Krystian Zimerman: A Polish patriot

Let's hope the world famous pianist will be the first of many in 'liberated' eastern europe to speak out against what's going on in the region.

A Hungarian Zimerman is urgently required- there the new 'emergency' government says that pensions, health and education spending must be slashed due to the poor state of the public finances, yet, surprise, surprise, they've still found $1.3m to buy new military vehicles from their imperial masters.

Letters of the Week: Bob Parsons & Andrew Shaw

Once again, it's a dead-heat. There's this cracker from Bob Parsons in Friday's Daily Express which caught my eye.

Labour isn't to blame for all the country's ills. Many years ago, before Tony Blair came to power, officialdom advised my adult daughter to get pregnant to become eligible for a whole raft of benefits. And this was under a Conservative government.

The Daily Express tells us 'They' have ruined Britain, but who are 'They'? Have we so quickly forgotten the financiers and bankers given free rein in the Thatcher era who have brought the capitalist financial system to its knees.

Many people, myself included, would have preferred to see these privately owned bastions of capitalism collapse under the greed of their owners and shareholders instead of being bailed out by the taxpayer.

So a Labour government has once again saved capitalism, thanks to money that ordinary people have provided, while the perpetrators enjoy gold-plated pay-offs for failing.

Bob Parsons,
Trawden, Lancs.

And then there's this short, but very sweet one from Andrew Shaw from The Daily Telegraph.

SIR – I am not surprised at Tony Blair's despair over the new higher rate of income tax (report, April 25).
It will cost him a fortune.

Andrew Shaw
Corby, Northants

Reasons to be cheerful: (1) A Hungarian horse named Overdose

So, it seems we're all going to die of swine flu. That's of course if those dastardly terrorists based in Afghanistan don't get us first. And on top of all this we have the new 50% top rate of tax, the prospect of Michael Caine emigrating, and something called 'Harriet's mad sex war' taking us back to the 'Dark Ages' (according to the ever-cheerful Ms Melanie Phillips). Crikey, things sound bad don't they. And on top of it all, it's Monday and it's raining.

But at least, as the late Queen Mum used to say, we still have the horses.

Above you can watch a clip of the unbeaten Hungarian wonderhorse, Overdose, chalking up his twelfth victory on the bounce in the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest last weekend. If you haven't seen the race already, you're in for a real treat. Overdose has been labelled an 'absolute freak' by the senior international handicapper and if you watch the clip, you'll understand why.

You can hear me talking about the greatest horse to emerge from Hungary since the legendary Kincsem, on the BBC World Service, here. (The feature is about 47 minutes 30 seconds into the programme).

"The Party has lost its soul"

This interview of mine with 'woman of the moment' Alice Mahon, appears in the New Statesman.

She was born into the Labour Party. Her grandfather, a Scottish miner who moved to Yorkshire in search of work, told her how he had heard and been inspired by Keir Hardie. At the age of ten, she was delivering Labour party leaflets. At 19 she was a party member, and at 49, she became a Labour MP, for her home town of Halifax. Now, after 60 years’ association with the party, Alice Mahon has had enough.

Her resignation was announced the weekend of 18 April in a letter to her constituency chairman, in which she claimed that the party’s leadership had “betrayed many of the values and principles that inspired me as a teenager to join”. There have been many attacks on New Labour before, but Mahon’s could yet prove to be one of the most damaging.

Widely respected throughout the labour movement for her integrity and commitment to social justice, Mahon’s critique of New Labour has traction, as it chimes with what millions of core Labour supporters feel about the party’s lurch to the right. “Labour is the party of bankers, not workers,” she tells me. “The party has lost its soul, and what has replaced it is harsh, American-style politics.”

Like many on the left, she hoped that things would improve with Gordon Brown’s elevation to the leadership in 2007. “I was naive enough to think that when Tony Blair went we would get a change of direction. But it was just wishful thinking. The thing is that Brown really believes in neoliberalism. Things are getting worse in the party, not better, particularly since Peter Mandelson came back.

