THE WORD EDITION 51 XMAS 2020

THE

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Issue #51, Christmas Edition 2020

Season Greetings from everyone at The Word

£1

Equality Democracy Truth Courage

THE PEOPLE’S PAPER

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OH LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM...

THE SUFFERING CHILDREN CRY

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POLITICS AND EVENTS

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THE ONLY EFFECTIVE ACTION STARES THE LEFT IN THE FACE

Starmer will gain nothing by allowing Corbyn back

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he simple answer is nothing, or at least nothing remotely useful. As usual the left stands around talking about solidarity as victims are picked off. This began in 2017.

Petitions have been organised, online rallies have been held and mild protest letters published. That’s it.

Starmer and his ‘glove puppet’, General Secretary David Evans, have not ignored it all and threatened retribution on anyone and everyone who dares to step out of their line.

Bristol local labour party ignored Evans’ ruling that only Starmer and his pals were allowed to discuss Corbyn’f fate. Two co-secretaries were suspended then the whole CLP put in the deep freeze until

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78 local parties have ignored the ban order

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THOUSAND MEMBERS BELIEVED TO HAVE LEFT THE PARTY

What is the Labour left doing to oppose ‘Keith’ Starmer’s latest attack on them and his gerrymandering of the rules to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of the Parliamentary Labour Party?

Corbyn on his own friends and supporters: Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Chris Williamson, Marc Wadsworth and Tony Greenstein to name a few.

February.

humiliation with no guarantee, what would Starmer gain out of letting him back into the PLP?

There is only one response and 100,000 members have led the way by leaving the party.

The Parliamentary left is already clearly cowed into submission, as Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy’s grovelling apologies to Starmer painted large.

It is time the SCG did not just talk about solidarity but put it into practise by resigning the Labour whip and calling on all left members to resign to form a new socialist party.

Starmer gains nothing but would most definitely lose support among the rabid right wingers and Zionists who would explode in righteous anger and threaten plagues of locusts etc.

The consequences of this would be that the Starmer party would never ever gain power, and that is all Starmer and the right care about.

was signed by 18 out of its 33 members and the Now the newly usual suspects, elected Young Diane Abbott, Jon Labour chair Trickett, Richard has been B u r g o n , instructed to Ian Lavery take down a organised an If the left post which online rally? resigned from the supported Starmer party he Corbyn and That’s it. would never gain was critical Meanwhile, power of Starmer’s Corbyn remains unconstitutional barred and has behaviour. She may turned to his lawyers. yet crack.

Whew! His left colleagues are off the hook.

Some even dared to declare no confidence in Starmer.

But, Corbyn has now been Most have called for Corbyn to presented with a humiliating be readmitted to the PLP, the pre-written apology he must preferred line of the Socialist agree to if he wants any chance Campaign Group of left MPs. of being allowed back.

Done Deal

When the SCG issued its first statement of support it

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Even if Corbyn was stupid enough (and the jury is still out on that) to accept the offered

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Corbyn has been presented with a humiliating pre-written apology he must accept

So, what to do?

If Starmer’s plan is for an apocalyptic confrontation he’ll expel Corbyn, but why force the left to face up to their collective cowardice when it would be so much easier to inflict on them the party’s unique living-death of never-ending suspension.

It worked u n d e r

With union support a new socialist party of activists would soon overtake the Starmer rump.

There is no alternative effective course of action.

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ECONOMISTS LINE UP TO SLAM USELESS BROADCASTER

BBC’s top reporter accused

of pushing for Tory austerity

The BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, is paid £290,000 a year and is “promoting economic illiteracy” and talking “twaddle” economics and finance experts complain

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peaking on Politics Live, Laura Kuenssberg said there was “absolutely eye-wateringly enormous” levels of public borrowing which were forcing into making the announced cuts.

In doing this she was promoting the lie that state finances are the same as a household’s .

So when Kuenssberg says the eye-watering debt has to be paid back” she’s plain wrong and should know it.

£290

M o s t The UK h o useholds THOUSAND government have little PER A YEAR has the Royal control over Mint and the earnings.

TO TALK Bank of England Adjusted for TWADDLE and BOTH can inflation people create money. The now earn less than Mint prints it, the Bank in 2007. But government of England can create it at the tax revenue has double over the push of a computer button. It’s last 10 years. called quantitative easing.

If a household suffers a Lenders will loan more to a shortfall, it has to cut spending 25-year-old on £30,000 (there or take on a second job. If the are some) than a 65-year-old. government has a shortfall it The lender wants to be sure can increase taxes, borrow more that they will be repaid before or just create more money. pension age.

And if the government did The government has manage the economy as though enjoyed ever-growing earning it were a household and seek to power for centuries. When a UK pay off the national debt, that government bond or debt is due would damage to the economy. it replaces it with new debt.

Every time we buy

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It is understood Mr Hatton was held on suspicion of witness intimidation, as part of a probe into the awarding of building contracts in the city. Mr Hatton, 72, is a former deputy leader of Liverpool City Council and was a key figure in Militant, a -left group that ran the city council in the early 1980s.

During that time Hatton had a verbal exchange with, my brother, Sir Trevor Jones, who was the Liberal party leader on the council.

Hatton shouted out “one day I will walk on your grave.” To which my brother replied, “That’s OK, I am being buried at sea.”

By CLIFF JONES

The UK runs a persistent trade deficit, which means that the foreign sector has a surplus.

If the government were also to run a surplus or just ‘balance the books,’ that would condemn the private sector to a deficit.

Finance expert Frances Coppola tweeted: “This is an utter disgrace and totally irresponsible.”

Government finance differs in at least four fundamental ways. A household does not have a licence to create money; earns for one life-time; has limited control of earnings and is not responsible for the entire economic system.

Derek Hatton Arrested

When Kuenssberg says the eye-watering debt has to be paid back she’s wrong

something cash changes hands. making spending someone else’s income, So the two ends of the trading transaction money out from you and income in for the seller - is zero.

So if everyone cuts spending they are cutting everybody else’s income. This leads to economic contraction.

Split the economy into a domestic and foreign sectors. The total of all activity will also be zero. If the foreign sector is in surplus, the domestic sector will have an equal deficit.

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“This is an utter disgrace and totally irresponsible.”

So if the UK government tries to run a permanent surplus, housewives and businesses will be condemned to a deficit. And if they then cut their expenditure, as Thatcher would suggest, economic contraction will result.

Politicians talk about run-ning a balanced budget but rarely do because it usually leads to a recession.

So if the government took Kuenssberg’s advice and attempted to pay back the national debt, it would have to do that by running a long-term surplus, and an equal long-term deficit for the private sector, an economic catastrophe.

Source: We-arethe-99%

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POLITICS AND EVENTS

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WINDRUSH MARK 2 USS SUPERCARRIER NIMITZ SAILS TO TH

Darioush Rezaeinejad Less than a month ago I wrote an article ‘Double standards over joint enterprise and deportation.’

Home Secretary Priti Patel has defended plans to deport 50 people to Jamaica on Tuesday, after more than 170 MPs called for the flight to be halted

In it I compared the treatment of a young Jamaican Osime Brown who was facing deportation, even though he arrived in the UK aged just four.

on Monday December 2nd. On the day 13 out of the 50 were deported.

He had been engaged in criminality but he was a young man with learning difficulties, and was our responsibility to deal with, not Jamaica’s.

I find it hard to believe that the Home Office could think they could persist with Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ without an outcry.

I compared his case with three others convicted of grooming and sexually exploiting young girls.

Maybe some of the deportees deserved to be deported but obviously the 82 well known people including actor, Thandie Newton, (pictured below) and author David Olusoga (above.)

About 18 months after they lost their appeal against deportation they are still here.

An article in The Guardian this week entitled ‘Black public figures urge airlines not to carry out Home Office deportation’.

The flight was scheduled to take 50 Jamaicans to Jamaica

I wonder if large scale deportations are planned for East Europeans, South East Asians or other ethnic groups!

I then read that complaints of racism and discrimination within Home Office teams dealing with the Windrush Scandal had prompted an internal investigation and the resignation of a senior official.

Former barrister and head of the Windrush compensation scheme, Alexandra Ankrah, left because she had lost confidence in the scheme. She claimed it was not supportive of people who have been victims’ and ‘doesn’t acknowledge their trauma’.

Fereidoon Abbasi Davani attempt failed 2010

FEARS OF WAR A

nuclear scientist

his major escalation of tensions risks placing the Middle East on a new war footing.

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Iran vows vengeance after the ‘father’ of the country’s nuclear programme was machine-gunned and bombed to death

The US ‘supercarrier’ Nimitz has been ordered back to the Persian Gulf with its strike group where it has spent most

of the year.

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Mohsen Fakhrizadeh

M o h s e n Fakhrizadeh was ambushed with explosives and machine gun fire on a highway near the capital Tehran.

Efforts to resuscitate him in hospital failed.

His bodyguard and family members were also wounded.

Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Israel was probably to blame, and an

adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed retaliation.

“We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action,” tweeted Hossein Dehghan.

The killing is seen by Iran as being as grave as the US forces assassination in January of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani.

Over the last 10 years four Iranian nuclear scientists were

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HE GULF AS IRAN THREATENS RETALIATION FOR ASSASSINATION

AFTER FIFTH

t murdered assassinated in similar ways, either going to or returning from work.

In 2010, Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed by a remote-control bomb strapped to a motorcycle as he was leaving his Tehran home.

time, survived an assassination attempt that same day.

head of Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was killed by a magnetic bomb stuck to ‘We will strike his car while driving to as thunder at work. the killers of

Pay back

In 2011, Darioush Rezaeinejad, an academic w h o s e this oppressed Later that year, another affiliation to the I s r a e l martyr’ nuclear scientist, Majid country’s nuclear has never Shahriar, died when attackers activities is disputed, commented on rode up alongside him and was shot by gunmen the accusations but its stuck bombs to his car. riding on motorcycles. foreign intelligence service, Mossad, has a record of Fereidoon Abbasi Davani, A year later, Mostafa assassinations.

Iran’s atomic chief at the Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy America has denied any involvement but it is widely A violent response would provide a accepted that Israel would pretext for a US-led attack on Iranian never launch such a provacative assassination without first nuclear facilities

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getting the nod from the United States.

Israel faces accusations that it is using the final weeks of the Trump administration to provoke Iran into preventing any chance of reconciliation between Tehran and next US administration under President Joe Biden.

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli Defence Force

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IRANIAN NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS MURDERED intelligence, said: “With the window of time left for Trump, such a move could lead Iran to a violent response, which would provide a pretext for a US-led attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.”

