative, better than Hillary Clinton and her British Labour
wannabes, better than the European Union and Emmanuel Macron. <span style="background: white;">In 2019, much of the material contained here has
elicited this response: “I warm to its spirit. It represents an important
strand of thinking and feeling in our country which we ignore at our peril.”
Those are the words of Professor Robert Skidelsky FBA, Lord Skidelsky, Emeritus
Professor of Political Economy in the University of Warwick, author of <i>Keynes:
The Return of the Master</i>, and co-author of <i>How Much is Enough? The Love
of Money and the Case for the Good Life</i>. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The next General Election will certainly result in another hung
Parliament, regardless of who led any party, but simply because of what is now
the shape of the three polities across which it will be held: England and
Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. One MP will therefore be able to make a
huge amount of difference. Here in North West Durham, it has become a
commonplace that the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and I are each on 30
per cent support, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I
have no interest in being a paper candidate. But I will stand if I can raise
the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Anyone in a position to
help, however much or little, please contact <a href="mailto:davidaslindsay@hotmail.com">davidaslindsay@hotmail.com</a>. I am a local, experienced and inclusive
candidate whose radically practical polices are rooted in radically traditional
values.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>A Local, Experienced, Inclusive Candidate<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I was born in 1977, and I have lived in North West Durham since 1982. I
never went to school anywhere else, and I went to university at Durham. I was
an elected member of Lanchester Parish Council from 1999 to 2013, a governor of
Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School from 1999 to 2007, and a governor
of Saint Bede’s from 2000 to 2008. I am currently one of Derwentside’s elected
public governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust. I was
elected unopposed. I have had several periods of involvement with Willow Burn
Hospice since the middle of the 1990s.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I have nothing against the present MP personally, and she may or may not
be the Labour candidate next time. But at the turn of 2017 she had never set
eyes on North West Durham, and there was no local involvement whatever in her
selection as a candidate. She has never expressed any of the opinions
articulated here. Indeed, she has expressed very few political opinions
altogether. Hers is a certain mood or tone, rather than any specific programme
or philosophy. <span style="background: white;">It has now been more than two
years since the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party effectively
abolished the Constituency Labour Party in North West Durham by denying it any
role in the selection of its parliamentary candidate. It then imposed a
29-year-old who had never set foot here, and of whom next to no one here had
ever heard. Soon afterwards, she lost her seat on Northumberland County
Council. I was present when she received that news, at the count for Durham
County Council, where she was being introduced as the all-done-and-dusted
Prospective Parliamentary Candidate to stalwarts who did not even know her
name, but several of whom had already bought me drinks. For some years by then,
certain of them had been introducing me at funerals as, “The man who should
have been our MP.” Everyone does that now, and there no longer even needs to
have been a death. They also call me “Speedboat”, as in, “Here’s what you could
have won.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am both a product and a feature of the political pluralism of North
West Durham, where Labour holds fewer than half of the County Council seats,
where the Conservative parliamentary candidate won 34.5 per cent at the last General Election, where the Liberal Democrat candidate cut the Labour majority in half
in 2010, and where an Independent kept his deposit both in 2005 and in 2010.
