Fares Fair

The biggest hike in rail fares in five years will be coming next month, with an average increase of 3.4 per cent. With the cost of HS2 diverted to reconnecting many towns to the rail network, we need the renationalisation of the rail services as each franchise came up for renewal, and thus at no cost, as the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, eventually free at the point of use, and prior to that requiring the approval of the House of Commons for any increase in fares. Make it happen.

Court and Circular

I still have to turn up to Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Wednesday morning, 6th December. But only to be told what my new trial date is going to be, doubtless well into 2018, and thus anything up to a year after I was arrested, perhaps even a year after I was charged. They have nothing. Nothing. But they are determined to spin out this shameful and shameless political hit job to the last possible moment. In the meantime, please give generously to the reason why they are determined to take me down, which is the reason why I am determined that they never will.

Please Give Whatever You Can Afford

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I am a writer, broadcaster and political activist who is not a member of any political party. I am happy to work with people of all parties and of none. My national and international work is focused on participating in the formulation, articulation and implementation of the alternative to neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy. In my own case, that is based on the pursuit of economic equality and of international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends.

Locally, I support justice for the 472 of Durham County Council’s Teaching Assistants who are still set to lose 23 per cent of their pay, I am working to bring Volkswagen’s production for the British market to County Durham after Brexit, I am seeking to provide a platform for the concerns expressed by and to the non-Labour majority of County and Parish Councillors in the North West Durham parliamentary constituency, and I intend to identify in each ward of the former Districts of Derwentside and Wear Valley a number of projects equal to the former number of District Councillors in order to campaign in support of those projects.

This Needs To End Now

With less than a fortnight to go until the showiest trial this side of Pyongyang, I have been informed by the ever-excellent Durham Constabulary that our old friends "the defenders of Bharat, the defenders of Eretz Israel" have once again been writing from the United States, a county that I have never visited.

This time, they have been writing to prominent but non-political figures in these parts. They have not only repeated their death threats against me (and possibly against others, although I have not been told that), but they have also extended those threats to "the teenage sons of female Police Officers". Those will be killed if I am not convicted and imprisoned, "the teenage sons of female Police Officers". 

This whole business has now crossed a line even by its own standards hitherto. Durham Police Federation must now demand that the charge against me be dropped and that any Police file on me be closed, as must every Member of Parliament and every County Council representing any teenage son of a female Police Officer. That is almost certainly all of them, and certainly all of the MPs.

Look, what do you want me to do? Forgo any claim to financial compensation? I would do it. Undertake never to seek any elected political office that I did not currently hold? I would do it. I am not asking for the Crown Prosecution Service to admit that it never had a case against me, even though it never did. I am not asking for the Council Council election in Lanchester that Labour, although not the candidates themselves, won by these nefarious means to be rerun at expense to the community at large.

Just drop the charge against me, close any and all Police files on me, and concentrate on protecting, not so much me, as others besides, now even including "the teenage sons of female Police Officers", from the intercontinental "defenders of Bharat, defenders of Eretz Isreal", who have defined themselves in the past as the heirs of Nuthurum Godse and of Moshe Sneh, and who are clearly bad and possibly mad, but who are not joking.

They hate me. The likes of Simon Henig hate me. But we trust that only one of those categories is prepared to see "the teenage sons of female Police Officers" go to their graves for the sake of its hatred of me. The one with quite literally more firepower than a single fingerprint that turned up seven months to the day after I had been charged and which may or may not have been mine (it is not), on one side but not the other of a folded piece of paper that any of hundreds of people might have touched, but not on the envelope in which it had been posted, an envelope that bears no trace of my DNA where it had been sealed.

This needs to end. Now.

Acquiescing To The Forces

This letter does not appear in The Observer, despite having been signed by a prominent former MP and by a Lobby journalist: 

Dear Sir,

Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of the Great Crash, and the fifteenth anniversary of the catastrophic invasion of Iraq. In the scandalously arranged absence of Bernie Sanders, President Trump has been elected by the American individuals, families, communities and areas that have suffered most as a result of politically chosen austerity, and which have given most to wars of political choice. The British individuals, families, communities and areas that have suffered most as a result of politically chosen austerity, and which have given most to wars of political choice, have elected Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party, have delivered the referendum vote to leave the European Union, have re-elected Corbyn even more overwhelmingly, and have deprived the Conservative Party of its overall majority in the House of Commons.

Yet Trump is, predictably, acquiescing to the forces against which his supporters voted, while Brexit is being negotiated, insofar as it is being negotiated at all, in precisely the interests of which the referendum result was a comprehensive rejection. In the midst of this, the senior newspaper of the Anglophone liberal tradition is disgracing itself by peddling a bad James Bond parody in which Hillary Clinton and the Remain campaign, limitlessly funded and with almost entirely sympathetic media coverage, were defeated by tweets and Facebook posts from the Kremlin.

Instead of this nonsense, The Observer needs to be participating in the formulation, articulation and implementation of the alternative to neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy, based on the pursuit of economic equality and of international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including a Leader of the Labour Party who is, and who deserves to be, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Yours faithfully, 

David Lindsay, Lanchester, County Durham; @davidaslindsay 

George Galloway, broadcaster and former MP; @georgegalloway 

Nadeem Ahmed, Birmingham Yardley; @Muqadaam 

Sean Caden, Leeds; @HUNSLETWHITE 

Neil Clark, journalist and broadcaster; @NeilClark66 

James Draper, Lanchester, County Durham 

Krystyna Koseda, Essex; @kossy65
John Sweeney, Islington North Constituency Labour Party (personal capacity); @johnsweeney18 

Matt Turner, Evolve Politics (personal capacity), @MattTurner4L

Shining A Light

It ought to be in almanacs: Lumiere means the first woolly socks of the year. I know that I shall love it this evening. I always love Lumiere. But we are talking about a million pounds from the County Council. The language of priorities, I'm afraid.

 

Some rural communities have had their common or garden street lighting taken away from them. The buses have been cut to the bone, making it difficult or impossible for many disabled and other people to attend Lumiere.

 

And, thanks to the political advice of a man who is now a high profile new MP's Political Advisor, 472 Teaching Assistants are still being left behind, continuing to lose 23 per cent of their pay. I reject that betrayal out of hand, and I will fight it to my last breath. This campaign has greatly awakened my interest in new patterns of trade unionism.

 

Durham County Council is the last outpost of bad old New Labour, snarling that, "You have nowhere else to go." Well, we shall see about that. And before anyone tries, I do not mean that my own somewhere else to go is prison.

 

One month to the day after I had been arrested, they took six hours to charge me on the strength of a pair of fingerprints that turned out, six months later again to the day, to have been a single fingerprint that may or may not have been mine (it is not), on one side but not the other of a folded piece of paper that any of hundreds of people might have touched, but not on the envelope in which it was posted, an envelope that bears no trace of my DNA where it was sealed.

 

Such contortions would be beyond me even if I were not as arthritic as I am. The prosecution has added physical impossibility to the moral impossibility of my having committed this offence, which latter is the publicly recorded view of every member of Durham County Council who has ever met me. It is also a matter of public record that the Police would not have charged me.

Come my trial date on Wednesday 6th December, consider that if anything else has purportedly turned up, then there had been absolutely no sign of it during the preceding eight months of this campaign of persecution at scandalous public expense.

 

It may harm your prosecution if you do not mention now something that you later rely on in court. Or, at any rate, it should.