Common Decency - Colour Blind Politics

Supporting the Grenfell Disaster

Guitar parts played tonight on the Queen stage where we're rehearsing in Anaheim - close to Los Angeles, California. Simon Cowell's team are working on the track in Sarm Studios - close where the Grenfell disaster happened - and a studio where so much of our old material was recorded. Through the miracle of Digital encoding, this will be transmitted tonight and will all native ready to be laid into the London backing track, along with the vocal overdubs. This is a great cause - all credit to Simon for pitching in - and of course this is my neighbourhood too - so I had to volunteer my services to help the families who are suffering so much. The plan is to release this track on Wednesday - just a week after the fire. Bri
 

Madam Guillotine

I seem to be ranting all the time at the moment, a return to my former voluble self. But at least I’m not alone now.

I’ll get it off my chest today. Soon I’ll be off. I’ll be intensively on the road, doing my day job, taking the Queen and Adam Lambert show all across the USA, and I'm hugely looking forward to it – looking forward to seeing lots of happy faces and making lots of good wholesome noise. I can make some money too, more money that I can squander on Animal Welfare based schemes!

But right now I feel full of explosions of long pent-up frustration and anger. Before I start this one, I'd like to get something out of the way. As the ‘Artist Taxi Driver’ so eloquently says, don't let anybody start telling us we should not be 'politicising' the appalling tragedy of the Kensington tower block of flats that went up in flames, killing and maiming innocent and decent ‘normal’ British folks. This is one of the worst disasters of recent times, all the more tragic because it’s so clear that it could have been averted at so many points over the last few years, and wasn’t. It is, by its very nature, political, because it’s about beliefs, and behaviours.

The one thing that everybody agrees on is that this disaster should not have happened. But it's a question of finding out why it did. And in asking the questions that lead to the answers we need, it's becoming apparent that the whole core of government policy over many years has to be surgically dissected and examined. I feel that the analysis will reveal that we need an absolutely radical restart, and a re-definition of all the fundamental values which have been held sacred by recent governments.

George Montbiot today says:

The #GrenfellTower disaster is a convergence of all the evils of our age: deregulation, inequality, corporate power, loss of democracy, etc.

I believe this is absolutely true. And no lame attempt at deflecting the blame on to Europe will change that. If this sounds like “We told you so” from the mouths of people like us, then so be it. I don't think anybody seeks credit. We just want things putting right.

During the latter half of the last century, there was a slightly bumpy but continuous build towards improving the quality of life of every citizen in the UK. The priority values were quality of life, and decency and fairness. There were differences of approach as regards the details, but the underlying intent was clear, and, I believe it was a good intent.

This isn’t an anti-Tory rant, by the way. I’ve been supporting some great compassionate Conservatives over the last few years. In spite of some flak, I’ll continue to do so. But anti-Theresa May? Yes it is. You also won't find me condoning the actions of Tony Blair. In my opinion he may have started out with good intentions but was utterly ruined by power and vanity and did immense damage. He skirted in a cowardly way around many of the important home decisions, like the banning of blood sports, and the quiet blind eye he turned towards the fact that the dismantling of the old evils of privilege in Britain were put on pause on his watch. He then made the catastrophically awful decision of taking us to war without good reason, and without consulting anyone - even his own cabinet – plunging us into the spotlight as a nation to be hated around the world, generating terrorist resistance to our actions. Socially, at home, I think history will see Tony Blair as somebody who simply allowed things to crumble. He diluted the ideals of Socialism to the point where it was almost indistinguishable from Conservatism. In the process, with a gentle smile, he allowed the traditional forces of darkness to assemble and grow strong, awaiting their moment. This is why Jeremy Corbyn, like him or not, has found support for his much more honest ‘real’ socialism.

After Tony Blair was dispatched, something truly awful happened. When Cameron first put a foot in Number 10 Downing Street, albeit sharing the power with a young LibDem lad who traded his morals for a slice of the cake, the social structure of Britain, the hopes of fairness and decency for all no longer continued, simply to crumble. David Cameron ruthlessly began the process of destruction, actively tearing down all the good that had been done over half a century in seeking a fair distribution of wealth and power in this country. In his second term, and in the recent regime of Theresa May, this destruction of fairness has been pursued with even more determination. These people stand for the protection and strengthening of Privilege in England, making it harder and harder to achieve any kind of equality of opportunity.