Wear Valley was controlled for a time by the Liberal Democrats, who remained
numerous on it until its abolition. Derwentside was in practice controlled by
an alliance between the Independents and that section of the local Labour Party
which now supports my parliamentary candidacy; its Leader from that time,
Councillor Alex Watson OBE, is one of my Campaign Patrons. When Chris
Williamson was the Leader of Derby City Council, then he held that position in
coalition with the Conservative Party, since such an approach is normal on the
grown-up Left. Another Campaign Patron is Davey Ayre, a legendary local trade
unionist. Moreover, George Galloway has never formally resigned as my third
Campaign Patron. It is now up to him, having read this pamphlet of which he is
one of the dedicatees, to consider how best to resume those duties.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As an example of my political approach, which is normal on the grown-up
Left, at the 2017 Election to Lanchester Parish Council, I voted for 15
candidates who were variously Labour, Independent, Conservative, Liberal
Democrat, and of No Description. 12 of my choices were elected, covering the
first four of those five categories. The treatment of the County Durham
Teaching Assistants made it impossible for me to vote Labour either for the
County Council or for the House of Commons in 2017. For the record, I voted for
myself and an Independent for the Council, and I voted for the Teaching
Assistants’ Liberal Democrat champion, Owen Temple, for Parliament. At the five
European Elections of my adult lifetime, I have voted, not without reservation
in each case, for the Socialist Labour Party, for Respect, for No2EU, for the
Labour Party, and, in the absence of No2EU or of anything like it, for the
Brexit Party.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It will be clear, then, that I am firmly a man of the Left, committed to
economic equality and to international peace through the democratic political
control of the means to those ends. Economic inequality is incompatible with
democracy, since it gives the rich far greater political power than the poor,
whose votes are thus effectively negated. In the struggle for the universal
good that is economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class,
of which the leading part is the trade union and cooperative movements. In the
struggle for the universal good that is international peace, the leading role
belongs to the working class and to the youth. Those struggles are fundamental
and integral to each other, and the anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggle,
which is indivisible in itself, is fundamental and integral to each and both of
them. The class oppression in these Islands goes back to the Norman Conquest,
while our particular form of capitalism was shaped by the slave trade, so that
they both have racist and imperialist roots.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I
am not “For the Many, Not the Few”. I am “For Everyone”. I reject class
conflict in favour of “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”. Although I have now been out of the Labour
Party for far longer than I was ever in it, I am a committed but critical
supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, who has opened
up the debate on economic and foreign policy for the first time in a
generation. Before the summer of 2015, Britain had an unquestionable State
ideology in international affairs and in relation to the architecture of the
economy. It was occasionally possible to make a small and probably jocular
criticism of the Government. But it was effectively forbidden to criticise the
State. We saw that most starkly at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, when the
State ideology’s idol was paraded through the streets of the capital city to
receive the obeisance of the once-great national institutions. Corbyn has
brought onto the platform the voices of opposition in principle to politically
chosen austerity and to wars of political choice. Before him, no one would have
questioned Boris Johnson’s assertion that people whose personal incomes were
between twice and well over three times the national median household income
were “middle earners”.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I
wrote and sent the following letter, which appeared in <i>The Times</i> on 18th August 2015:<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Dear Sir,<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We do not all hold British nationality or reside in
the United Kingdom, although some of us do. We are not all members or
supporters of the British Labour Party, although some of us are. However, we
are united in rejecting the charge of “economic illiteracy” against Jeremy
Corbyn, and in recognising that his economic analysis and proposals are, at the
very least, superior to those of the current British Government, as well as
being more comprehensive and coherent than those of any other candidate for
Labour Leader.</div>
</div>
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Yours faithfully,<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>David Lindsay</b>,
Lanchester, County Durham</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Victoria Chick</b>, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University
College London</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Alfredo Saad Filho</b>, Professor of Political Economy, Department of
Development Studies, The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor John Grahl</b>, Professor of European Integration, Middlesex
University Business School</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Stuart Holland</b>, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Economics,
University of Coimbra, Portugal; Senior Scholar of the Institute of Social and
European Studies, Köszeg, Hungary; Member of Parliament for Vauxhall, 1979-1989</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Christopher May</b>, Professor of Political Economy and Faculty
Associate Dean for Enterprise, Lancaster University<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Ozlem Onaran</b>, Professor of Workforce and Economic Development
Policy, University of Greenwich<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Prem Sikka</b>, Professor of Accounting, Essex Business School,
University of Essex<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Pritam Singh</b>, Professor of Economics, Department of Accounting,
