David Cameron is NOT a Pie

Jesus, this man is the best! I wish we saw more like him, seriously. Aggressive, loud, and strongly opinionated. I don't even know if he's particularly left wing, but Jonathan Pie's defense of the NHS is absolutely, without a doubt, badass.

Just listen to him, will you? That anger, that seething rage at the Conservative Government, and all those who would see our country run in all but official name by private corporations, is what I live for.

Go on. Watch the video. If you have already, watch it again! He's the only guy I've ever seen with a job in the media who actually says the right thing.

Which is to say, the left thing.

All in all, I think we can safely say that 'Tim' is talking shit, not Jonathan, and that the clever hacker who took control of Jeremy Corbyn's twitter was absolutely wrong.

David Cameron's not a Pie.

Not by a long shot.

Greg did it

Just thought I'd let you know, he totally smashed that goal of £1M.

Yeah.

The People of Britain still care.

Thanks, guys.

~ Baxster Brand

Radio 1, and the Gregathlon

Radio 1's Greg James recently undertook a frightening amount of physical exercise - 5 Triathlons in 5 days, without interruption - in order to raise money for Sport Relief, who will be using it both to help the homeless in the UK, and to lend aid to the refugees in Calais, and those still made victim by war in Syria.

This man... has really, really impressed me.

They said they'd have been happy with £50,000, that that would have made them content that they had done their part for the world this year, and that there would be no guilt on their parts after that.

They were estimated to get only slightly more.


They have since raised over £900,000.

I... I just... wow. No, really. I'm not joking around here. I didn't think that any part of the BBC still had this level of good left in them, and as I listened to him on the way home just now, he was frantically urging the good people of Britain to help him - to help Sport Relief - reach £100,000,000.

He said that he was the only person at the studio who thought it was possible, and that everyone else had always doubted him, but by God there was passion in his voice, and there is determination in the People, and I am so fucking proud of us.

See, this is proof, isn't it? The People of Britain are not bastards. We do care about people other than us, and we do put our backs into it when the time comes to do something. Our government might be comprised of shitheads, and our 1% might be less active than any chemical process at 0 degrees Kelvin (which is to say, literally not at all, as there is no particle movement at 0 Kelvin) but the People are the Power, and the Power is still strong.

I'm so happy.

This is my evidence, my friends, that we do not have to be bad people, and that the world does not have to be cruel. This is my evidence that the whole world, and its apparent nature, is entirely up to us. Yes, there will be tragedy, because we don't know how to stop Earthquakes, and we don't know how to hold back the winds of a Hurricane, but this is my evidence that even in the face of what must seem like all the hatred of an angry, angry God, Humanity can stand together. Humanity can help the fallen to regain their feet. Humanity can take everyone aboard, and carry them forwards, unto progress, unto the light, unto the future.

This is my evidence that hope is not lost.

This is my evidence, my reason, for being even slightly optimistic about the future of the Human Race.

Because we can still love unconditionally.


And yeah. I donated too. I could only afford to do so once, but I can still say that no matter how small a part I played, I still played a part in helping people. What kind of Socialist would I be if I could, and didn't?

I do hope dearly that you do the same, because it might sound a little mad of Greg to think we can get to £1M by 7 O'Clock this evening - which is when they're calling it all in - but you know what? I think so too.

If you can - and only if you can, I understand if you can't - please, please text GREG to 70703. It'll cost 3£, plus your standard network charge for a text. You need to be 16+ unfortunately, and you're gonna need the billpayer's permission, but we can do something good here, guys.

For once, we can actually do something good.


Come on.


Let's do it, shall we?

~ Baxster Brand

Europe, and the Youth

So I saw something rather interesting on a Left Wing group I frequent, today.

A 17 year old girl was getting rather angry indeed about how she was not only not allowed to vote in the EU referendum in Britain this year - which could seriously affect her future, depending on the outcome - but how nobody seemed to be talking about this scandalous exclusion of the young people from politics.

And... for a moment, I thought "Pfft. She clearly isn't looking hard enough. All us left wingers care!"

But...

Well, she's right.

Nobody is talking about it. No newspapers, left or right. Nobody at all.

At least, not now.

In November, 2015, the Guardian took a bit of a look at the idea of those aged 16 and 17 voting in the EU Referendum. Why did that do this? Because Parliament was doing this. In fact, the House of Commonds was voting on it, and - get this - they voted that 16-17 year olds would get the right to vote.

So... why hasn't it been done?

Why isn't it law?

Because of the House of Lords.

As far as I understand the situation, the idea of 16-17 year olds voting is currently being tossed between the Commons, who are now voting Aye, and the Lords, who appear to be voting Nay.

So yes. In fact, there are - or were - some people talking about it, but unfortunately for you, my dear, your dreams are now caught in the machine of bureaucracy, with nobody decent enough who has the power to save them, thanks to the unfortunately aristocratic style of government the House of Lords appears to subscribe to.

"YOUNG PEOPLE? WITH OPINIONS? NOOOOOO. NOT AT ALL."

Bastards.

In fact, the Guardian article (which I shall leave a link to in the post script) did mention that one of the peers - Lord Faulks, our Civil Justice Minister, of all things - argued that "... 16 year olds might be overwhelmed by the challenge of voting."

What? I'm sorry, what? This sounds like a man who simply cannot believe that those younger than him could dare to have opinions, much less want to voice them.

Now, don't worry, because a Liberal Democrat peer then verbally thrashed him.

"Can the noble peer tell us whether he has seen the film Suffragette? The argument he is just advancing was one of the reasons that was given for not giving women the vote until after the first world war and then not extending it beyond those under the age of 28. Those arguments were deployed by his contemporaries, as it were, of that period.” - Lord Tyler, the Liberal Democrat peer.