Masoud Alimohammadi 2010

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Big landowners lose as THIS PROJECT IS AS UNREALISTIC AS BOR subsidies target nature

Jet Zero is a fant distraction from climate pollutio

£1.6 BILLION A YEAR PAID TO FARMERS

The £1.6 billion annual subsidy farmers enjoy for simply owning the land is to end by 2028.

been made possible because of Brexit and leaving the EU’s common agricultural policy, widely regarded as a disaster for nature.

The farmers’ favourite political party has announced E n v i r o n m e n t that in future farming’s total secretary, George Eustice, of £2.4 billion in subsidies acknowledged the damage will only be paid for restoring done to the environment wild habitats, creating by industrial farming since woodlands, improving soils, the 1960s. “Over the last cutting pesticide use century, much of and to help buy our wildlife-rich New green new machinery. habitat has been lost, and many payments will Wealthy species are be trialled with landowners, in long-term 5,000 farmers including the decline. before a full Queen and launch in vacuum cleaner “I know many 2024 king, Sir James farmers feel this Dyson, currently loss keenly and are paid more than £150,000 taking measures to reverse a year, will lose a quarter of this decline. But we cannot their payments next year, deny that the intensification two-thirds by 2025 and of agriculture since the 1960s end on 2028. Money for has taken its toll. Our plans environmental action will for future farming must rise from a quarter of the total tackle climate change – one to more than half by 2025, of the most urgent challenges with the remainder used to facing the world.” increase productivity.

Farming is the biggest The new payments will be driver of biodiversity trialled with 5,000 farmers loss, produces significant before a full launch in 2024. greenhouse gases and water Payment for natural flood pollution. defences and restoring peatlands and saltmarshes The government also has not yet been set. announced that it would be cutting “red tape” for These changes have only farmers, with warning letters replacing automatic fines for The minor issues.

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intensification of agriculture since the 1960s has taken its toll

In July, the government said rules about growing diverse crops, fallow land and hedges would be abolished in 2021, claiming they had little environmental benefit.

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ismissed by experts as a gimmick and positively counterproductive, Jet Zero, first announced by Boris this June, has been recycled into the government’s Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution.

If Jet Zero could be achieved, which professionals doubt, it would do little to address underlying environmental concerns; rather it’s a ruse to convince the public that technology has it covered and we can carry on flying.

There are measures the government could take to curb aviation’s damage to our climate, but Johnson ignores them.

Airlines were given billions in coronavirus rescue bailout packages without any green conditions. France’s finance minister demanded in return for an airline bailout,

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Boris Johnson has a new pet aviation project: “Jet Zero, let’s do it!” he calls zero-emission transatlantic flight by 2025. The problem is, he is all talk It’s a ruse to convince the public we can carry on flying

that France should have “the greenest airline in the world”.

Boris could tax jet fuel so greener forms of transport, such as coach and train, are not put at a disadvantage. Levying a fuel tax would create a fairer system – more like the open market the Tories say they favour.

It could adopt a policy of

One percent of the global population causes 50 per cent of global emissions

polluter pays as one percent of the global population causes 50 percent of global emissions.

Such a tax wouldn’t prevent ‘super-emitters’ jetting about, the money raised would at least help fund the development of green jet fuels.

Currently, low cost of jet fuel is a climate hazard. In tricky times and with lower operating costs, airlines may be tempted to run planes half

TORY CHUMOCRATS TAKE CHARGE IN 2017 the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had its income cut by 70% with notification of a further 25% cut by 2021.

Who gets appointed to such bodies? With whom should your values chime if you do get appointed? If Commissions have little money how much room for manoeuvre do they have?

Among the Quangos (Quasi-Autonomous NonGovernmental Organisation) and Agencies I knew the Training and Development Agency for

schools best. Towards the end of each year the boss would send a report to the Secretary of State who would reply using the wonderful words “I am minded” in order to signal what Secretary wanted doing the following year.

It was a carefully choreographed dance and if you were careful you might, from time to time, take the floor.

Individual phone numbers and email addresses were available on the website. But as New Labour faded access narrowed.

Then Gove and Cummings put an end to something that could keep professionals and politicians connected.

Of course they must be connected. But how best to do this? Is it really wise to create a chumocracy? Is the rocking of the boat to be forbidden?

Jessica Butcher has just been appointed to the EHRC. We have to wait and see if this is a positive appointment for women. I do not expect any boats to be rocked.

We live our lives so ignorant

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RIS‘S ISLAND IN THE THAMES ESTUARY

tasy m on

empty, precisely when we know that old, dirty, fuel-guzzling or empty planes should not be permitted.

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POLITICAL CIVIL WAR

We have a divided Tory Party but for now I want to concentrate on Labour.

We could roughly divide the Party into people who think politics is all about obtaining and clinging to power and those that see it as all about values.

The power-minded have a relatively straightforward task: do what you have to, say what you must, to get power.

The values-minded people have a more difficult task: choosing which values and explaining them is not so easy.

Yet Corbyn found it relatively easy to appeal to people who wished to live in a more equal, a fairer, society.

50% CUT IN POLLUTION BY 2030

Activist, Greta Thunberg, has highlighted this creative accounting on emissions.

The UK’s Climate Change of how we are governed. As a schoolteacher I realised how little my kids and their parents were aware of an array of semigovernmental bodies literally running the place. But at least such bodies had a sense of public service.

Now so many of them have been privatised and once the regulators also become privatised the connection between government and governed snaps.

The Dewey Decimal System classifies the Social Sciences, including government and politics, under 300. Soon that shall have to be changed to 900 where History is to be found.

Act commits to lowering pollution by 50 percent by 2030 - but aviation is excluded from the calculations.

Instead of shallow spectacle, if the government made a genuine commitment to abatement measures and green

technology (like developing the UK’s Rolls-Royce/ Airbus E-Fan hybrid electric plane - shelved during lockdown) productive jobs would stand a chance of replacing them.

At the moment it looks as if we are doomed to live on Boris Island – the failed, four runway floating airport, he wanted for the Thames Estuary.

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The question for party members who put values before power is stay and fight or leave and promote ideas?

It looks as though he easily won the majority of the votes of the under 45s. But such a society suggests that many holders of economic power will be discomforted; and it was such people who found it so easy to support Blair.

Wayne, he wants them to stay on the tiniest of reservations which does nothing but shrink, and when they defend themselves they become ‘terrorists’.

If so we have a link between the prosperous and the power-hungry. Corbyn was more than a nuisance to such people: he was a hindrance and a threat. He was, therefore, assassinated.

The ‘Values People’ get in his way because they threaten him with arguments based on socialism, even, heaven forfend, international socialism. Starmer is a Capitalist Accommodator.

And so on to Starmer.

At first it looks easy to classify him as a comforter of the prosperous: no revolutionary he. But like so many revolutionaries he is intolerant, and is dangerously close to forbidding all but the gentlest criticism of Israel.

He does not show up on the Socialism Detector. He does on the Establishment Detector. And his pinging on the Likudnik Detector drowns out everything else.

He may claim to support Palestinians but, like John

The question for the valuesminded is, stay and fight the power-minded or leave and promote those values. Which is it to be?

STARMER’S SINGLE ISSUE IS AN ERROR IF a party chooses a single issue it should be wide enough to encompass a lot of smaller issues.

For the Many Not the Few works for me but gets dangerously close to an advertising slogan. Its strength is that when challenged there are lots of appealing examples.

So it works.

years, regarded Zionism as antiJewish.

Definitions of Zionism vary but Starmer appears to believe that if you belong to a religion you are also entitled to a ‘nation state’ whose bedrock is fairy stories from aeons ago.

That was Corbyn. Now we have Starmer. His single issue is not Judaism, it is Zionism.

‘Chosen People?’ Those people did the same as so many others: they experimented with deities until they chose one that they could make say that it was the people that were chosen.

Many Jews have, for many

Zionism involves displacing

and demeaning indigenous people. You want to find the original ‘Jewish people’? Start by looking at the Palestinians.

‘Semitic’ applies to a family of languages. Starmer uses it racially, just like Hitler did.

Palestinians are not only the descendants of ancient Jews but, unlike most Israelis, they use a Semitic language. It was Aramaic now it is Arabic.

Modern Hebrew? A kind of Semitic Esperanto gaining, by the day, more and more Arabic

slang. If you put a still-born language next to a live language that is what happens.

I may get a red card for this as it seems that to stay on the field I must be ready to endorse Starmer’s Single Issue Politics.

Netanyahu? Nobel Peace Prize, again and again. DEFFO. But please, can we have a Labour leader who avoids choosing as a single issue something so racially wrongheaded that it expunges humanity from the party?

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SPEEDY VACCINE METHODS WERE READY FOR COVID-19

The announcement about the Pfizer vaccine trial success shows that ‘there is a pathway out of the woods’ as one virologist said.

The success of this trial also suggests that other vaccines, using slightly different methods, are likely to be equally successful.

Comparing the high-tech methods for CV-19 vaccine production with traditional methods developed by Jenner in the 1790s to counteract smallpox, is like comparing a high-speed electric train to Stephenson’s Rocket.

In the 1820s smallpox killed up to one in five in crowded towns and cities.

It took 50 years to prevent it being common and 200 hundred years to finally eradicate it in 1980.

When a person catches a virus the body reacts by producing cells and chemicals aimed at eliminating it.

would happen and so have been working on new ways to rapidly and safely make a vaccine for any new virus.

Key T and B cells are stored in case of future infection, when they are quickly activated to attack the virus, also producing antibodies specific to that virus.

The methods developed all require detailed information about the structure of the virus.

Chinese scientists provided this information early in 2020.

If a ‘T cell’ was the size of a football, a CV-19 ‘cell’ would be pea-sized and antibodies specs of dust.

A particular feature of the CV-19 virus, which our T-cells and B-cells can recognise, is its spikes.

Since Jenner vaccines have used an inactivated form of the relevant virus to stimulate the immune system.

Of the methods being trialled, there are three ways the vaccines get the body to recognise the spikes and store the information.

This requires the virus to be grown at large scale and then deactivated.

After the recent emergence of SARS and MERS scientists believed it a viral pandemic

Astra-Zenica use a modified cold virus in which to insert the RNA ‘recipe’ for the spike.

Injecting this into us makes our body produce the protein.

Pfizer use the same RNA directly as a vaccine, though it has to be ‘wrapped-up’ to prevent the body from destroying it immediately.

Other methods first synthesise the spike protein and use this as the vaccine.

All the methods cause the body to produce antibodies as a reaction to the spike protein.

Memory cells protect us against future infection.

The technology behind all the vaccines is truly astounding, requiring the manipulation of biochemicals at molecular level.

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The Patient’s Eye

Mr and Mrs Four Immunitie

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in, and tell you to bring your toothbrush. There had been an oversight. I was in big trouble.

We’d gone to see the consultant in our new coats, ready for a favourable prognosis with lunch in town, and a bit of shopping.

Somehow, my body reacts to treatments very positively.