Finance and Economics, Oxford Brookes University</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Robert H. Wade</b>, Professor of Political Economy and Development,
Department of International Development, London School of Economics; Leontief
Prize in Economics 2008</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Dr David Harvie</b>,
Senior Lecturer in Finance and Political Economy, School of Management,
University of Leicester</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Ismail Ertürk</b>,
Senior Lecturer, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1cm;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Ewa Karwowski</b>,
Lecturer in Economics, Kingston University, London</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nevertheless, Corbyn has overlooked his supporters by appointing his
enemies to frontbench and other positions. He has permitted a free vote on
Syria. He has whipped an abstention on Trident<span style="background: white;">,
which there is absolutely no suggestion that a Corbyn Government might scrap,
while there is more chance that Donald Trump’s America might leave NATO than
that Corbyn’s Britain might do so.</span> He has never brought the arming of
the Saudi war in Yemen back to the floor of the House of Commons for another
vote. His housing and transport policies go nowhere near far enough. <span style="background: white;">He has done nothing to bring into the mainstream the
Modern Monetary Theory that saw Professor Stephanie Kelton designated as Chief
Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee,
hotbed of Trotskyism that that is. Nor has he done anything to bring into the
mainstream the Universal Basic Income that has been accepted even by the Adam
Smith Institute.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Corbyn supports
the Government’s indulgence of the ludicrous theory of gender
self-identification, and he sides with neoliberal capitalism in supporting the
legalisation of drugs and prostitution. He has
allowed, and even caused, the dissipation of his initial following among the
young male victims of anti-industrial economic policy and of belligerent
foreign policy. He supports the Government’s anti-industrial
Malthusianism of net zero carbon emissions, for which the country has never
voted. He wants a Customs Union with the European Union, possibly even at the
price of accepting its State Aid rules. He now favours a second referendum on
EU membership, and a vote to Remain. He has accepted some of the Government’s
baseless and collapsed claims about Salisbury, Amesbury, and Douma.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Corbyn has acted against the social and ethnic cleansing of Labour
Haringey, but he has failed to secure justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants
in Labour Durham. He has reacted wrongly to the provocative extension of a
State Visit to President Trump. He has conceded the unfounded existence of
widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, he has taken with complete seriousness the self-appointed “community leaders”
of British Jews, he has accepted the deeply flawed IHRA Definition, he
has submitted to the presumed right of the “Equality” and Human Rights
Commission to enforce that Definition as if it were the law of the land, and he
has failed to prevent the expulsion of distinguished black and other activists
from the Labour Party on trumped up charges using that Definition, even though
some of those black and other activists have themselves been Jewish. <span style="background: white;">Under Corbyn’s Leadership, Tony Greenstein, Jackie
Walker and Marc Wadsworth have all been expelled, something of which Tony Blair
could never have dreamed. </span>Corbyn has failed to point out that Pete
Willsman had been stating the facts about Israeli Embassy interference, as had
been captured on film between Shai Masot and Joan Ryan. <span style="background: white;">Both Labour Party membership and the Labour Whip can now be refused or
revoked by the Israeli Ambassador.</span> “If you deny the problem, then you
are part of the problem,” is the cry of the witchfinder down the ages. Corbyn
has failed to defend either Chris Williamson or Kelvin Hopkins. And he has
failed to insist that Julian Assange not be extradited to anywhere under any
circumstance, which is the wedge issue that is being used to define a pantomime
Left that would be acceptable to the official media for the purposes of
pretended balance. <span style="background: white;">The same or similar
criticisms may and must be made of such figures as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I
believe in liberty, equality and fraternity. Liberty is the freedom to be
virtuous, and to do anything not specifically proscribed. Equality is the means
to liberty, and includes the Welfare State, workers’ rights, consumer
protection, local government, a strong Parliament, and public ownership. And
fraternity is the means to equality, taking such forms as trade unions,
cooperatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies, and mutual building
societies. Liberty, equality and fraternity are therefore inseparable from
nationhood, a space in which to be unselfish. Thus from family, the nation in
miniature, where unselfishness is first learned. And thus from property, which
is each family’s safeguard both against over-mighty commercial interests and
against an over-mighty State, and which therefore needs to be as widely
diffused as possible, as the guarantor of liberty. The family, private property
and the State must be protected and promoted on the basis of their common
origin and their interdependence.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I
am therefore committed to economic equality and to international peace through
the democratic political control of the means to those ends. Economic
inequality is incompatible with democracy, since it effectively nullifies the
votes of the poor. Since there cannot be a “free” market in general, but not in
drugs or prostitution, including pornography, so there must not be a “free”
market in general. Since there cannot be a “free” market in drugs or
prostitution, but not in general, so there must not be a “free” market in drugs
or prostitution. Since there cannot be the unrestricted movement of goods,
services and capital, but not of labour and thus of people, so there must not
be the unrestricted movement of goods, services and capital. Since there cannot
be the unrestricted movement of labour and thus of people, but not of goods,
services and capital, so there must not be the unrestricted movement of labour.