We forget so quickly, don't we? Cameron and his cronies came up with all sorts of glib catchphrases, designed to hoodwink us into thinking they were acting in our interests. It’s actually monstrous to contemplate that anybody believed “We're all in this together”. Cameron, the Prince of the old guard, old-fashioned Tories, became a master of talking the talk, while walking smartly in the opposite direction. And so it has been, ever since. It's been deception on a grand scale, but somehow the massive forces of their money and spin managed to hoodwink a large section of the population for quite a while. Not any more.

The other great catchphrase which swept so many of us are up in its appealing chatter, was the vilification of the so-called “Nanny State”. Remember? Suddenly any kind of caretaking was namby-pamby, an erosion of freedom, and wasteful. This propaganda was used to justify the dismantling of all the safeguards that had been so carefully put in place by preceding generations. It was all labelled “Red Tape”, and the good old-fashioned Tories set about ripping it all out. In their over simplistic language, it was so easy to justify. “Look! We’re saving lots of money. We’re making the economy healthy. We’re turning Britain around”. The fact that they would in the process deny decent people their jobs, erode health and safety, and remove the right of anyone to challenge this course of action, was brilliantly swept under the carpet by the propaganda rhetoric of the Press, almost all of which they controlled. The Mail, The Telegraph, The Sun, and The Times all absolutely locked into shoring up the status quo, all slapping each other on the back and building up invulnerability, so that the poor people could never again challenge their divine right to rule, or take away the unfairly large piece of the cake they were owning. They also mischievously used terrorism as an excuse to table the destruction of the Human Rights Act.

Now, in 2017, by a strange sequence of events, almost as if it were a thunderbolt from the heavens, all those closed doors behind which the skullduggery took place have been opened. It's now so clear to everyone that the red tape and the social care network that the Tories absolutely consciously destroyed have led to our country being a wasteland for the common people. Worse than that – even the simple safeguards to keep people secure in their beds at night was thrown away. This is why we have a burning building spelling out the truth for us. It has cost the lives of these poor people to wake us up – and we all know that if they had been rich people, this never would have happened.

This is not politicising. This is the plain ghastly truth. The logical end of all those stupid catchphrases is the destruction of this country. Our once beautiful London is wrecked, choked under a plague of building work which does not benefit Londoners. It benefits the upper echelons through the very fact that rich investors support their hold on power. Our buildings are not safe. Our nurses are not paid a decent wage. And our once-great National Health Service has been all but destroyed by running bits of it down and selling them off for rich cronies of the Government to develop for profit. Our education system has, almost without protest, suffered the same fate. All those ‘Academies’? Did we notice? We don’t own them any more. They are not owned by the state, supported by taxes. They are run by rich businessmen to make a profit. When they fail to make a profit, pieces of the educational machinery which are suddenly deemed unimportant are ripped away. This asset stripping is going on as we speak, undermining our children’s education. It’s the same story. The aim is always profit, and money. It’s called ‘The Economy'.

When I began my campaign for decency seven years ago, we made a viral video called “Bollocks to the Economy". I was accused of being simply rude and irrelevant. But I was deadly serious. In my view, making ‘The Economy’ a false God has poisoned this country – taking away the true priorities of decency, fairness and quality of life. I don’t want ever to hear the sentence ‘We are good for the Economy" again.

This present ‘mess’ is not an accident. It has all been planned. The old-fashioned Tory clique are not stupid. They are ruthless and unprincipled, and have an unshakable belief that they were born to rule, and have a divine right to hold on to the power and riches generated by the ordinary people of this country. They were just not quite clever enough. They got found out.

This is not a small matter. It will not be solved while the present Government limps on, pretending there is a plan for this hopeless Brexit exercise.

This is the moment. It's funny, because I was brought up as a staunch Tory, and always despised the grubby revolutionaries. I also made money by pursuing my dreams, although money was never the object. But now is the time. This will have to be something on the scale of the French Revolution. While the increasingly astoundingly unlikable Theresa May is still robotically chanting “Let them eat cake” (remember her recent “There is no magic money tree to pay nurses”?), it's time to get Madam Guillotine ready.