I have a 12 weekly hormone reducing injection, and after a few years, when the cancer began to reinvade my lungs as secondary tumours, I was given a drug called Xtandi.

Almost immediately I began to feel better and tests concurred.

That was some years ago.

iagnosed with a condition described as incurable, inoperable, and of the most aggressive strain of cancer, I was pretty stunned.

The results of my biopsy had taken about four weeks and friends, some of them doctors, had told us that when the results are bad they phone up within three days to come

I will have the Coronavirus vaccine as soon as it is available; my body will accept

TIME FOR SUTTON COU AS the British Medical Journal points out “Covid 19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale and is harmful to public health”.

Merton and Croydon councils among others, the government via an “independent” review system has supported the Trust’s proposals.

The neo – liberal agenda of incremental destruction of the NHS continues to march on.

Local councils and groups are considering the next steps in the fight to ensure beds and services are not removed from an area of greater health need.

Nowhere is this clearer than at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Trust, where for a mere £500m, it has proposed removing maternity, children’s in-patient care, intensive care, emergency surgery and medicine, urology, accident and cancer and coronary care from its two hospitals.

S a d l y, L i b e D e m controlled Sutton Council have been dazzled by the government’s figures and chosen to sit on the fence, letting down people in the St Helier hospital area which has over 40 of the most deprived parts of the local area.

Despite the opposition of Siobhain McDonagh MP,

While Belmont, the Trust’s proposed new site for a hospital

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THE CORONAVIRUS MERRY-GO-ROUND GREAT news that there is a C19 vaccine on the horizon.

However, that’s for the future.

What about now? Here and now the whole pandemic has been grossly and negligently mismanaged by a bunch of chancers we call government.

They’ve used it as a fabulous excuse to speed up their NHS privatisation agenda.

Thousands have lost their lives, and thousands have had their lives touched suffering long Covid or by losing loved ones. the immunisation and work infection and it isn’t seasonal better than 95%. That means influenza. We don’t lose so that should I meet another many people even in a bad ’flu inoculated person, our year, but I’m not arguing. combined risk of failure would be 5% times 5%, which is What I am is disgusted 0.25%. We’d both be with some of our THERE IS 99.75% likely not friends who have to pass any CV19 been behaving AN INFECTION infection to the as though risks AND IT IS NOT other.

SEASONAL FLU. WE didn’t apply to them. Some have DON’T LOSE SO Disbelieve if died. One pair in MANY EVEN IN A you like, call it a particular seem to BAD FLU YEAR government scam have that strange (there is an element thing called double of that in the PM’s stopimmunity, where after start – restrictive then laisse the body reacts to an invasive faire approach) but there is an microbe, another immune

system kicks in after three days.

I’ve been reading about it on the Internet (hoax alert.) If true then not only have they been getting away with going everywhere, no masks except when visiting the toilets (so they don’t give the virus to their own fluids I guess,) but they could be super-spreaders to everyone else.

“We won’t be having the vaccine,” they tell us. “We never get anything anyway.”

We had the the localised Tier system but the population continued to move around.

Then we moved into another national quasi lockdown. On November 5th the UK again started from scratch.

What has never changed though, is the reliance on Matt Hancock’s friend from Cheltenham, Dido Harding, and her horse racing pals to establish a test and trace system to keep us safe.

Billions of pounds were handed to her to reinvent the

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The pandemic has been a fabulous excuse to speed up NHS privatisation

wheel. She has had since March but we have gained nothing.

We continue to see hospitals struggle, doctors and nurses at breaking point, testing dysfunctional and tracing, at best, random.

Public Health England and GPs have been bypassed. The NHS has been left in chaos.

Tell Johnson and Hancock.

You are culpable. Your vile and selfish ambition has cost lives.

Sadly people erroneously voted for you to look after their best interests. You have done the opposite. You have failed your voters. You have failed the nation.

Candy Gregory of Save Our NHS in Kent (SONiK)

They’re probably correct.

NHS undermined by private companies UNCIL TO OPPOSE TOXIC PLANS offering fewer beds, has only one deprived area.

T h e government’s approach of giving more to those that already have is clearly supported by the Trust.

That this proposal is being pushed ahead during the Covid pandemic has weakened the argument for Belmont as the best site even further, a point raised Chris Grayling (neighbouring MP), who believes the decision to site the new hospital at Sutton has been rushed through.

Opponents believe tht the degree of political unity over this decision is a basis to at least abandon the Trust timetable.

Dave Dwyer Merton, South London

I am a passionate and proud nurse but currently feeling exhausted, overworked and extremely worried about the future of our NHS. I am the lead campaigner for Chesterfield NHS Workers Say NO and on the Core Leadership Team for Nurses United UK. We are all campaigning to save the NHS and keep to public and ensure everyone has the right to free healthcare.

We have seen over the past few years is NHS staff being handed over to private firms.

Staff members are handed over to private firms making them feel unvalued, replaceable and worthless. Many of them were not even consulted before being handed over. Where is the transparency?

Outsourcing has led to multiple employers operating within the NHS causing a dangerous fragmentation in delivery of services to patients. Outsourced workers

are often cut off from the key communications and resources they need to do their jobs effectively, as well as the personal protective equipment (PPE) that would ensure safety at work.

The year on year pay cuts NHS staff has experienced is driving staff out. In real terms, the NHS staff has lost out on 20% of their pay over the last 10 years. The only message we are getting from the Government is, “your worthless, despite you battling on the frontline of COVID, you are only worth a clap”. This needs to change. We have 45k nursing vacancies and only more leaving weekly. What incentive do we have to remain?

Matt Tacey / Nurse from Chesterfield

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FEMALES ARE ON THE FRONT LINE IN THIS HEALTH WAR

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hough coronavirus affects men worse than women, women are being affected by the pandemic in different ways.

Compared with men, on average women carry out three times more unpaid care and domestic work (rarely classed as work).

As well as being responsible for the bulk of domestic duties women are also providing most of the Covid-19 care in hospitals.

About 77% of health care workers are women and they also make up the majority of health service workers such as cleaning, laundry, catering and admin work, so are more likely to be exposed to the virus.

According to a study by Autonomy, 2.5 million women are employed in the highest risk roles, and many of them not entitled to statutory sick pay.

Lockdowns are putting women at higher risk of physical and sexual violence.

Impact of Coronavirus

CRISIS ON WOMEN Sheila Altes of Save Liverpool Women’s hospital campaign

Cases of domestic violence have rocketed. Charity Refuge reported a 700% increase in calls to its helpline in one day.

Geneva: World Health Organisation:2020 Covid-19 operational guidance for maintaining essential health services during an outbreak- interim guidance https://who.int/publications-detail/covid-19-operational-guidance-formaintaining-essential-health-services-during-an-outbreak

Access to essential health services has gone down for all during the pandemic.

The consequences of this is particularly severe for some vulnerable women.

New York: UN Women Redistribute Unpaid Work https://unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/csw61/redistribute-unpaidwork

The World Health Organisation said care during pregnancy and childbirth is an essential service.

Sexual and reproductive health care should be the right of all women. Those using drugs, sex workers, and

The Guardian 29th March 2020 Low paid women in UK at “high exposure of coronavirus risk” www.theguardian.com

in poverty are at high risk of Covid-19. Marginalised and vulnerable women must be included in the response to

the pandemic. Health care is a basic human right and should not depend on where you were born or the colour of your skin.

The Hague: Europol;2020 Pandemic profiteering: how criminals exploit the Covid-19 crisis https://www.europol.europa.eu/print/publications-documents/ pandemic-profiteering-how-criminals-exploit-covid-19-crisis

DISABLED LIVES MATTER Under the cover of Covid, with the Five Year Plan and STP is being pushed through, disabled people’s needs are being totally ignored. Services are being centralised and privatised without due consideration of people’s needs.

Rural areas are harder hit because of the lack of public transport and poorly maintained roads. Patients in Lincolnshire with disabilities are finding Integrated Care both expensive and restricting. Many

services and A&E are no longer available the local hospital.

Converted lorries are used for Out Patients and X-rays.

Ambulance waiting times can be four hours and assisted transport is very selective.

For example: GP appointments are now over the phone. CN, an adult with learning disabilities, worried he had contacted C19.

He called his GP but panicked when he was diverted to a call centre. He needed help with his

appointment and waiting for his GP to call him back.

S D relies on her mobility scooter, suffers fits. She was taken to Lincoln, and had return ambulance booked for 6.45pm.

It arrived at 4am. Recently she was left lying on her bedroom floor for two and a half hours waiting for an ambulance.

A partially sighted woman has to spend four and a half hours travelling to Boston and back for her 10 minute eye

appointments.

A wheelchair-bound teenager has been told she will now have travel to Peterborough for her hydrotherapy sessions.

This will mean two to three hours travelling for a 30 minute treatment.

A disabled adult who suffers

fits was sent to Spalding for a dental appointment. We had to force Thames Ambulance Services Ltd to transport him.

He also had to abandon an X-ray appointment recently as the ramp into the X-ray department lorry was too steep for him.

Bernice Cullimore, Is Anyone Listening Lincolnshire

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THE REPORT FACEBOOK SAID BREACHED THEIR ‘STANDARDS’

NURSES AGAINST CAR PARKING CHARGES

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ifferent schemes are in place. Some are operated by NHS trusts in conjunction with companies to issue tickets, followed by harassment and threats of court action which can last a year.

These NHS Trusts can be named and shamed into withdrawing these schemes.

Using Freedom of Information you can find out how many people have been taken to court in the time they’ve been operating their scheme, if it’s none or a very small number,

e Facebook page th er ov ke ta to ne eo m so ed ne e W

To win the battle of NHS staff paying for car parking is not an easy nut to crack then they are using fear to get you to pay.

Parking at hospitals is a civil matter where you could be taken to a civil court. The car park owner would send a solicitor to represent them, normally costing more than the fine. Also courts don’t want parking cases taking up court time.

But the Mothership are the PFI companies who build hospitals then lease them

back to the NHS. They retain ownership of the land, creating pay car parks for staff, patients and visitors, with the revenue going straight into their pockets.

Breaking this stranglehold has to be done through petitions, canvassing your MP and opposition political parties or starting a Commons petition.

Let’s see where Labour stands on saving nurses money.

There is another way but it’s

fraught with danger as it calls for civil disobedience.

If all staff refused to pay, and were issued a ticket, summons or threats to have their car towed, this would amount to up to 3,000 cars a day and be impossible to implement.

becomes criminal law.

NHS trust would ask the police to ensure that emergency vehicles have access, and that nurses and doctors were not held up which would be against the law.

Fighting to end having to pay to go to work is a legal minefield

By entering the car park you are entering an agreement that you will pay the charge. If it’s not paid you are committing fraud. Instead of civil law it now

If police are present they would view staff refusing to pay as breaking the agreement between them and the car park owner. Would the police then have to charge us for fraud?