If “there is no such thing as society”, then there can be no such thing as the
society that is the family, or the society that is the nation.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Only
40 years ago, a single manual wage provided the wage-earner, his wife and their
several children with a quality of life unimaginable even on two professional
salaries today. This impoverishment has been so rapid and so extreme that most
people, including almost all politicians and commentators, simply refuse to
acknowledge that it has happened. But it has indeed happened. And it is still
going on. To regret that must be to regret the defeat of the miners in 1985,
and vice versa. To seek to reverse it must be to attend the Durham Miners’ Gala
if at all possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On
those grounds, and indeed on all of the grounds that are set out in this book,
I was active in Blue Labour while it was active, I remain so insofar as it
remains so, I supported Ed Miliband from the start of his Leadership campaign
to the end of his Leadership (even while disagreeing with him, especially on
Libya), I still think that he would have made a good Prime Minister, I
supported Andy Burnham until the infamous Labour abstention on the Welfare Bill
made Jeremy Corbyn my only rather than my second preference, I supported Tom
Watson’s Deputy Leadership campaign from start to finish, I continue on balance
to support his Deputy Leadership in principle, I have repeatedly sought
election to the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society, I voted proudly for
Pat Glass in 2015, and I would have done so again in 2017.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am not a Marxist. Marxism asks many of the right questions, but it
also gives many of the wrong answers. Straightforwardly, I do not believe in
dialectical materialism. Nor do I believe in Marxism’s sense of its own
inevitability. We have had to fight for everything that we have gained, and we
have to fight to save it. Rather, I stand in the pro-business tradition that
came down to the Attlee Government from the ultraconservative figures of
Colbert and Bismarck, via the Liberals Keynes and Beveridge, and which held
sway in Britain until the Callaghan Government’s turn to monetarism in 1977. Britain did not experience a post-War decline. This
country’s people were not worse off in the 1970s than they had been in the
1930s. Was the phrase “the sick man of Europe” employed to refer to Britain in
any other language? The European Free Trade Association was sorry enough to see
us leave, while the European Communities were pleased enough to see us join and
then stay. We cannot have seemed too sick to any of those 15 other European
countries.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That British
tradition grew from many and various roots, trade union and cooperative,
Radical Liberal and Tory populist, Christian Socialist and Social Catholic,
Guild Socialist and Distributist, Fabian and Marxist. It therefore corresponds
in many and various ways to phenomena on the Continent and elsewhere that would
not ordinarily be regarded as having much, if anything, to do with each other.