This cannot be a small change. All those ruthless, selfish bastards have to get the comeuppance now. They must go. Every last one of them. It's time to start knitting their names into history. Of course, we won't literally chop off their heads. Hopefully, we have enough Common Decency in us not allow things to run amok. But they must go. Every last vestige of the rotten, filthy, old-style privileged Tory edifice must be torn down. I can already see the glint of the blade of the guillotine rising out of the mist. It is time.

Every time I look at the dreaming spires of Westminster, I'm struck by the image in my mind of the shocking corruption inside those buildings. And the rottenness and the unfairness it promulgates. It's time to clean out the filth.

Bri

The Language of True Extremism

The Daily Mail - widely acknowledged now as one of the most evilly poisonous publications in the world - is actually a fascinating place to study the language and techniques of propaganda. One of the first results of the humiliating loss of power that Theresa May has suffered is something truly wonderful. She's being forced to abandon her declared plan to tear up the Treaty of Human Rights. This piece of crass stupidity was a knee-jerk reaction to a very small number of cases where supposed terrorists were managing to escape deportation by claiming it would be a violation of their human rights. It was a very crude attempt at vote-winning for TM to claim that she would solve the problem by just sweeping away the whole carefully constructed landscape of the Human Rights Treaty - which, by the way, was largely based on British ideas and hard work.

It was a very dangerous idea - absolutely shocking to those of us who believe that Human Rights are the very basis of Common Decency and morality.

So - with a non-existent majority quietly smiling at her from the wings - she now has to abandon this appalling idea. But the Daily Mail reports it in a highly dishonest and inflammatory way. Look what it says ...

It doesn't just report the facts - it puts an intense colour on the story, by saying " ANGER as May is forced ... " . If the British Public were stupid, they would swallow this whole. They'd share that anger and get all worked up - "How shocking, this abandonment of TM's plans". Maybe that would have happened in the Old Days. But I'm certainly starting to believe that Britain is waking up fast - which makes me very happy, since I've been calling out "Wake Up" for months. In the election, Britain mostly rejected the Daily Mail's spurious and pernicious accusations against Corbyn - and stripped TM of her majority.

I think we are all getting clearer as to what is truth, and what is filthy distortions.

So ! Looking at that headline again, who is "Angry" about Theresa May being prevented from smashing Human Rights ? Well probably the owner of the Daily Mail and a few of the rather nasty fox hunting friends that Theresa has managed to keep by her side. But - the rest of us ? We're over the Moon !! We can hardly believe it. Suddenly we realise all over again - there IS a God !!! Decency and moderation are beginning to dawn in the skies of Britain !!!

Bri

PS - if you want some fun try looking through the Daily Mail's headlines in the next few weeks. Look for those emotive words designed to pervert our opinions - "Anger as .." ... "Rage as ...." "Dismay as ...." It's Fun ! There are lots of others - words and phrases too .... if you have a moment - go look ! Even better - you'll find great stuff in the Sun, too (RSPCA "blasted" !), and the Telegraph, and, yes, the formerly respectable and respected The Times too. What a game ! But the game is up.

Cheers folks ! Things are changing. Here comes HOPE !!!

This man speaks the truth this Government dares not utter. It's as if clear messages are being sent to us. Britain needs massive change.

Bri

This Mess Theresa May

In the light of the humiliated Theresa May being forced to ‘tear up her manifesto’, this cartoon a month ago in the Times seems strangely prophetic.

I’m also discovering that my own words exactly a month ago - written in response to an invitation from the Mirror, but, strangely, not published until the eve of Election day - were prophetic too. The day after Theresa May’s announcement (carefully planned) that she would bring back blood sports, I wrote …

"The public backlash that I saw following this announcement convinced me that the country might just be ready to send Theresa May packing the same way they had pushed David Cameron out of the door, in recompense for his very similar vaunting arrogance in the Brexit Referendum. Now that the blinkers are off, we see Theresa May in her full glory – a ruthless insatiably ambitious woman with not a shred of compassion for man or beast.”

And so it proved to be … against all the expectations, because at that point the opinion polls were still giving the Tories a massive 20 point lead, and predicting a ‘landslide’ ! Mrs May eventually secured possibly the hollowest victory of all time, and although she still limps on in number 10, blithely pretending nothing’s changed, her ticket to the same place Cameron was banished to (Planet Ignominy) … is already written.