I was stunned when I read that, actually. I've never heard of the Lib Dems actually... well, doing anything. But this gentleman appears to have proven me - if only slightly - wrong.

Good on him. Really. It'd be nice to have a few more people in Parliament who actually said the right things at the right times.

Maybe then our Youth's votes wouldn't be in sodding Limbo.


Good evening.

~ Baxster Brand

PS: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/18/lords-back-eu-referendum-vote-for-16--and-17-year-olds

We are murdering children

Yes. Unfortunately, this is indeed the case.

I'm not sure exactly how long it's been, or how many of us have forgotten, but we are now as a nation not only endorsing, but actively participating in the murder of innocent children, through the use and implementation of pyrotechnics and explosives.

I am, of course, speaking of the airstrikes in Syria.

Every day on my facebook feed, I'm greeted with the screaming faces of children hit by chemical weapons attacks during church, fragmentation bombs during school, and incendiary devices during dinner. I've seen parents hunched over the tiny, inanimate bodies of their dead children - their murdered children - in the streets of Syrian cities.

Murdered by our bombs. By Russian bombs. By American bombs.

Murdered.

You know why, though, don't you? Because ISIL are so great a threat we've decided to start blowing children limb from limb in an effort to-

Well actually, this literally could not possibly be doing anything positive for us.

 Look at it like this;

They hate us because we bomb them, and destroy their lives, their infrastructure, and their homes. That's just the Iraq war etc, by the way, I haven't even gotten to present day yet.

So what do they do? Well they do what any people who hate people do.

They bomb them. By which I mean they bomb us. Which is wrong. It is horrendously wrong and at no point am I saying that they are in the right for doing that, but you've got to understand that we are by no means doing any different from them - if anything we're doing it on a larger scale.

Which makes us hate them.

And now that they've bombed us - in the name of ISIL, see? - we feel the need to bomb them again.

So we bomb them and make them hate us more.

So they try to bomb us and start massacring innocents who would rather we were in power, while we start bombing them and massacring the innocents who couldn't get away from them - whilst managing every time to conspicuously miss their commanding officers, oddly enough (no conspiracy theory here, I just think it's weirdly incompetent of us) - and then we also start refusing refugees.

The Far Right starts to gain popularity over here, just as it basically already has over there, and soon everyone is up in a nationalistic rage, just begging to be allowed to kill their 'enemy''s men, rape their women, and enslave their children.

Which actually, has already started happening.

What was it, around 100K refugee children around Europe have gone missing? It's suspected (which is a word the police occasionally use for 'known, but we can't stomach facing it' when something is really, really grim) that they've been abducted and sold either into some form of drug labour, or the forced sex trade.

Yeah.

And actually, that one's on us, guys. I don't doubt that people in positions of power do some pretty terrible shit to the children they have power over, but we've now seen the disappearances of 100K innocent, war-fleeing children on our own soil, and actually I can't see anyone doing all that much about it.

You know what? I'll be honest here, and it's not because I want to invoke the good old 'all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing' crap on you.

We are becoming monsters.

Utter monsters.

You know, I was in central London today, too, and I passed a homeless guy on the street, begging.

And he apologised to me when I said 'sorry mate, I don't have anything' because I didn't have anything.

He said sorry... to me?

There are people who will say we shouldn't take refugees because we need to worry about our own, but they're so blatantly not worrying about our own that you've got to wonder whether they even believe that anyone still believes them when they lie like that.

Because this guy apologised to me.

Why? Because he took less than ten seconds out of my day to ask for help to survive?

I bet those kids are apologisiing too you know. To their new masters and mistresses. Their white, European, moneyed masters and mistresses.

Their owners.

See, we say that we've abolished slavery, but really we've just pushed it to the back of our minds, haven't we? Because we totally allowed this to happen. We, in Europe, totally let this happen.

We did not deploy the police to protect the vulnerable from hatred and manipulation. We did not deploy the correct avenue of application of military force to start resolving these problems at their sources. We did not act on moral intelligence, and we instead acted on our childish desire for more, more, more money and power and oil and people to lord it over.

Those 100K children did not need to end up in lives of abuse, rape, and torture.

That poor, apologetic man who, as I write this, could very well be freezing to death on the cold streets of London, did not need to end up in a life of poverty and dirt.

And we, the people, do not need to end up in lives of regret for having allowed this to continue.


I like my optimism, ladies and gents. I do. I think humanity is going to end up some place nice.

But fuck, are we going to have to work for it right now.

~ Baxster Brand

They didn't fucking drop it

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tories-take-rape-victim-supreme-7256632

Remember, some time ago now, I went on a rant of torrential abuse and perfectly justified rage against the bloody Tory party?

Well, now I'm going on another one.

Because the subject of the rant prior to this one was that the DWP was charging a rape and domestic abuse victim, who is also a single mother and justifiably suffers from constant anxiety, bedroom tax for her panic room.

No! I... I just can't. This is evil. This is no longer in the realm of being a bastard. This is no longer the department of typical British apathy to suffering - this is the type of thing you would expect the Empire, literally the bastard antagonists who cross the Moral Event Horizon on an hourly basis out of Star Wars, to do.

We've become them.

This is beyond abhorrent.

I mean, I feel like I'm just repeating myself here - because I am, nothing has changed since last time - but this is a panic room specially installed by the police to protect her from the constant threat of her rapist, who is for some reason walking free.

What the fuck?!

WHAT THE FUCK?!

There is NO EXCUSE FOR THIS!

Someone needs to take David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith, George Osborne, and Jeremy Cunt Hunt outside and shoot them in the bollocks with birdshot at point blank range. They have Britain by the balls, so I say we outright remove theirs.

This has gone on more than long enough.

~ Baxster Brand