“Take the Welfare Reform Bill. John McDonnell was magnificent, but what I thought was deeply depressing was that – apart from Lynne Jones – there were hardly any Labour women MPs attending the debates and opposing the bill.”

The party’s “obsession” with privatisation, and the way former cabinet ministers (16 at the latest count) obtain private-sector jobs soon after leaving office, are particular bugbears. “Why are we continuing to privatise? It can’t be because privatised services work better; we only need to look at the railways to know that that isn’t true. One has to wonder whether it’s because of the rich pickings politicians can get when they leave office. They are joining companies which bid for government contracts, and there is a clear conflict of interest.”

Then there’s foreign policy. Mahon, a veteran peace campaigner, has opposed all of New Labour’s military interventions. “Labour has become the party of war. The wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq are all part of the same imperialist war. The Labour Party was supposed to be against imperialism. I remember seeing children being pulled out of the rubble when Israel bombed Lebanon. But the government wouldn’t say anything to condemn it. What kind of morals is that?”

For Mahon, the party is now beyond repair. “New Labour’s control of the party is total. They don’t just use smear campaigns against the Tories, but against anyone within the party who opposes them. Take the case of Janet Oosthuysen, who was selected to be the prospective Labour candidate for Calder Valley at the next election. She’s a lovely woman and very popular with local people. So what did they do? They dragged up the fact that she had once scratched her former husband’s car, and the NEC then blocked her candidacy.

“Then there’s Bob Wareing [Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby from 1983 until he was deselected in 2007]. What happened to him was disgusting; a lifelong socialist who had given great service was deselected in favour of a thrusting, ambitious Blairite [Stephen Twigg] who had lost his seat in the last election.”

Mahon, as the descendant of a miner, feels she has nothing in common, either politically or personally, with New Labour’s middle-class metropolitans. “Blair was a cuckoo in the Labour nest. New Labour is nothing whatsoever to do with the Labour Party. What do I have in common with James Purnell? He looks like a Poor Law Guardian.”

So if the Labour Party is not the answer for progressives, what is?

“I’d advise people to vote for individual candidates. I’m not going to join any other party. What parties are there? The big disappointment has been the unions, who have continued to support Labour, even when they’ve been privatising and attacking working people.”

As honest and as straightforward as any politician I have met, Alice Mahon is a throwback, in the best sense of the word, to the times when the Labour Party inspired devotion in working-class communities around the country. “When I was a child growing up in Halifax, there were three main topics of conversation in our house: Rugby League, cricket – and the Labour Party,” she recalls. One wonders in how many working-class households today the Labour Party is discussed in affectionate terms. And how many ten-year-olds will be out ­delivering party leaflets.

New Labour may have won three general elections in a row, but by alienating those like Alice Mahon, who have given a lifetime of service to the party, it could well have sown the seeds of its own demise.

Wally of the Week: Simon Heffer

Do you know anyone who earns more than £150,000 a year? No, me neither.

Yet according to Daily Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer such people constitute 'Middle England'.

Heffer claims that

"Labour's policies are shaped increasingly, if not exclusively, by considerations of how it advances the cause of its own people. Those who are not in that category – such as most of you reading this column – get what is coming to them."

Again, I wonder what percentage of Daily Telegraph readers earn over £150K. Very, very few I should imagine.

The best response to this claptrap comes from commenter 'mac', who writes:

This article laid bare the hypocrisy of Tory sympathisers. To say that 150K is representative of "middle England" shows how out of touch they are with the REAL middle Britain who earns far less than 150K. I really hope voters see what danger the Tories would actually pose to the real middle England because they would end up cutting everything for us in favour of the RICH who earn 150K or more.

That's not an argument to vote Labour. But it's certainly a good argument not to vote for the party Mr Heffer supports.

Crisis? What crisis?....for Mr George Soros

Worried about losing your job in the current downturn? Frightened that you won’t be able to pay your mortgage, or that you won’t be able to take the kids for a summer holiday? Well, don’t worry- there’s one man who is having a whale of a time.
Our old friend, the arch-globalist Mr George Soros…..

The Daily Mail reports:

The hedge fund manager who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been 'stimulating' and the culmination of his life's work.