The latest carefully rehearsed heroic speech from Mrs May goes something like “Well, I got us into this mess, and I am the best person to get us out”. I’m looking for another cartoon, from a couple of weeks ago which also rings those bells … it showed Theresa May driving a bus full of people off the edge of a cliff. All it needs is a new caption:

“I’m the best one to save us … trust me ? !”  Yep, Theresa, sure we trust you.


(Original caption) “Who else wants a shot??” – 18 April 2017 – Theresa May calls a snap election
before the reality or ramifications of Brexit become manifest - by Seb Charrot

Various people have been tweeting their reactions to the astounding poll result, but lots of people have been asking me "What is the result of the election from an animal welfare point of view?” Well, we all know that there will never be real progress towards decent treatment for all creatures while the ‘Old Style Toxic Tories' are still in Government. We would need either a new-style enlightened Conservative regime (which just might happen) or a Labour government, or a House packed with MPs with empathy.

That didn’t quite happen this time. But it’s no longer an impossible dream. We saw a significant change in the way people voted this time, many free at last from the influence of the disgustingly mendacious and poisonous Right Wing Press. And though, as many have commented, both major parties claimed victory, we at Common Decency are convinced that the victory was OURS ! What we have, at least in this interim period, is a House of Commons which is delicately balanced - no one person or party having absolute power. Every decision will have to be honestly debated, and the votes will turn on who has been convinced by logical argument. It will be incredibly difficult for any extreme and damaging bill to get through. In particular, with a Parliament containing over 400 MPs who are against the return of blood sports (rightly, since they now reflect more closely the will of the public) the chances of Theresa May bringing in a bill to smash the Hunting Act must be less than an asteroid hitting the Houses of Parliament. Her promise to do that is effectively torn up along with the rest of the Theresa’s now obsolete manifesto. As regards Badgers, things are moving in the field. We’re all very excited about an experimental project in Devon masterminded by vet Dick Sibley, a man already with a track record of conquering disease in farming. It’s not yet verified science, but it certainly looks as if he has solved the Bovine TB problem in cattle - without killing a single badger or other wild animal. His work was temporarily paused while DEFRA sorted out the legality of his enhanced testing regime, but he certainly has made ONE farmer very happy, enjoying his TB-free status, and convinced that this is the way forward. In Wales, Christianne Glossop (although at present, against the advice of most experts, headed towards doing some small-scale culling), is taking the bold step of applying this technique to a selection of problem farms.

The significance of this is that, from the perspective of those involved with the bovine TB problem, it may not matter which party is in power in the future. If a true solution can be found which doesn't necessitate the death of either cattle or badgers … a solution which actually WORKS … then suddenly we are all friends. And the polarisation of the parties will no longer exist. Jeremy Corbyn has promised to halt the badger cull anyway, and obviously we would welcome that, but, in the long term, a SOLUTION rather than a DECISION is what Britain needs.

So we have gone a long way towards our vision of a Parliament working on Common Decency rather than party lines, and I thank all of you who supported the idea. By the time we get to the next election, we promise to be better prepared, and more noisy in promoting Common Decency. And maybe in the NEXT parliament, some real progress can be made in making Britain a fairer place for all creatures, human and non-human alike.

Oh – by the way, if people show you that mocking face, and ask “So you really expect people to vote according to whether a candidate wants to kill foxes or not ?” Just remind them that fox hunting is a wonderful piece of litmus paper, to indicate whether a person has empathy or not. If the answer is no, there is no chance of getting this person on side in campaigns to give the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged a fair deal. A DECENT MP works on creating a decent life for ALL his constituents, whether or not they have a voice, or a vote.

Onwards !!

Bri

Dave Goes all Decent ?

Well, here's a turn-up for the books. Good old Dave Cameron emerges from the shadows he was consigned to, after his arrogance and vanity resulted in his fall from grace. Guess what ? He's gone all Common Decency ! He's telling the equally humiliated Theresa May that she ought to consult with the Opposition party and hammer out a Brexit policy that might actually be something close to what the people of Britain really want. GOOD IDEA !!! That's how Parliament ought to work - as we've been saying in the Common Decency campaign for a few years now ...