Billions up for grabs by private health providers

David Wrigley’s words make clear what is needed:

Concerns have grown around how the Government has responded to Covid.

Lucrative contracts which have directly affected the health and safety of NHS staff, care workers and the public, have been agreed with private companies out of sight of public scrutiny.

£10 bn

aggressive outsourcing to private firms during the COVID-19 pandemic“ and “urgent Public sector action is required services that could have OPEN TO PRIVATE to protect the NHS SECTOR AND been used have been and ensure taxpayer CHARITIES marginalised or ignored. money is spent in a responsible manner.”

David Wrigley, deputy chair of the British Medical It’s welcome news that Association council, wrote “the Everydoctor and The Good Law Government has accelerated its Project are working together

on three lawsuits addressing these deals. These have already revealed that the government wasted £252 million on Personal Protection Equipment that was unusable or never delivered.

However, little attention has been given to a £10bn four year NHS contract that started in November.

The Increasing Capacity Framework is open to

independent sector providers - private health and charities giving NHS commissioners and NHS hospital trusts the option of using them when contracting for clinical, diagnostic and other NHS services.

NHS funds will flow through this framework into private hands instead of NHS facilities, NHS staff or NHS services.

“In the long term the health service must be protected and returned to being a genuinely publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable system.”

“We should be empowering and expanding our NHS to undertake additional health-related work and not continually running to the private sector which has shown time and time again that it is not able to undertake and fulfil contracts to a satisfactory level.”

M Collier, Campaigner in Sutton, South London

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FORGOTTEN BANDS

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Sober Mick Taylor was replaced by Ronnie Wood who knew how to party

THE ROLLING ST

Y

eah, you’ve forgotten them.

Brian Jones!

gigs on the jazz circuit.

You’d forgotten Brian did less and the best less on more and They weren’t always four Brian, THEY WEREN’T more instruments, blokes with skins like old wallets musician of the lot standing in front of a black guy of them. A freshall the while ALWAYS FOUR nobody remembers the name in faced but gloomy scouring the ads BLOKES WITH SKINS in the music press the shadows playing bass. After lad with the fringe LIKE OLD WALLETS for his position several decades “leader” Mick of a sheepdog. He Jagger still won’t let him be a formed the band STANDING IN FRONT in the band full member of the band! It’s not out of pals Jagger OF A BLACK GUY being announced. racism; he did this to Ron Wood, and Keith Richards, He watched Eric Clapton’s career in case it who replaced Mick Taylor, who blues fans from Dartford, replaced Brian Jones. and some guys they knew from reached a hiatus and he became suddenly available. He stopped coming to recording sessions.

They sacked him; days later THE WORD NEWSPAPER NEEDS YOUR HELP he was found drowned in his THE We are a non-profit making cooperative but still swimming pool. Was it murder? have our outgoing costs such as design, website That’s a conspiracy theory. hosting and software. Please help us maintain this left wing tabloid by going to our website at www.thewordmedia.org The band had rung up and subscribing. By joining together let us all fight back against the rich Ron Wood to join them but and powerful.

Faces bass player Ronnie Lane

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IT’S POLITICS JIM BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

Benito has a majority of 80. We are told that, for one reason or another, 70 Tories are not best pleased by him. Yes, I know that this can be attributed to the fight between HEALTH and MONEY within the party.

But my guess is that the motives wobble around a bit more than that.

What, I think, we can say is that pressing the RE-SET button has yet to work. The Party is still fighting over the remote.

Starmer stands in front of the Tory goal. The laces of the keeper’s boots have broken and there is mud in his right eye. Looking through his left eye only produces blurred images.

Up runs Starmer but instead of kicking the ball he kicks the previous captain of his own team. Benito breathes again.

AND THE PUBS ARE SHUT, FOR GOODNESS SAKE. A handy Guide to the Three Tier System UK Tier 1 – Pints Tier 2 – Pints but only with Chips Tier 3 – No Pints

answered the phone and “took a message,” coming back a minute or two later to tell then, “Ron’s not interested.” Ron had not been consulted, so the

band enlisted Bluesbreaker Mick Taylor on lead guitar, and their best and most productive period began. Sweet music (Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Get

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BIZARRE EURO CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS

As we reach the end of the transition period on leaving the EU, here’s a few of the seasonal traditions they would have ‘forced’ on us if we voted to have remained. What a lucky escape eh?

TONES »

The day the Sixties died and nearly tore their hearts out when a man was knifed to death by their Hell’s Angels ‘Security’

Yer Ya Yas Out) resulted with Richards and Taylor playing like a two guitar band again.

They did live gigs, but the one at Altamont Speedway in 1969 nearly tore their hearts out when a young man was knifed to death by a Hell’s Angels gang that the band had enlisted as “Security.” That was the day the

1960s died too, though some lovely music continued from lots of band until about 1973.

Eventually the band got tired of Mick Taylor being so sensible, quiet, sober, un-rock-and-roll (compared to you and me he was probably no such thing, but compared with the other four...) and he was replaced by Keith Richards near look-alike Ronnie Wood, who knew how to party and was pretty good hey? on guitar having nearly filled the guitar role of Steve Marriott when he’d left the Small Faces.

Rod Stewart took the lead vocal role and removed the ‘Small’ from their name.

But bands move on, and they’re either better, or not so good. They’re never the same.

atalonia-Spain – C Potty Minded If you look carefully at the nativity sets in Catalonia (as well as in Andorra, Naples and parts of Portugal), you’ll see a figure about to take a dump alongside the usual Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, shepherds and Three Kings. That’s El Caganer (literally, The Shitter). There’s no definitive reason as to why he’s there – or doing what he’s doing – but there’s no denying this pooh bandit adds an irreverant air to the Nativity. Meanwhile, in Barcelona around Christmas time folk always keep a Christmas log!

In Catalonia and several other regions in Spain, it’s tradition to dress up a piece of wood (Tió de Natal) and keep it in your house.

Why? Well, if you feed it daily the log will eventually poop presents on Christmas Day! This is why the log is usually referred to as Tió Caga, meaning pooping log. On 28 December, Spain has their equivalent of April Fools’ Day, called Holy Innocents’ Day, when people play jokes on each other.

Norway -Shoot the Witch With Halloween long over in Norway, it was widely believed that witches and spirits will show up on Christmas Eve and steal brooms and fly around the night sky, cackling away. To foil these nefarious plans, housewives would hide away brooms and men would fire their guns into the night sky. Norwegian children look out for two creatures at Christmas.First is a creature like a goat called Julebukk, who is a present-carrying gnome.

Then there is Jul Nisse, who guards farm animals and plays tricks on children if they don’t leave porridge out for him.

Traditional winter festival treats in Greenland include Kiviak, a piece of Auk, a bird similar to a Puffin, wrapped in seal skin and then left to mature (fester/rot) under a rock for a couple of months leading up to Christmas.

choice of transport. He arrives in the Netherlands on a steamboat from Spain, then travels from city to city on a white horse called Amerigo. In this day and age, you’d think he’d at least take a canal boat and a trusty Dutch bicycle.

erman and Austrian Alps G -Bagged and Beaten Children in the Bavarian and Austrian Alps live in fear of Krampus, a half-goat/half-devil that functions as an evil Anti-Santa. Krampus’ job is to steal away bad children in his sack so he could beat them later, though in newer versions, Krampus beats the children immediately. Offer Krampus some customary schnapps and he may leave you alone. Celebrations in Germany start earlier in December 6 on St Nicholas Day.

Greece - Goblin Watch your back for small goblins!

The Kallikantzaroi are nasty little creatures that spend most of their time sawing away at the World Tree. If the tree falls down, the world will end, but luckily the Kallikantzaroi never seem to succeed. They come up to the earth’s surface every Christmas to terrorize humanity, only to find upon their return that the World Tree has fully healed itself.

So keep this in mind the next time you’re being pestered by goblins – you’re also serving as a distraction that is saving the world!

Children leave shoes outside of their front door, which Father Christmas - or Nikolaus, as they call him - will leave presents in if they have been good. If they’ve been naughty, his servant Knecht Ruprecht will leave twigs for them!

A meal is eaten on Christmas Eve, which won’t contain any meat.

Children will also open their presents on 24 December. Meat can be eaten in a feast on Christmas Day. I reland – It’s Good For You Forget a small schooner of sherry or glass of milk - Irish Santa demands Guinness and mince pies. All that chimney sliding is hard work, after all.

weden – Get The S Goat Every Christmas since 1966, the people of Gävle, Sweden, have built a 13m-tall straw goat. And every year since 1966, local pranksters have tried to burn it down – sometimes twice in the same year – succeeding 29 times in 50 years. Starting Dec 1, the goat’s wellbeing will livestream on Gävle’s GoatCam.

Netherlands – Dodgy Pete St Nicholas has a very different companion in Holland.

If you happen to be in the country in mid-November, you’ll find the saint at one of his arrival parades, accompanied by Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). This figure’s Blackface has caused a lot of controversy over the last few years with the jolly servant being linked to slavery, which has resulted in heated arguments and political debates. Parade organizers have taken notice and introduced Green Pete, Purple Pete and even Stroopwafel Pete, whose face is painted like the famous Dutch cookie.

Greenland Rotten Bird

One thing that hasn’t changed however, is St Nicholas’ outdated

–

Italy – Witchy Misses Out If you’ve ever missed out on a good party you will sympathize with the Italian witch La Befana.

When three wise men came knocking on her door looking for a baby, she turned them away, being too busy doing witch stuff.

A little while later she changed her mind, grabbed some candy to give to the baby and tried to catch up with the wise men. Searching far and wide, the witch was unable to find the baby. Ever persistent, she is still searching for him today (in Italy, apparently) and leaves candy in kids’ houses. She even sweeps the floors of those houses – which makes sense since she’s just happens to be carrying a broomstick..

Iceland – Lads Have Spuds In Iceland they actually have 13 Father Christmases, called Yule Lads!

These mischievous characters are said to live in the mountains and visit towns one by one in the 13 days leading up to Christmas. Children leave shoes out for the Yule lads, who will leave presents in them if they’ve been good, or rotten potatoes if they’ve been bad. There is a tradition that says everyone must receive a new piece of clothing for Christmas. If they don’t, they might be eaten by a giant Christmas cat who belongs to the Yule lads’ mum called Grýla!

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INJUSTICE – THE STORY OF THE HOLY LAND FOUNDATION FIVE T

he book follows the story of 5 Muslim Americans who set up the Holy Land Foundation which later became the largest Muslim charity in the USA and was the first charity on the scene after the New Orleans Hurricane. The objective of the organisation primarily was to deliver aid to the Palestinian people with the express purpose of being as non- political an organisation as possible with total transparency both in the USA and abroad.

people and over time became ardent critics of the Israeli occupation.