And it corresponds closely but critically to the
Hamiltonian American School as expanded by the American System of Henry Clay, a
pro-business tradition that between the 1860s and the 1970s worked to make the
United States the world’s largest economy, with the world’s highest standard of
living, culminating in the glorious achievements of the New Deal, which in turn
made possible the rise and triumph of the Civil Rights movement.<o:p></o:p>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That was achieved, by Democrats and Republicans alike, through the
strict division between investment banking and retail banking, with large
amounts of federal credit (in Britain, that would be central government
credit), at low interest rates and over a long term, to build great national
projects, notably enormous expansions in infrastructure, which then paid for
themselves many times over. There were pro-business tariffs and subsidies, and there
was a pro-business National Bank to promote the growth of productive
enterprises rather than speculation. Britain and America both need a lot more
of this today. North West Durham needs it more than most.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Therefore, I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative
and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least
one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local
people. I would also appoint a Political Advisor from within each of the
Independent, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat blocs. If he were
amenable, then my Labour Political Advisor would be Neil Fleming, who was
previously the Labour Party’s Head of Press and Broadcasting, and who was then
its London Regional Director. The Brexit Party did well here at the European
Elections, but people here would not vote for any General Election manifesto
that might be acceptable to Nigel Farage.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the coming hung Parliament, the price of my support for any
Government, even a Corbyn Government, would be the necessary support for a
number of projects in each of the former District Wards equal to the former
number of District Councillors, together with justice for the 472 Teaching
Assistants whose pay Durham County Council had cut by 23 per cent, together
with not less than the retention or restoration of the level of hospital
provision in Consett in July 2019, and together with the implementation of the
plan for the rail service in the North of England that was advanced in June 2018
by well over 20 local and regional newspapers. In Lanchester, the three projects would include both proper flood defences at
long last, and the restoration of the bus services that Labour-controlled
Durham County Council has slashed to the bone. In Weardale, I would require the
Sixth Form provision on which the present MP for North West Durham has said a
very great deal while delivering little or nothing. That MP has appointed as
her Political Advisor the man whose political advice led the Teaching Assistants
to their present predicament.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am now working with all of the non-Labour members of Durham County
Council and with the trade unions, to bring Volkswagen’s production for the
British market to County Durham after, or even before, Brexit. I am more than
open to further suggestions along similar lines. Among many other things, this
project will guarantee the financial future of the Durham Miners’ Gala and of
the Durham Miners’ Hall. The absence of the County Council Labour Group is that
Group’s own sorry fault. I unreservedly condemn the decision of that Group to
award to the Kier Group, with its history of blacklisting, the contract to
build the new headquarters of Durham County Council.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I would cooperate with people of all parties and none, in order to
implement Theresa May’s original Prime Ministerial agenda of workers’ and
consumers’ representation in corporate governance, of shareholders’ control
over executive pay, of restrictions on pay differentials within companies, of
an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme, of
greatly increased housebuilding, of action against tax avoidance, of a ban on
public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, of a cap on energy prices, of
banning or greatly restricting foreign takeovers, of a ban on unpaid
internships, and of an inquiry into Orgreave. The same applies to everything in
Boris Johnson’s Golden Age speech, except on stop and search, and except on the
prioritisation of net zero carbon emissions, which it is very difficult to see
as compatible with the pro-industrial content of the rest of the speech.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
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As the Member of Parliament for North West Durham, my Westminster office
would be a global centre for the broadly based opposition and alternative to
neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy, strongly
asserting that that opposition and that alternative were the real centre
ground. My candidacy is already endorsed by Dr Philip M. Giraldi, Executive
Director of the Council for the National Interest, Washington, D.C.; former CIA
counterterrorism specialist and military intelligence officer; and foreign
policy advisor to the 2008 Presidential campaign of Ron Paul. It also endorsed
by Dr Leon Hadar of Chevy Chase, Maryland, and of Tel Aviv, Israel;
Contributing Editor of <i>The American Conservative</i>; Commentator, <i>Quillette</i>, Sydney, Australia; Washington
Correspondent and Columnist, <i>The Business Times</i>, Singapore; and foreign