But what a shame Dave never thought of this in the days when HE was forcing his will on Parliament ! How come it comes into his head now ??? Oh ... sadly it's all too obvious that this is a way of trying to recover his dignity and respect. Of course. He was right all along, wasn't he. He should still be up there in the fluffy clouds that surround Number 10 ! At last the British public will acknowledge their error in rejecting him ! How he must relish he spectacle of Theresa May having to go cap in hand to the opposition - something that would have been unthinkable in the heady days when King DAVE was invincible. Shame. No honour among thieves, I guess. Not much decency either. Good try, Mr Cameron!

And by the way, Dave ....  did you forget ? All of this - ALL OF THIS SHAMBLES - is YOUR FAULT. "

Bri

Theresa May's stance on fox hunting

I must admit my first reaction to the announcement from Theresa May that there was to be a snap general election was mild disgust. It was obvious in an instant that this was nothing to do with strengthening her position in negotiations in Europe, as she lamely pretended. How could it ? No – it was planned out of purely callous and cynical self interest. She had been advised that the Tories were further ahead than ever in the opinion polls, and it was a great time to try to increase her majority in the House of Commons (in spite of the fact that it would immoblise this country in the middle of crucial negotiations with Europe) . But I think for a moment we all almost believed the Tory newspapers’ attempts to show her in a favourable light – a woman valiantly seeking to provide “Strong and Stable Leadership”. What a joke, in the light of the laughing stock she has become in Europe, and the fact that she historically advocated Remain anyway – until taking the opposite point of view gave her a ticket to Power. Every time you hear “Strong and Stable leadership” from now on, just think “Strong and Insatiable Appetite for Power”. Wanting to give her a last benefit of the doubt, I was nevertheless momentarily hesitant to re-introduce our Common Decency campaign – maybe there was no point this time ?

My hesitation turned into anger and resolve when I saw Theresa May’s shocking admission last week that she had “always been in favour of foxhunting”, and she intended to bring in a vote in the House of Commons on the repeal of the Hunting Act, commensurate with a return to those abhorrent blood sports which roughly 85 percent of the British public regard as completely unacceptable.

Why would she make this rash announcement, just when she seemed to be safe in the ratings? Well, it's blatant self interested maneuvering again. By doing this, she enlists the help of those Countryside Alliance supporters who will rally round like they did for Cameron, and help Theresa May’s bloodthirsty chums to get re-elected. Has she forgotten what revulsion this would produce in the rest of us?

The backlash that I saw following this announcement convinced me that the country might just be ready to send Theresa May packing the same way they had pushed David Cameron out of the door, in recompense for his very similar vaunting arrogance in the Brexit Referendum. Now that the blinkers are off, we see Theresa May in her full glory – a ruthless insatiably ambitious woman with not a shred of compassion for man or beast.

I do not use these words lightly. It's been shown many times that a disregard for the feelings of animals generally corresponds with a similar disregard for people’s feelings too – especially the poor, the sick, and the voiceless, a quality which we have already seen in Theresa May's cold and twisted smile. The attitude of a person to blood-sports is actually a kind of litmus paper … it’s a fairly reliable indicator of whether the person has a decent conscience or not.

Yes, I, along with so many others, was willing to give Mrs May a chance, and believe that perhaps she had a decent heart beating in her body. But the events of last week have banished that view forever. This is not a nice woman. This is a quietly dangerous woman, hell-bent on establishing herself as a virtual dictator in this country, at which point she would be able to continue to smash the Health Service so it can be sold off to unscrupulous business concerns, without a backwards look, continue, unchallenged, to widen the gap between the very rich and very poor, and, believe it or not, try to enable the barbaric blood sports of the last century to return to Britain.

Just in case any of you are thinking that foxhunting might, just be kind of … okay… ? Let me remind you how the hounds are trained, by unleashing them, hungry, on newly dug-out baby foxes. The hounds which do not show enough ferocity are immediately shot. The pitiful pictures of those beautiful tiny fox cubs torn into a bloody mess will always haunt me. The argument that foxhunting is a form of pest control is, of course a downright lie, because the remaining Hunts have been caught red-handed, breeding foxes just so that they can be released as live bait in front of those half starved packs of pounds. It’s all lies. There is no justification. Fox hunting is a disgusting, deplorable, sadistic activity, and anyone who endorses it deserves not a moment’s sympathy. We have now seen the rise of the Clean Boot hunts, in which it is a man who is pursued, not a fox, and no blood is lost. All the fun of the chase, country air, a hard ride, but no blood – no torture of innocent animals. This is the decent future of hunting. There is no excuse for the other thing … no possible excuse for a return to barbarity.