Miko later moved to the USA where he now lives but still has family and friends in both Israel & Palestine.

First book was The Generals Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.

1997 his niece was killed in an attack by Hamas.

The book has a chapter on each of the 5 members and their families - their history both in Palestine and in the USA and charts their rise to prominence on the US and Muslin world charity scene.

Throughout the book strong reference is made to the living conditions of the Palestinian people and the repression they receive under Israeli occupation.

It charts the rise of Hamas as an organisation and the secretive spy network of the Israeli government throughout the troubled past.

Family became increasingly disillusioned with the oppressive regime inflicted on the Palestinian

The historical aspect of the book is excellent and it certainly taught me a lot about the conflict.

Miko’s father was a senior General of the IDF and took part in the initial terrorist attacks on the Palestinian territory in 1948.

Maternal grandmother was one of the signatories to the Israeli declaration of independence.

In 2004, and as a result of the War on Terror launched

by Bush the houses of the HLF5 were simultaneously raided by the FBI and all the men were arrested on trumped up terrorist charges.

The book then follows their two trials and the highlights the bias and chicanery of the US justice system which was used to get guilty verdicts and long prisons sentences for all the men.

The overriding theme within the book is how the men’s Muslim faith helped them cope with everything that was, and still is being thrown at them.

The book is a testament to their bravery, love for their homeland, but above all about how their faith underpins every aspect of their lives during both the good and the desperate times.

I heartily recommend it.

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Mad Madge Talks Across Oceans Of Time FROM BEYOND THE WALL OF LOST SPIRITS, LOOSED TEMPORARILY FROM THE HORRORS OF ETERNAL TORMENT, AUNTIE MAGGIE ANSWERS YOUR LETTERS. A VERY MAGGIE CHRISTMAS

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is the season to be jolly and also boost our Covid ravaged economy by literally spending a year’s savings on stuff you don’t really need.

But what about the afterlife. How is the midwinter festival celebrated down in the pits of hell, do the demonic hoards ease off on the tormenting, do they crack out the Baileys or British Cream Sherry whilst they ram hot pokers up dead Billionaires backsides?

Well here at THE WORD we have our very own correspondent from the vast eternal torment across the river Styx. Yes folks here’s your special, exclusive Xmas missive from The Right Honourable Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC. That’s right its Mad Madge, Agony Aunt MAGGIE; Well readers, certain aspects of an eternal torment Xmas are the same as in the living realm, they constantly play ear splitting hits by Slade, Wizard and Shakin bloody Stevens.

Everywhere is insanely busy and crowded, all the seasonal food has use by dates in November and by mid December it’s all sold out.

Then, when the day finally arrives, you are locked in a house with members of your extended family that you have always despised, all bedecked in novelty sodding knitwear. Everything you eat and drink just makes you nauseous and/or bloated and time stands still, longing for the whole misguided exercise to grind to an end.

Last year I had to play Monopoly with Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev and Josip Broz Tito. Well you couldn’t credit how competitive the boys got.

Several times it almost came to blows. Not one of them wanted to comply with the Community Chest demands and it all kicked off, with them denying the existence of the others.

This proved to be an ideal opportunity for a secret assignation with my old squeeze General Augusto Pinochet, it’s exactly like those office Christmas parties you proles have, a total sausage fest.

Augusto is still very dapper in the hereafter.

You’ve got to admire a man who executed 3,200 Socialists, interned 80,000 citizens, torturing many of them and disappeared 3,000.

He was also a great believer

in the ‘free market’ easily banning trade unions and privatised social security and sold off state assets to his family at knock down prices.

That’s how you generate growth, mostly for yourself.

When he died he had amassed $28 million, they call it ‘corruption’ but I see it as moxy.

Anyway he had saved some of the finest Malt Whisky that I used to send him from 10 Downing Street when he was exiled in London, so we got totally trashed. We were just about to get funky when Cthulu and Krampus showed up and it all got very Demonic. Those red hot pokers smarted like a bastard.

Turning to your letters....

Dear Maggie I am a pathological liar so I went into a profession that suited me and became a lawyer. This bored me as I could only twist the truth so I became a politician. Is there a job where I can lie and be paid more than my current salary?

Keith Starmer.

Well if it’s not ‘Sticky’ Starmer! You’ve got no hope mate. What you should have done is, like Owen Smith, lose the leadership race, retire from politics and become

a lobbyist for Pfizer. Drugs companies are big business these days with all these viruses infecting the heaving masses.

Even if you manage to get elected to the top job (I won’t hold my breath) then the salary is pitiful. I was fortunate that Dennis was independently wealthy from tax evasion and oil companies. No, politics is no place to make a fortune, but on the other hand you get to help Millionaires become Billionaires and screw over your colleagues.

Dear Margaret I smashed a kids head in at school then kicked him in the goolies when he was on the ground. Now I find he won’t apologise. What should I do?

Nick Brown Welcome to the Bullingdon Bullyboy club!

See, if you had had a half decent, private boarding school education this sort of thing would be second nature to you. This smaller kid would take the beatings, toughen up and lose all empathy and take it out on smaller kids. He sounds like a right troublemaker and ‘principled’ zealot full of Trot ideals. Just accuse him of a random hate crime and let

the Headmaster expel him. Or set Patel on him.

Dear agony aunt Is it Anti-Semitic to be a Socialist? Am asking for a friend.

J Mcdonnell Yes it is, and if it isn’t it should be. More to the point it is legitimate establishment practice to victimise socialists as well as minorities. It worked for Hitler and Stalin, it works for Boris, it will work for the red Tories.

Some really terrible people are trying to evict me and my family from my home.

Can I use nuclear weapons to stop them?

D Trump.

Nobody likes a sore loser, even one with itchy fingers near the nuclear codes.

Man up. Good luck with the inevitable divorce, tax evasion prosecution, sex crime cases etc. I’ll be seeing you in Hell sooner than you think. Enjoy your Xmas Big Mac, it may be your last you daft bugger.

That’s all from your Hellbound Harridan Agony Aunt. To all you Trots, Ingrates, Layabouts and Bolshies have a Misery Christmas and a Hellish New Year!

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SIR KEITH’S CHRISTMAS CRACKER

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aving forensically studied your left-leaning newspaper I have noted that the Vegan cookery slot is usually written by former Labour MP and rabid Trot Chris Williamson. In the interests of balance, I put it to you, that in order to win the next election, a more middle class, meat based cookery item should be included, in order to appeal to those PLP and Labour supporters who normally take the Daily Mail and Telegraph. To that end I have attached my own omnivorous Christmas Luncheon menu together with recipes for you to place on your Husqvarna, marble topped, kitchen island in your bespoke Pog and Pohl kitchen. And rest assured scores of sentient beings suffer and die in excruciating pain in order to make this delicious feast My Precious Menu;Assorted Amuse Bouche Fruits de Mer -----------------------------Foie Gras and Slaughter House Black Pudding -----------------------------Three Bird Roast, With Seasonal Trimmings -----------------------------Pudding Noel Cuit à la Vapeur Now a lot of you my be tempted to order it all from Harrods or Selfridges but that can be quite expensive even for a Knight of the Realm. So listed below are some recipes and handy shopping tips that should help you manage your budget to around £150 per head excluding wine. Not much more than a fairly mundane meal at Claridges and well within an MPs expenses allowance. So tuck in, Merry Christmas!!! and I extend that to all the Vegan Leftard Hobbitsz that have funded the Labour Party for the last 5 years.

Foie Gras and Slaughter House Black Pudding Now this simply delicious course is literally the result of good old French tradition and immense cruelty, combined with good Northern working class blood and guts. It is a quick, simple, one pan recipe, you simply fry slices of the Foie Gras and Black Pudding in a little Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil. The secret is in where you source your ingredients and the answer for both is online. The Black Pudding can be sourced, direct from Bury Market in Lancashire and you can feel self satisfied that you are closing the North South Divide. The Foie Gras you can order direct from the Farmers in France. Make sure that the Geese have been force fed sweetcorn and had it rammed down their necks until their livers fail. It just doesn’t taste right otherwise, of course the immense pain inflicted on the birds fills them with adrenaline which give the meat a bitter taste, so the rest of the carcass is fed to the pigs.

Three Bird Roast, With Seasonal Trimmings This is the main event, the Piéce De La Resistance. Now I recently attended a masterclass with Essex Lad and Chef Jamie Oliver and recorded it all on my phone. I got one of my researchers, Tabitha an intern, to type it all out verbatim for me as I couldn’t be bothered.

Get dahhhn your local Butchers and order up a laaaaaverly Turkey, Duck and Partridge. Also get sthome pukka sthausage meat, loadsa bacon, good old east end chipolatas and two Paaaand o goose fat.

Pukka Bone out the free birds, know what I mean eh lads naaaaaaah, but no if you don’t know how to bone a bird get my latest, post bankruptcy, cook book from Amazon, only £95 including postage. Proper job innit, schorted. Naaah sthtuff ya boned chicken wiv the sthausage meat, eh girls, bung it up the old Jacksy of Donald Duck, then sthtuff the ole lot up the old Turkey. Sthlamm it in the old Sthmeg Range Cooker or Aga til it’s all Cwispy and laaaaaverly.

In yer sthecond oven bung ya old taters in wiv the old goose grease an a fist full o sthea sthalt.

Chop the old veggies and do em on the hob in your Jamie Oliver Bamboo Streamer, £85 including postage on Amazon, five Paaaand cheaper than Nigellas one.

Sthorted, now I’m off dahn the Rub-a-dub for a Light Ale and a Pickled Egg. Merry Blaaady Chrithstmas!!!!!

Amuse Bouche Fruits de Mer Ingredients: 1 Fruit de Mer Box (ready to eat) from Waitrose or your local Artisan Fishmonger 1 Organic shallot 5 tablespoons Portuguese wine vinegar 1 teaspoon Sicilian tomato puree 1 teaspoon creamed horseradish (M&S do a lovely one for only £4.50) 1 tablespoon Absolute vodka 1 tablespoon Waitrose soy sauce Splash of sesame oil 1 Organic spring onion Some sesame seeds The method Fruit de mer / shellfish platters usually contain cooked lobster, crab, prawns, live oysters, clam and mussel meat. Some local fish mongers have individual, ready-to-eat fruit de mer boxes for sale. These smaller portions would be perfect for this home recipe.

Red wine and shallot dressing: Finely chop 1 shallot and mix with 5 tablespoons red wine vinegar.

Bloody Mary dressing: Mix 1 teaspoon tomato puree, 1 teaspoon creamed horseradish, 1 tablespoon vodka in a small whisky glass.

Soy and sesame dressing: Pour 1 tablespoon soy sauce in a small bowl, add a splash of sesame oil. Finely chop 1 spring onion and sprinkle it in the sauce together with some sesame seeds.