policy advisor to the 2008 Presidential campaign of Ron Paul.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>Buy the book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1798543257?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860">here</a>.</i></b></div>
</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-43045912786883828362018-09-01T15:11:00.001+01:002018-09-01T15:17:00.294+01:00Crowdfunding My Parliamentary Campaign<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>I’m back, <a href="https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/david-lindsay-for-parliament/">here</a>:<o:p></o:p> </i></div>
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I
was the only journalist to predict a hung Parliament in 2017, and I am
predicting another hung Parliament at the next General Election. One MP is
going to be able to make all the difference. Local information already has me
on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here in North West Durham,
meaning that any of us could be the First Past the Post. All that I need is the
£10,000 with which to mount a serious campaign, plus the crowdfunding fee. I
have no interest in being a paper candidate.</div>
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I was born in 1977, and I have
lived in North West Durham since 1982. I never went to school anywhere else,
and I went to university at Durham. I was an elected member of Lanchester
Parish Council from 1999 to 2013, a governor (including a time as Vice Chair)
of Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School from 1999 to 2007, and a
governor of Saint Bede’s from 2000 to 2008. I am currently one of Derwentside’s
elected public governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust;
to the best of my knowledge, I am the only person ever to have been elected to
that Council of Governors unopposed. I have had several periods of involvement
with Willow Burn Hospice over the last 25 years. </div>
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I am both a product and a
feature of the political pluralism of North West Durham, where Labour holds
fewer than half of the County Council seats, where the Conservative
parliamentary candidate won 34 per cent of the vote last year, where the
Liberal Democrat candidate cut the Labour majority in half in 2010, and where
an Independent kept his deposit both in 2005 and in 2010. Wear Valley was
controlled for a time by the Liberal Democrats, who remained numerous on it
until its abolition. Derwentside was in practice controlled by an alliance
between the Independents and that section of the local Labour Party which now
supports my parliamentary candidacy; its Leader from that time, Councillor Alex
Watson OBE, is one of my Campaign Patrons. My other Campaign Patron is Davey
Ayre, a legendary local trade unionist.<o:p></o:p>
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I would appoint an Independent, a
Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards,
ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to
work with me and with local people. I would also appoint a Policy Advisor from
within each of the Independent, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat
blocs, and I hereby offer first refusal on that Labour position to my old
comrade Neil Fleming, who is now living here again after his time as Head of
Press and Broadcasting for the Labour Party and as its London Regional
Director.</div>
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The price of my support for any Government in the coming hung
Parliament would be the necessary support for a number of projects in each of
the former District Wards equal to the former number of District Councillors,
together with justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants whose pay Durham County
Council had cut by 23 per cent, and together with the implementation of <a href="http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/16268844.Newspapers_unite_to_help_tackle_Northern_rail_crisis/" style="box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="color: #1aa7db;">the
plan for the rail service in the North of England</span></a> that was
recently advanced by well over 20 local and regional newspapers, most of which
have never supported Labour, and only one of which did so last year. And yes, I
do mean the price of my support for <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">any</em> Government. Even a Government that was
headed by Jeremy Corbyn, whom I broadly, but not uncritically, support. Two of
the three such projects in Lanchester would be the restoration of the full bus
service and the construction of adequate flood defences, while one in Weardale
would be the saving of the Sixth Form at Wolsingham.</div>
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I am now working with all of the
non-Labour members of Durham County Council and with the trade unions, to bring
Volkswagen’s production for the British market to County Durham after, or even
before, Brexit. I am more than open to further suggestions along similar lines.
Among many other things, this project will guarantee the financial future of
the Durham Miners’ Gala and of the Durham Miners’ Hall. The absence of the
County Council Labour Group is that Group’s own sorry fault.<o:p></o:p>
</div>
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I strongly support the
exploitation of the vast reserves of coal in this country and in this county.
That, and the extension of civil nuclear power, are the means of delivering
highly paid, highly skilled, high status, unionised jobs while securing
independence from Arab oil, from Russian gas, and from coal that has been mined
using child and slave labour. From North Korea, Donald Trump intends his
dynasty to supply a dependent world with the coal of the Kim dynasty deep into
the twenty-second century. Yet we have our own, right here under our feet.