To my mind, this election has now turned into a God-given opportunity for us, finally, to wake up in Britain to the fact that this awful woman needs to be sent packing. I'm hoping that the young people of this country will register in time to make sure that this happens. As I have emphasised so many times in the past, Common Decency is colour blind. It is not anti-Tory. There are some great Tory MPs in the House of Commons right now – like Tracey Crouch, Andrea Jenkyns, Henry Smith – who are committed to Decency in all its forms. We need to keep them there. But Common Decency is absolutely opposed to the wrong kind of Tory, as epitomised by the very (as Patrick Moore pointed out some years ago) unpleasant Mrs May. This election has become all about getting rid of Mrs May.

Let’s get to it.

Brian May

The most disgraceful daily mail front cover ever

Very much as I predicted - probably the most disgraceful Daily Mail front cover EVER.

I accuse the Daily Mail of being poisonous lying bastards. This 'story' is tantamount to accusing these three decent citizens of being terrorists.

Seriously, it is such a blatantly disgusting attempt to destroy the character of Mr Corbyn, that somebody from the Daily Mail should go to prison for Libel. Surely measures must be taken in the future to make Newspapers as accountable for the truth and decency of their output as the rest of us. Of course this is a grossly unfair use of the power the Mail has, to attempt to influence the outcome of the election.

I will pray that the British public can see this skulduggery for what it is - and discount ANYTHING the Daily Mail says in this respect. VILE, VILE, VILE. And beyond shaeful.

Bri

Fox Hunting (Appeal)

HI Folks.

Brian here.

I'm speaking to you from Save Me Trust HQ and this is where we talk about foxes and badgers and hedgehogs and deer normally, but Theresa May last week made fox hunting a major national issue by declaring that she has an allegiance to it. She supports it and if she gets back into power she will try to bring back blood sports.

I think this is one of the most important things that ever happened to Britain because suddenly we're seeing in the polls people reacting to this.

They’re reacting not only to the actual cruelty aspect of the the sport itself - if you could call it a sport - we're seeing people coming to realise that someone who is not bothered about torturing an animal, is not bothered about the welfare of people either, and this is something I've come to realise over the years where I've been campaigning. Fox hunting is not just important in its own right as a cruelty issue it's a fantastic litmus paper. It's something you can apply to people to discover if they have compassion in them or not. Someone who's gonna advocate tearing a fox apart limb from limb while it's still alive is not gonna be someone who cares about children or sick people or poor people or the fact that nurses are having to go to food banks to survive.

So, we have no compunction now in our Common Decency campaign in saying if you find out that somebody is an advocate of fox hunting, do us a favour and don't vote for them.

Doesn't matter what party they’re in. This is not a party issue. It's about whether the MP that you choose to elect will be decent or not. Will they make Britain a decent, compassionate place or not. So this is my advice, and we have some advice coming up much more specific than this, but basically let's see the reverse landslide . Let's see Teresa May discover that she has unwittingly unleashed the power of compassion in Britain. It will unseat her and it will be the making of Britain, I believe. We will have a new compassionate Britain eventually and maybe soon.

Bri

What's Common Decency about (Post No 3)

At this moment, Theresa May is no longer Prime Minister of Britain. Because of her purely selfish bid to increase her majority by calling an election, Britain right now has no government. At the crucial moment of Brexit, we have no leadership. We have no “STRONG and STABLE leadership”. We have no leadership at all.

It’s time for us all in Britain to wake up and see what is really happening here.

We need to shake up Britain. We need to get rid of the arrogant and dangerous Theresa May, or at least thwart her attempt to become a virtual dictator.

But this coming election is not about being anti-Tory.

We all have to grow up, too.

The real situation is this. We may be able to remove Theresa May or we may not. But no matter how this election turns out, what we need to aim for at the end of it is a DECENT House of Commons. A Parliament in which democracy will function the way it was designed to do. So the next Government will be accountable for its actions. So the Prime Minister will be moderated by decency and democracy at work.