Pudding Noel Cuit à la Vapeur At this point you and all your guests will be absolutely hammered so it’s time to cut some corners. Get a good quality pudding from any supermarket, just ensure its made with real beef suet, you will need some rendered animal by-products to take the edge of all the fruit. Microwave it and serve with Creme Fraiche de Isigny from Lidl.

So there it is, a New Labour seasonal feast to unite our ‘Broad Church’’ and alienate those Vegan types with their unelectable, probably Anti Semitic, hard-left dietary foibles. Merry Christmas my preciousz Comrades.

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D RI VE T O BAR NARD C ASTLE A ND SEE IF YOU CRASH

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HOW THE REAL SCROOGE SOCIETY ENJOYED FESTIVE FUN ON

VICTORIAN SKINFLINTS’ PARLOUR GAMES

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s, was popular in Victorian times, childhood poverty and diseases such as rickets are all the rage these days so are parlour games. Basically free entertainment, something that Jacob Rees-Mogg would find ‘uplifting’. Here is a selection for your delight and delectation.

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Laughing game All players sit in a circle and each player takes it in turns to say ‘Ha’, ‘Ho’ or ‘Hee’. The first player to start laughing loses and is out of the game.

Continue until everyone is out of the game – the person who manages not to laugh for the longest is the winner. A tough game for uptight Victorians.

Times before the Telly. When dropping a hankie was cause for controlled laughter and resisting a smile a winning way

Charades One player acts out a word or phrase often by miming similarsounding words, and the other players guess the word or phrase. The idea is to use signs and not words to convey the meaning.

Blindman’s Bluff One person is blindfolded, and all other guests scatter around the room. When the blindfolded person catches someone, they have to tell who it is they have captured or the prisoner is freed and

the blindman must continue become ‘it.’ The person who their pursuit until they never smiles is declared the can identify the winner. person caught. The GUESSING blindfold then Ho, Ho, ho GAMES, JOLLITY changes hands.

One player stands in the AND FOREFEITS You’re Never middle with a FOR ‘IT’ WERE Fully Dressed handkerchief.

THE ORDER OF As they drop the without a Smile THE DAY One person is handkerchief to selected to be ‘it’ and the floor, everyone that person is the only one must laugh. They must in the group who is allowed to stop laughing as soon as the smile. They can do anything cloth hits the floor. Anyone to try and get someone else to who doesn’t laugh the whole smile and if they succeed, they time the handkerchief is falling

HOPE AND GOOD NEWS New Jersey: A New Jersey man is being hailed as a hero for saving a man from a sinking car in Newark Bay. Anthony Capuano, 29, had just finished a workout in the park when he heard screaming. A group of roughly 20 bystanders had gathered on the shore, he said, watching a car sinking into the bay.

Anthony happens to be a lifeguard and swim coach, didn’t hesitate to jump in, but first he had to take off his prosthetic leg. He helped pull the victim to safety and onto dry land. He said “...I got him out in the last second. “and “It was that moment when a car goes into a body of water where all the air releases and then the car sinks. That’s basically when

I pulled him out.”

Eleven years ago Anthony was struck by a train. First responders saved his life but it cost him his leg.

Courtesy of ‘Sunny skyz’.

India: Scientists at St. John’s Medical College and Research Institute in Bangalore have reported they think a ‘polypill’ could reduce the risk of heart

attacks and strokes by up to 40%. The polypill is made up of four drugs to treat high blood pressure and cholesterol.

It would be convenient to use being just one pill taken daily and cost effective since it is based on commonly-used generic drugs.

It has been extensively tested on nearly 6,000 people from nine countries and Professor Pais, helping

lead the research, says ‘Even if one third of eligible people receive a polypill, its use is likely to avoid millions of individuals experiencing serious cardiovascular diseases worldwide’.

Support for the research includes the Wellcome Trust in London who hope the pill can be study will encourage its use globally.

UNESCO: Over the last 25 years, the proportion of girls

being educated around the world has risen to 89%—a 16% increase since 1995.

A UNESCO report released last month shows that 180 million more girls have enrolled in primary and secondary education compared to a generation ago Additionally, three times more women are now enrolled in universities.

A report entitled, A New Generation: 25 years of

thewordmedia.org

N THE CHEAP or continues to laugh after it ends is out. The last person remaining wins the prize.

Shadow buff Hang a sheet across the room, put a single candle on a table behind it and turn out the lights. One person sits in front of the sheet while everyone else passes between the sheet and the candle, and the person in front has to guess who each of them is. The shadows can disguise themselves in any way they want to, but if they are correctly identified they have to pay a forfeit.

Forfeits Have fun inventing some homemade forfeits to dish out as penalties to the losers – for example the loser has to fetch snacks for everyone else, kiss the hands of all the ladies in the house or be everyone’s servant for the rest of the day.

Pass the Slipper Make a circle with one person standing in the centre with their eyes shut. The members of the family forming the circle pass a slipper around behind their backs, then the person in the middle has to open their eyes and try to guess who has the slipper.

20 Questions Players have 20 questions to guess the object that the ‘answerer’ has chosen, but they can only answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ efforts for gender equality in education evaluated the progress in girls education over the last two and a half decades since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark commitment by 189 countries to advance the rights of girls and women.

We all know that education is the cornerstone of equality and the education of girls and women is the first step towards a more gender-equal world, said the UN group in a press release.

Since 1995, the global enrolment rate for girls increased from 73% to 89%, with the biggest improvements seen in subSaharan Africa, Southern Asia, and especially in India.

Courtesy of Good News Network.

POLITICS AND EVENTS

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WOMEN WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE

VIOLETTE REINE ELIZABETH SZABO GC

She was born in Paris to British Army driver Charles Bushell who met his wife, Reine, during World War I, before moving back to London 26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945

D

uring the Great Depression, Violette and her youngest brother lived with their maternal aunt in Picardy, northern France until she was 11 and reunited with her family in South London.

Active and lively she was regarded as a tomboy, even being taught to shoot by her father. She had to pick up her English but the family, other than dad, conversed in French.

Violette joined the Women’s Land Army in 1940, then worked in a London armaments factory. That year she met and married Etienne Szabo, noncommissioned officer in the French Foreign Legion after a 42 day whirlwind romance!

Violette was 19 and Etienne 31. After a week’s honeymoon he left to fight for the Free French in Senegal.

Violette took up work as a switchboard operator before she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS) and worked on Anti-Aircraft batteries before leaving to have a baby girl, Tania.

News of Etienne’s death in action in the Battle of El Alamein prompted her to train as a field agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

She saw this as her best way of fighting the enemy that had killed her husband.

»

Her knowledge of French and work with the ATS meant she given security clearance.

Completing training in fieldcraft, night and daylight navigation, weapons and demolition she moved to the SOE “finishing school” at Beaulieu, Hampshire, where she learnt escape and evasion, communications and cryptography, and had further training in weaponry.

She finally passed the course in February 1944.

Her first mission was postponed due to the arrest of several of the cell she was to join in France. She took refresher training in wireless operation and was given her code poem The Life That I Have by Leo Marks, SOE cryptographer.

Later she parachuted into German occupied France near Cherbourg. Her code name was “Louise”, and nickname “La Petite Anglaise”, she was only 5ft 3ins (1.6m) tall. With colleague Philippe Liewer they went to assess the damage made by German arrests of the cell known as ‘Salesman’. It was beyond repair.

She reported to her Paris chief and found time to shop Violette’s reports on local factories producing war materials aided targets for Allied bombing missions.

Viollete and her husband Etienne are believed to be the most decorated married couple of World War II

Violette returned to France in June 1944 as part of the new ‘Salesman II’ team, operating around Limoges.

Her cover name was Mme Villeret, widow of an antiques dealer. Her job was to coordinate the resistance attacks on German communications during the Normandy landings.

To do this she was sent by Liewer as his courier, to a more active group in the Dordogne.

They did not know that the 2nd SS Panzer Division was travelling through the area to the Normandy battlefields.

Instead of using an inconspicuous bicycle was driven by car with two Resistance fighters.

After D Day the Germans banned civilian cars. They were stopped and she tried to make a dash for it but after a gun battle she was arrested with one man.

The second man escaped andd raised the alarm.

Violette was interrogated for four days by the SS, before being transferred to Gestapo Headquarters in Paris for questioning and torture.

Along with two other British agents she was recalled to Ravensbruck on 19th January 1945, facing even more harsh treatment which finally broke her spirit. Her ordeal finally ended when she was shot in the back of her head on 5th.

February, aged just 23.

Violette and Etienne were awarded the Croix de Guerre.

Violette also received the Medaille de la Resistance. Her five year old daugher Tania received the George Cross on behalf of her mother in 1947.

Max Hastings wrote in a biography of her that Szabo was “adored by the men and women of SOE both for her courage and endless infectious Cockney laughter”.

The Life that I have The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours The love that I have Of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours.

As the allies approached Paris she was sent with other valuable prisoners to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.

A sleep I shall have A rest I shall have Yet death will be but a pause For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours.

Violette and 250 others refused to work in a munitions factory in Torgau, and were later returned to Ravensbruck, then on to a punishment camp.

By Leo Marks SOE Cryptographer.

Code poem for Violette Szabo.

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THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT?

The Invention Of Christmas

C

hristmas, that heartwarming season of ancient traditions that celebrates the birth of a Middle Eastern Jewish, mystic, by visualising a winter landscape somewhere in North-Eastern Europe covered in yuletide logs, red-breasted robins, rednosed reindeer, mistletoe, fir trees and deep, deep, snow.

Doesn’t make a lot of sense does it.

In reality our ‘traditional’ Christmas was invented in the 19th Century by advertisers eager to sell us mass produced decorations, cards and gifts via a brand-new popular mass-media designed to sell them more effectively.

For a millennium and more Christmas had been only a minor festival in the Christian calendar. In the UK, Christmas Day did not become a national holiday until 1834 and Boxing Day not until 1871. In the USA Christmas Day wasn’t declared a federal holiday until 1870.

The Christmas Tree had only been introduced to England in 1841 by Queen Victoria’s new German husband Prince Albert. Yet by writing about it only two years later Dickens in his Christmas Carol, written in 1843, cemented this very new idea into public consciousness by freezing that moment in time.

1843 was also the year of the first print run of 1000 commercial Christmas cards which further cemented this new Christmas iconography into English culture.

Paradoxically, these new ways of celebrating Christmas were from the very beginning presented nostalgically as if part of an ancient tradition.