George Soros, who predicted the global financial crisis twice before, was one of the few people to anticipate and prepare for the current economic collapse.

Mr Soros said his prediction meant he was better able to brace his Quantum investment fund against the global storm.

But other investors failed to take notice of his prediction and his decision to come out of retirement in 2007 to manage the fund made him $US2.9 billion.

And while the financial crisis continued to deepen across the globe, the 78-year-old still managed to make $1.1 billion last year.

'It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,' he told national newspaper The Australian.

Soros is one of 25 top hedge fund managers from across Wall Street who have defied the credit crunch crisis to reap a total of $11.6billion (£7.9bn) last year.

Hat tip: Louis Proyect.

Alice Mahon: Politician of Principle

Here is Alice Mahon's resignation letter to her constituency secretary Martin Burton.

Dear Martin,

I am resigning as a member of the Labour Party and I wanted the local party to know before I make my decision public.

First, I would like to thank you and my friends in the party for your comradeship and support over the years. This has been a difficult decision to take as I feel I was almost born into the Labour Party.

However, I can no longer be a member of a party that at the leadership level has betrayed many of the values and principles that inspired me as a teenager to join.

You will recall when I stood down I said that after the illegal decision to wage war on Iraq I could not have served another term under Tony Blair's leadership.

With hindsight I should have resigned then, but I thought this would be very unfair to Linda Riordan and labour members putting themselves forward for election to the council.

I also hoped that we might go back to being a really progressive and caring party should Gordon Brown succeed Tony Blair as leader.

In the event I could not have been more wrong.

Despite all the evidence and in the face of the credit crunch, Gordon Brown's obsession with privatisation such as the Royal Mail is inexplicable and quite simply wrong.

Labour had its chance after Blair to get its finger on the pulse in the country, more social justice not less.

That chance was squandered with catastrophic results.

He has shown not one jot of contrition as he continues to privatise what is left of our public services.

At the same time he has failed miserably to tackle the corporate greed of the bankers.

As to foreign affairs, it becomes clearer by the day that the Labour Government cooperated with the Bush regime as they rendered whoever they judged to be guilty of terrorism to despotic regimes who tortured them and offered them no access to the legal process whatsoever.

Our ministers shame us in front of the world when they give their support to the Israeli government as they commit war crimes in Palestine and the Lebanon.

Brown has just announced plans to send another 900 troops to Afghanistan, billions to be spent on an unwinnable war and pensioners dare not turn on their heating because this Labour Government will not tackle the energy fat cats.

On the domestic front we said in our 2005 manifesto that we would not privatise Royal Mail, we lied.

That same manifesto promised a referendum on the European Constitution, we re-named it the Lisbon Treaty and reneged on that promise also.

If this Treaty is ratified we can say goodbye to any publicly owned services. Article 111-147 is clear, we will be handing over to private corporations, social services, education, transport and postal services. Even the NHS will be up for grabs.

The misnamed Welfare Reform Bill now going through parliament is something the Poor Law Guardians would have been proud of. This Labour Government should hang its head in shame for inflicting this on the British public just as we face the most severe recession any of us have experienced in a lifetime.

This assault on the poor and disabled is taking place at a time when former Labour Ministers still drawing an MPs salary, line up on an unprecedented scale to take up lucrative consultancies with private companies, that as ministers they previously had dealings with.

I have written to Gordon Brown about this, he simply passed me on to a civil servant. This personal greed and possible conflict of interest did not appear to concern him.

My final reason for leaving the party is because it is no longer democratic. The personally vindictive, dishonest campaign played out on the pages of the tabloids by certain Labour party members to deselect Janet Oosthuysen was despicable, but even more shaming was the behaviour of the NEC who have uttered not one word of criticism about the Home Secretary's behaviour on expenses, but have ruined the political career of an excellent candidate whose only crime was to scratch her ex partner's car.

The undemocratic nature of that selection continues as the reselection has been conducted without much transparency and is now subject to complaints from members of the Calder Valley Party.

Quite simply I have had it with New Labour.

Yours in friendship,
Alice.