We can NOT do this by removing decent MP’s, no matter what party they belong to. Last year, we managed to stop Cameron bringing fox hunting back in through the back door with his sneaky SI. How ? The crucial deciding factor was the number of Decent Conservative MPs who stood by us. Contrary to what you may have been told, it was NOT the SNP who stopped Cameron in his tracks. Cameron HAD to back down because his own troops, acting on their own decent conscience, refused to support him.

In the next parliament we need to be able to do the same. Even if Theresa May gets an increased majority, it will not help her bring back fox-hunting if those crucial decent Tory MP’s - along with many decent Labour MPs and the massively decent Caroline Lucas for the Greens, are all against a return to barbarity.

This applies to many other issues too. Having a house packed with MP’s of all colours who are decent will moderate policy in all areas. It will make it harder for the Prime Minister to smash the NHS, to sell it off to rich supporters, which is already happening right now. COMMON DECENCY aims to achieve exactly this.

We are NOT anti Tory. We are anti Theresa May because she is the WRONG KIND OF TORY. She is not the decent kind. She is the ruthlessly ambitious, heartless, merciless kind. She is in the old Margaret Thatcher mould … do not let the publicity machine (including the Daily Mail, the Sun, The Telegraph, and the Times) fool you into thinking otherwise. She is a nasty piece of work. She is attempting in this election - against the interests of this country, to grasp total power - to become virtually a dictator. We MUST not let her pull this off.

How do we do it ? We vote according to Common Decency. Vote for your candidate not because he or she belongs to a party you’ve always supported … vote for the DECENT candidate who will represent your interests in Parliament … not just the interests of the rich. Common Decency will help you find out who that most decent candidate in your constituency is. We can’t make the decision for you, but we can help.

The fox-hunting issue is important in its own right – repealing the Hunting Act would plunge Britain back into the Dark Ages of brutality … not just Fox Hunting, but also Hare Coursing, Stag hunting with dogs. … it’s disgusting even to think of. But the fox-hinting issue is a kind of litmus paper test. Anyone who supports such a return to cruelty is highly likely to behave indecently in other matters too. Any MP who supports the abuse of animals is more than likely to support abuse to vulnerable humans too – the poor, the sick the homeless, the voiceless. And this is exactly what we see in the small but indecently powerful minority, headed up by Theresa May, who are right now advocating smashing the Hunting Act. If she succeeds, Theresa May will disable all those who wish to protect animals, and similarly she will take away the power of the majority to challenge them. This would bring about the end of democracy in our country.

Britain ! It’s time to wake up … and grow up. This is NOT about party politics .. it’s about saving democracy from an evil and cynical attempt to undermine it from within.

Theresa May must be stopped.

Bri

OK - If you don’t believe me on this matter … look at Tracy Crouch’s tweets. Look at what Andrea Jenkins is tweeting. Look at what Henry Smith is saying, Sarah Wollaston, what David Morris is saying. They’re all sticking their flag in the ground AGAINST the return of cruelty. And the Tory contingent of decent MPs is growing. We NEED these people. So we do NOT want to be marching with anti-Tory banners right now !!! We need to be marching with Anti Theresa May banners. She is the villain of the piece, because she epitomises the old-style Tory style – the arrogance, the insensitivity, the selfishness, the unfairness, and – as we now know for sure – the cruelty. 

Registration and Voting - (Post No 2)

Hi Folks

Since this election was suddenly announced, a lot of people have asked me what we plan to do this time around, to follow on from the Common Decency campaign we conducted at the last election. This is my answer.

It's been a while since I got on my Soapbox in earnest and talked politics. But now is the time to get serious, because I believe our country and the very roots of democracy are under threat because of Theresa May and this poisonous and opportunistic election.

In a nutshell, what I'm going to say to you is that, by any means open to us, we must direct our efforts towards getting rid of Mrs May in this election. The very best result for the Country would be that she gets thrown out of office. And it COULD happen. But even if that's not achieved, the next best thing will be to pack the House of Commons with a cross-party mix of thoroughly decent MPs who will be able to limit Theresa May's powers in the coming months, and thwart her attempt to become a virtual dictator. If this seems a little alarmist, I'm now going to tell you why I'm convinced that this is the case.