But there was still a way to go to complete this process of inventing Christmas. ‘Sinterklaas’ was the Dutch and Belgium name for a third-century Turkish saint called Nicholas. But It wasn’t until 1881 that an American political cartoonist Thomas Nast, drew ‘Santa Claus’ as a jolly man in red with a white beard and a sack of toys. The first Christmas Grotto was invented for

a London department store in 1888 to encourage the giving of presents to children at Christmas as the new normal. Although in 1898 the first Christmas movie ever made featured Nast’s vision of Santa Claus, there were diverse versions of Santa who could be portrayed in green, brown or red costume. The Santa we know today didn’t become set in the culture until 1931 when Coca Cola portrayed hi in their own brand colours.

And it wasn’t until 1939 that Rudolph, “the most famous reindeer of all,” was created by advertising copywriter Robert L. May to lure customers into a New York department store. Thus in 1959, when Dean Martin sang so nostalgically and fondly of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and his very shiny nose’, it was in fact only 20 years since the character had been invented.

Today it is no different with the entertainment industry relentlessly playing on this fake ‘tradition’ riff.

The Coca Cola adverts are perhaps the most shameless examples but everything from The Snowman to Eastenders does it. Even in Australia and Florida where it is actually tropically hot at Christmas time, the iconography of Christmas is still that of a fictional, snow-laden, northern Europe at some unspecified time in the past.

So remember folks that the warm glow of nostalgia flowing over you on Christmas afternoon after that third Bailey’s is really the result of a load of old bollocks invented over the last 150 years by advertising executives to sell you stuff you don’t need.

About the author Chris Jury is an award-winning television actor, writer and director.

At the start of his career he played Eric Catchpole in the BBC’s antique drama, Lovejoy, before moving behind the camera and going on to write, direct and produce for most of the UK continuing drama series including Casualty, Holby City, The Bill, Coronation Street and Eastenders. He has been a trade union activist for 30 years serving at the local, regional and national level for the Director’s Guild, Writer’s Guild and University & College Union. He is currently developing television drama projects for the UK and US markets.

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THIS SERIES DOES NOT SHY AWAY FROM THE INJUSTICE AND RACISM

JACKIE WALKER REVIEWS, SMALL AXE

S

mall Axe is a must watch.

Small Axe – Available on BBC (including iplayer) and Amazon Prime is an epic series of Black Britain made by acclaimed director Steve McQueen, already a household name for his Oscar winning film, 12 Years a Slave

It’s a treat for anyone who remembers, or loves, the music and politics of the 60s, 70s and 80s. This is written, directed and acted by the community Lovers’ Rock, Red White it talks about. If you’re and Blue, Alex Wheatle interested in music and Education are If you are the first clue of all based on real a big tree, what the series life events. Many We are the small of the actors, is about is in the title. Reggae such as the Star axe Sharpened fans will ‘get’ the Wars hit actor to cut you message of the John Boyega, are down title ‘Small Axe’ household names. taken from a Bob Marley hit.

At a time when the cost of ‘fighting the power’, to “If you are a big tree, We are quote another hit song, has never the small axe Sharpened to cut been more clear, ‘Small Axe’ offers you down” viewers an exciting, disturbing and beautifully styled alternative The five films, Mangrove, to the normal pap served up on

»

It’s a treat for anyone who remembers, or loves, the music and politics of the time

onto the radio and TV screens, is brilliantly played by Malachy Kirby (Kunte Kinte in the remake of Roots). The second programme ‘Lovers Rock’ is a must for music heads.

McQueen gives his audience a close up, front row seat at a music filled evening of the ‘blues party’, a West Indian tradition which many believe is the forerunner of the house party and rave scene. I’m lucky to be old enough to recall the dancing, the heat, the grind, the clothes. But for younger viewers, look forward to a story told more through music and dance than words. It’s a feast for the eyes.

Small axe, the series our screens.

Mangrove, the first episode, centers on a court room battle, and the little known story, of the police harassment and fight back of the Black community around

the Mangrove Café in London’s Notting Hill in the 1960’s. Darcus Howe, familiar to some for his ferocious interviewing on Channel 4’s ‘Devil’s Advocate’ was one of the few black social commentators who ever made it from the ‘ghetto’

But this series does not shy away from the injustice and racism that is part of the British society. Look out to be challenged and uplifted in these stories of a generation of Black Britons who have left their indelible mark on our music, our culture, our politics, our lives

The Secret Care Worker I have great respect for the guiding principles of treatment being free at the point of need from the cradle to the grave. I personally would not be alive without the NHS’s generosity. Bevan’s vision needs to be imprinted in each new generation because those in their 90’s, who I care for, had to drop the odd shilling in the pot to pay for the Doctor. They couldn’t always call for help if money was tight.

Now they are near the end of their life and need different support, I believe social care should be included as an extension of the NHS. We must ensure beds are released, companies can not profit from someone’s ill health, and care for their needs is maintained out in the community in a safe way, but, not just for those able to access funding for MND, Parkinson’s etc or a pensioner with considerable savings.

Care workers work extended

14 hour days for a possible 8/9 hours pay (contact time only), and can drive up to 150 miles between calls (An allowance of 19p a mile remuneration for the use of a vehicle against HMRC rates of 45p). Exploited by a system that offers a zero hours contract and pays nothing if you call an ambulance and stay with a client until you are sure they are ok. Nothing extra if someone is anxious returning home after being in hospital and have no food in the house and you go shopping, and nothing

when a client is upset because everything feels confusing and you stay to reassure them beyond the allocated 30 minutes.

Pensioners and care workers should campaign together to improve the service.

Secret care worker / Cheshire

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LIFE IN LEBANON

I

t’s only fair the reader should know that my ideal relationship has always been with books.

Earlier this year and following a long spell of hesitation I finally decided to join a bookclub

Books and I never quarelled or deceived one another even if at times I felt let down by some heroes or the ending was a bit disappointing

corona pandemic. However, Lebanon’s book industry was already in shambles prior to the corona, starting with the October revolution that saw many publishing houses and bookshops curtail the number of their employees. A drastic contrast to the UK where in September 16,443 books hit the market.

I got to know Bookholics, through a friend of mine.

I was thrilled to join and share with similar souls We would meet once per month to enjoy and discuss a previously selected book.

Yet after only two meetings, my young adventure was cut short plagued with the

Meanwhile in my country things escalated; political mayhem and a surge of the dollar crippled an already ailing economy rendering a bleak future a certainty rather than a possibility.

Historically, Beirut was revered as a cultural hub and the Lebanese as worthy heirs to this rich legacy.

There’s a saying among Arabs “Cairo

writes the book, Beirut prints and Baghdad reads it” today is quite a different story, all three capitals are strugglings. Their denizens’ chief concern lies in securing the basic livelihood whereas books and reading represent a luxury, in the survival equation.

These political upheavals coupled with the economic dislocation profoundly affected a vital segment of society; the reading class for whom books form their communion bread.

According to the Scottish writer Ali Smith “the novel is a democratic space because reading is an act of empathy, or seeing the world through another’s eyes.”

In Lebanon this space is being brutally downsized to the point of vanishing all together.

Cinemas, theatres, cultural centers and bookshops are treading on very thin ice. Cracks are becoming sharper, potentially threatening to collapse and engulf

Mariam Laban’s last article brought home to us what it was like to experience the explosion in Beirut. (above). Here she tells us of how a city and country are also having their famous culture squeezed out. A librarian and published author she is acutely aware of what is happening. the Lebanese cultural heritage.

Even the local press a much sought after and respected source of information, failed to escape this curse. Several newspapers and magazines have closed and many are following suit. There are a handful public libraries scattered in major cities. Their

survival is equally under the knife.

Can public libraries be the secular saviour for the book worshippers?

Only time will tell.

Currently getting hold of a book is like frying ice cream. The meltdown drastic and swift.

By MARIAM LABBAN

Witch-hunt screw tightens A little-noticed but extreme extension of the Israel Lobby’s “antisemitism” witch hunt regime has quietly been carried out by the Trump administration.

It even includes Orwellian attempts to censor Zoom conferences featuring Palestinians and a digital event that sought to conflate Black Lives Matter, campus activists, Muslims, peace groups, and international socialists with neoNazi as top threats to organized Jewish life across the globe.

In perhaps the most disturbing of these developments, the US Education Department and The Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel legal group, are looking into applying the US no-fly list against a Zoomhosted university discussion by PFLP member Leila Khaled, on the basis that since Zoom is meant as an alternative to in-person

appearances during the pandemic, her use of the platform was circumnavigating the travel ban.

government, Michael Gove, exLabour MP Luciana Burger, Dave Rich, author of the book “The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism, and Benjamin Netanyah.

In reality, the attempt to use the no-fly list to shut down Zoom appearances by Khaled The conference called to only shows that the list is itself a extend the International Holrestriction on free expression, ocaust Rememberance as the Zionist argument Alliance definition of in effect admits that anti-Semitism the 76-year-old is Mike Pompeo more broadly and not banned due aims to declare undertake social to the potential Amnesty Human media crackof her carrying downs on proout a radical Rights Watch Palestine activists. skyjacking, but and Oxfam as rather to block anti-Semitic Pompeo, exher as an envoy of head of the CIA, oppressed people. is considered to be a 2024 presidential In a bizarre spectacle that potential received no media attention, the candidate. He admitted to “lying, US State Department, headed cheating, and stealing,” as director up by Mike Pompeo, hosted of the intelligence agency and a Conference on Antisemitism is also notably a believer in the that included, among others, Rapture and Christian apocalyptic representatives of the Israeli religion.

In 2019, Pompeo promised to block Jeremy Corbyn as UK prime minister and said in a conference that he already had taken measures to ensure it never occurred.

Notably, this online jamboree occurred almost immediately ahead of the release of the IHRA Report into Antisemitism in the Labour Party and the suspension of Corbyn as a party member.

Just last week, Pompeo announced guidelines to be used by the US government to declare organizations “antiSemitic.” According to reports, the US government could include

even venerable civil rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Human Rights Watch in such a list.

All of this comes at a time when actual examples of extreme antisemitism are on the rise. Extreme-right neo-Nazi organizations demonstrated on the anniversary of Kristallnacht in Germany. Meanwhile, Trump’s own administration allies continue themselves to stoke anti-Semitic embers, including dog-whistles about George Soros rigging American elections and bankrolling antifascist activists.

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POLITICS AND EVENTS

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CORBYN LOYALIST IN TALKS ABOUT FORMING A NEW PARTY

Starmer has killed the Labour Party long live its replacement C

hris Williamson, the former Labour MP for Derby North, has today revealed that he is in discussions with key labour movement officials and existing left-wing parties about creating a new socialist party.

Despite resigning from the Labour Party over a year ago, the former MP has until now rejected calls to establish a new party.

However, Keir Starmer’s response following the recent publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report into Labour’s handling of anti-Semitism, and

Jeremy Corbyn’s subsequent suspension, has “shifted the landscape” according to Mr Williamson. When speaking about his decision to begin forming a new party, he said: “The Labour Party is dead. Any previous hopes that Labour would transform Britain’s political settlement and be a beacon to the world have been destroyed.