Horror stories about how coal was burned or mined in the Britain of the
twentieth century have no relevance to the Britain of the twenty-first. At the
same time, I am totally opposed to the open-casting of the Pont Valley or
anywhere else, digging up hardly any coal while employing hardly anyone. On
those same grounds, I am also totally opposed to fracking.<o:p></o:p>
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I would co-operate with people of
all parties and none, in order to implement Theresa May’s original Prime
Ministerial agenda of workers’ and consumers’ representation in corporate
governance, of shareholders’ control over executive pay, of restrictions on pay
differentials within companies, of an investment-based Industrial Strategy and
infrastructure programme, of greatly increased housebuilding, of action against
tax avoidance, of a ban on public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, of a
cap on energy prices, of banning or greatly restricting foreign takeovers, of a
ban on unpaid internships, and of an inquiry into Orgreave, while returning to
her world-leading record of work against human trafficking and modern slavery,
not least now that slavery has returned to Libya.</div>
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As the Member of Parliament for
North West Durham, my Westminster office would be a global centre for the
broadly based opposition and alternative to neoliberal economic policy and to
neoconservative foreign policy, strongly asserting that that opposition and
that alternative were the real centre ground. My candidacy is already endorsed
by Dr Philip M. Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, Washington, D.C.; former CIA counterterrorism specialist and military
intelligence officer; and foreign policy advisor to the 2008 Presidential
campaign of Ron Paul. It also endorsed by Dr Leon Hadar of Chevy Chase,
Maryland, and of Tel Aviv, Israel; Contributing Editor of <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">The American Conservative</em>;
Commentator, <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Quillette</em>;
Washington Correspondent and Columnist, <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">The Business Times</em>, Singapore; and foreign policy
advisor to the 2008 Presidential campaign of Ron Paul.</div>
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I have spent more than 20 years,
since I was just about still in my teens and had never seen the Internet,
trying to get the story out about Harriet Harman and the Paedophile Information
Exchange. I have paid a terrible journalistic and political price for it, but I
have no regrets. Media that always knew about it simply ignored the whole
thing, banning me from their websites and what have you, until a period of no
more than two weeks when they needed to distract attention from Patrick Rock.
Normal service was rapidly resumed, and it has continued ever since. No one has
done more on this issue than I have. No one. And now, the plan is advancing to
make Harman the next Speaker of the House of Commons. Not only would I oppose
her election, but, were she already in post, then I would oppose her
re-election at the start of the next Parliament.</div>
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I am actively involved in
campaigns for truth and justice as various, and yet as inseparable from each
other, as Hillsborough, Shrewsbury, Orgreave, Grenfell Tower, blacklisting,
spycops, George Bell, Julian Assange, the Miami Showband massacre, the Marikana
massacre, support for the Dalits, support for the Rohingya and other minorities
in Myanmar, support for the Chagossians, support for Abdullah Öcalan and the
wider Kurdish cause, support for the deportation of Altaf Hussain to Pakistan,
support for an inquiry into the role of the Thatcher Government in the 1984
storming of the Golden Temple and in the events surrounding it, support for the
Dorje Shugden practitioners who are being persecuted by the Dalai Lama, support
for the Russian and other ethnic minorities who are oppressed in the Baltic
States, support for the ancient indigenous Christians of the Middle East and
North Africa (and not least of the Holy Land), support for those in Israel who
are opposed to the apartheid Nation-State Law, and support for the Jews and
Zoroastrians of Iran. As the Member of Parliament for North West Durham, I
would board a plane to Tehran and simply refuse to leave without Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
and Abbas Edalat. My Westminster office would be a global centre for the
coordination of these and numerous other campaigns for truth and justice at
home and abroad.</div>
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My views on a wide range of
issues may be read <a href="http://davidlindsay2020.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-big-three-oh.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="color: #1aa7db;">here</span></a>.
Any money raised over and above the target of £15,000 would be donated to other
candidates, of any party or none, who broadly shared those values and policies.
Very many thanks.</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4288483228419330984.post-20098119017023952812018-08-20T17:08:00.001+01:002019-06-12T17:29:10.239+01:00Bring It On<div style="text-align: justify;">
"<a href="https://twitter.com/NoWayDavidLind1/status/1031557988685938688">Here in North West Durham, @LauraPidcockMP, the even worse @davidaslindsay, and the Tories are on 30-30-30. Any of them could be the First Past the Post. But @DPJHodges is to contest this seat against all of them. @GuidoFawkes @afneil @hurryupharry @TheNorthernEcho @ChronicleLive</a><o:p></o:p>"<br />
<br />
Also, complete with a large photograph of me, my article about my case is on page 6 of the latest edition of <i>The Word</i>.</div>
David Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.com0