Going back a couple of years, we saw David Cameron calling a referendum on Brexit. The voters were given virtually NO information on what would happen if we departed, because none was available. The case for Brexit was laughably flimsy - based on fatuous catch phrases like "making Britain Great again" (how strikingly similar to Trump's inane cant). The country should have thrown it straight out of the window. But David Cameron, irresistibly pulled on by giddy ambition, vanity and a lust for power, gambled on being able to scare us all with ridiculous exaggerations. He gambled on the gullibility of the public, and his belief in his own carefully manicured charisma. And it all backfired. Unexpectedly, and catastrophically for him, he lost.

So Britain, voting for all the wrong reasons, made the stupidest decision in my lifetime - to smash all the relationships with Europe that had been so carefully forged for so many years, and leave Europe, without even a shred of a road map.

Cameron, correctly reading the tea-leaves which told him that staying on would only get him into more and more difficulties, vacated 10 Downing Street. Cameron's removal from office was basically the only good thing to emerge from that fateful mess of a decision - Brexit. In the scrabbling around which then took place within the Conservative party to fill the gap of PM, deals were hastily done, while all the fierce proponents of Brexit quietly ran away. And who should find herself hot in the running - but Theresa May. Widely regarded as a steady hand at the time, she had actually voted to REMAIN - and had indulged in some pretty grubby scaremongering herself ( did she really say that "leaving Europe would be the worst disaster since World War II ?? - did we forget so soon ?!!)

What happened next slipped by us all, and was hardly commented upon, because, I think, we all wanted to think the best of this new person arriving in Downing Street, with the opportunity of starting things afresh.

But we all should have realised that, at this point, the decent thing for Theresa May to have done would have been to stick to her principles, and tell the country she couldn't lead us in a direction which she didn't believe in. Instead, presumably drawn by the same irresistible pull – the heady prospect of power – she accepted the job. Suddenly she was telling us she would go all the way in ‘fulfilling the wishes of the country’. The warning bells were ringing at that point. But none of us heard them. Theresa May was cut from the same cloth as Tony Blair and to David Cameron – her lust for power was soon to be unleashed, and there would be no turning back. Who was it that said that "all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"?

Jumping to a couple of weeks ago, Theresa May suddenly, out of the blue, announced a new general election. She told us that the reason for calling it was to ‘strengthen her negotiating position in Europe’. The phrase “Strong and Stable leadership” was created by her publicity writers, but of course her leadership in Europe has been anything but strong and stable … she has become a laughing stock after displaying her arrogance and ignorance in conference with Mr Junckers.

But let us look at her declared reasons for calling this election. It doesn’t take much brain to realise that the result of it can make absolutely no difference to her powers of negotiation. The decision was plainly made because TM was advised that she was 20 points ahead in the polls, and an election could give her a massively increased majority in the House of Commons. It would mean she could push through anything she wanted … with no appreciable opposition. She would become, virtually, a dictator. So now the picture becomes clearer … not only is she mad for power, but she is dishonest in her declaration of intentions. This is not a nice woman, or a decent woman, or a woman who should be trusted with the power she seeks.

Theresa May is in fact in the middle of one of the most cynical bits of maneuvering in British Parliamentary history … at the expense of the country’s best interests. Right now, we have no Prime Minister. We have no Parliament … Theresa May has effectively immobilised Britain at one of the most crucial moments we have ever experienced … the potentially disastrous exit from Europe. This is gross irresponsibility, a monstrously selfish and dishonest act, and Theresa May should be called to task for it, by being ejected from the race to be the next PM.

But many of us were still, amazingly, willing to give this woman the benefit of the doubt.

But three days ago everything changed. In the midst of her campaigning, we saw Theresa May assert she was in favour of Fox Hunting and would bring in a bill in Parliament to repeal the Hunting Act. Suddenly the blinkers are off. Fox Hunting ? ! In the middle of planning our whole future as a nation, she declares she wants to bring back blood sports. It’s so shocking most people would not have believed it until they heard it from her lips. The vast majority of the British public is horrified and disgusted by all forms of blood sports. At a stroke, Theresa May has marked herself as morally unfit to be the next prime minister. For the sake of Democracy, decency, and for the protection of the poor, the sick, and the voiceless, Theresa May is unacceptable as our leader.

Bri