“Keir Starmer is overseeing a ruthless, anti-socialist regime, which is more focussed on driving out Labour’s left-wing members than on winning office in four years’ time.

“It’s

time

for

socialists,

anti-imperialists, and trade unionists to come together to create a new political vehicle to unite the British working class behind an ambitious programme of change.

“People are no longer interested in tinkering around the edges. We’ve reached a point where the entire system must be overthrown, and that’s what a new party needs to be committed to achieving.

“We’ll be working to build bridges and to create alliances.

We know that competing in a two-party system has limitations.

So, strategy and discipline will be our watchwords.”

NOTES FOR MSM EDITORS 1. The former MP issued this rallying cry to his supporters on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1326781774949650432 2. Mr Williamson was not, as has sometimes been claimed, ‘expelled’ from the Labour Party. He took legal action against the Party over the decision to ‘re-suspend’ him on 28 June 2019 following a public outcry at his readmission to the Party just two days prior. The hearing took place in the High Court on 12 September 2019. In his judgment, which was handed down on 10 October 2019, Mr Justice Pepperall ruled that the Party’s decision to re-suspend Mr Williamson was unlawful. Mr Williamson recovered all his legal costs. Despite this, the Party’s National Executive Committee excluded Mr Williamson from standing for the Derby North constituency in the 2019 General Election. On that basis, Mr Williamson resigned from the Party on 6 November 2019 in order to stand as an independent.

3. For media enquiries, please contact campaignforcw¤gmail.com in the first instance.

IT’S WAR ON VAX T hank you all for the tremendous support before and at my court case Dec 2nd (Westminster Magistrates). We got a great result: One charge (30 May) NO CASE TO ANSWER; the other (16 May) ABSOLUTE DISCHARGE. This success appears to have driven the police to be more respectful of Human Rights Articles 10 (free speech) and 11 (right to assembly) and therefore stood

back in all #OurMovement demonstrations since then.

shows that this Covid19 vax is experimental, dangerous and still under trial.

Would you fly in a newly created jet aircraft which had not got an air-worthiness certificate and for which the manufacturers had no liability for any deaths or injuries?

No, of course not, yet the government and the fake

‘opposition’ expects us to take similar stupid and dangerous risks to promote the New World Order and boost the profits of Big Pharma by billions.

The next big rally is The North Unites, Manchester, Piccadilly Gardens, 1pm Saturday 12th December. I’ll see you there.

By Piers Corbyn, StopNewNormal.net / Twitter: @Piers_Corbyn

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THE WORD Questions

1. Democracy originated in which society?

2. The right to participate in government through voting originated in which ancient city?

3. What sort of democracy is it when all citizens represent themselves directly and can participate in the government by assembly to vote on laws?

4. What type of government does the following describe: One ruler who inherits power and passes that rule to their son?

5. When was the UN Human Rights Declaration brought out?

6. When was the UK Human

Rights Act passed?

7. What does the word “Sovereign” mean?

8. What does the word Democracy translate to?

9. What type of government exists when few people share power?

10. What is known to be the first Charter written regarding human rights?

11. When was the European Convention on Human Rights introduced?

12. What age can you legally vote in Welsh elections?

13.

When was The Representation of the People Act implemented?

14. What is the Party in government in New Zealand?

15. How many Parties are represented in the Danish Parliament?

16.

How does North Koreas Constitution define its government?

17. What sort of governance does Jordan have?

18. What was “The Very British Coup” said to be about?

19. Which country has the highest number of women in government worldwide?

20. Which country has an allfemale coalition government?

Pesto Genovese and Green Beans

Here’s another nice quick and easy vegan recipe combining pasta with potatoes.

Ingredients 600g waxy new potatoes 350g wholemeal penne pasta 350g fresh green beans 4 tbsp Sacla vegan basil pesto – available in most supermarkets Method Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender but still firm,

usually takes about 12 to 15 minutes

When the pasta is cooked, drain the saucepan and then add the steamed green beans and potatoes.

When they are cool enough to handle, cut them into small cubes Cook the pasta to your satisfaction

Spoon in the pesto and mix well.

When the pasta is cooking, trim and cut the green beans into 5cm lengths and steam them for about six minutes.

Garnish with fresh basil leaves and serve with warm ciabatta bread.

Enjoy

Book 100

Sudoku #5

7

6

5 8

1

9 5

9 3 4

3 6 1

2

1

9 4 8 3

7 3 5

9

2

© 2013 KrazyDad.com

Intermediate Sudoku Puzzles by KrazyDad

Sudoku #6

6 3

2 8 5 3 1 3 8 5 5 6

Want to help me pay my Internet bill?

9 4

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4 1 7 5 6 4 8 1

© 2013 KrazyDad.com

1. Ancient Greece 2. Ancient Athens 3. Direct Democracy 4. Monarchy 5.10th December 1948 6. 1998 7. Control by a King 8. The word comes from demos, “common people” and kratos, “strength” 9. Oligarchy 10. Magna carter 11. 1950 12. 16 13. 6 February 1918 14. Labour Party 15. 14 16. A dictatorship of people’s democracy 17. Constitutional Monarchy 18. The 1975 constitutional crisis in Australia with” Alleged” CIA involvement to remove a government proposing to close US military bases.

19. Rwanda 20. Finland Answers

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Vegan recipes

Christmas Edition 2020

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Cooking with Chris Williamson

VEGAN TIRAMISU W

ith deep winter just around the corner, here is a bit of Christmas indulgence for the winter solstice. This extraordinarily delicious vegan pudding is a genuine taste sensation!

INGREDIENTS: For the sponge 250ml almond milk 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 tsp vanilla bean paste 50g vegan margarine such as Flora 215g self-raising flour 230g unrefined caster sugar Pinch of sea salt For the Cream 2 x 400g tins of coconut cream 170g vegan cream cheese 1 tbs cacao powder 3 tbsp icing sugar 120ml good-quality freshly brewed iced coffee 4 tbsp rum, or to taste.

Toppings Grated dark chocolate Coffee beans

Method Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a 5cm deep x 30cm baking tray with nonstick baking paper.

has melted, pour the almond milk mixture into the dry ingredients and fold together.

Scrape the batter into your lined baking tray and level out.

Sponge Put the almond milk, apple cider vinegar, vanilla paste and vegan margarine into a small saucepan over a low heat.

Measure out the flour, sugar and salt into a large mixing bowl. When the margarine

Place the tray into the preheated oven to bake for 12 – 15 minutes, or until golden and springy to touch, then turn out the sponge onto a wire rack to completely cool down.

Cream

Whisk the coconut cream, cacao powder, cream cheese and icing sugar together in a large mixing bowl until fully incorporated.

Add a few tablespoons of iced coffee and rum, then taste. Adjust the flavours according to your palate.

Cut the sponge into discs to fit into your serving glasses.

Pop a sponge disc in the base of each glass, then a spoonful of cream, then another disc.

Drizzle in a little more coffee and spoon in another layer of cream. Top each tiramisu with chocolate shavings and a couple of coffee beans.

Eat immediately or store in the fridge for up to 24 hours.

After that, all you have to do is Enjoy!

Merry Christmas.

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THE LOWEST DEPTH CORPORATE NEGLIGENCE HAS EVER PLUMBED

RECALLING THE BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY

T

he world’s deadliest industrial disaster happened this month 1984 in the heart of India.

A Union Carbide factory, in the industrial city of Bhopal, was producing a pesticide called Sevin (‘Carbaryl’).

Its main ingredient was one of the most toxic compounds ever discovered – methyl isocyanate (MIC).

Drowning on dry land Near midnight on Monday 3 December, gas was detected leaking from the pipe network across the plant and 40 tonnes of released MIC gas was rushing through the maze of pipes.

Safety mechanisms all failed, and it surged unobstructed from the factory’s ventilation

outlet into the open air.

A gigantic toxic cloud gradually spread and returned to the ground across the residential district of Bhopal.

MIC reacts violently with water.

Thousands of unsuspecting Bhopali inhabitants breathed in the gas, which reacted with moisture in their lungs.

Their’ immune systems responded by pumping blood into the lungs, carrying antibodies to fight the poison.

With lungs filling with blood it became impossible to breathe.

In one night, more than 3,000 people, in effect, drowned on dry land - more than died in the US twin towers terrorist plane crash disaster.

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Tens of thousands more Bhopal residents have died or suffered in the decades since.

Union Carbide dodges the blame Investigations found clear evidence of grand-scale pennypinching negligence, but Union Carbide has evaded all responsibility.

on Union Carbide’s website.

Purchased immunity In 1989, Union Carbide attempted to buy permanent non-liability for the disaster with a single payment of $487 million. This works out at about $1,000 per death and $500 per injury, and was on condition that Union Carbide would be protected against further c r i m i n a l prosecutions in connection with the tragedy.

Union Carbide has persisted in evading any responsibility

Now a part of Dow Chemicals Group, in turn a part of the Du Pont Chemicals Conglomerate, it claims sabotage by a bitter ex-employee.

In well over 30 years since the disaster, no evidence for this has ever been found. But even if it had, that would still not account for all the safety features failing.

The same implausible cover story even now is propagated

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The Indian government agreed without consulting any of the victims.

The payments survivors have received do not even come close to covering the costs of the medical treatment they need to receive for the rest of their lives, and it does nothing to detoxify the poisoned soil

The payments survivors have received do not even come close to covering the costs of their medical treatment

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Over 3,000 people died of, in effect, drowning on dry land

and water supply across the city. The company abandoned the plant within months of the disaster, leaving the poisoned buildings as they were.

The local people, with nowhere safe to go, remain marooned on thousands of toxic acres, their water supply permanently poisonous.

Babies are born in Bhopal with severe physical defects. Life expectancy is short.

And all the while, the ruins of the abandoned plant still loom over the city as a gruesome reminder of the inhumanity of corporate greed.

A campaign for Justice for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy is ongoing. If you would like to learn more, or even to help the campaign, please visit https:// www.bhopal.net/.

By Martin Odoni

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THE SHOCKING SAFETY CONDITIONS FOUND AT BHOPAL

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It was also undersized for the scale of the plant. The gas passed through the scrubber completely unobstructed

A CATALOGUE OF FAILURES

xamination of the plant subsequent to the disaster found the E following failings; l Water reached one of the MIC tanks due to a metal seal that

was missing from the pipe network

l MIC storage tanks were meant to stay below 50 per cent full.

The tank that leaked was 75 per cent full

l The recommended maximum amount of MIC to be stored

on one site was meant to be half a tonne. Bhopal was storing between 55 and 70 tonnes

l MIC tanks were supposed to be kept refrigerated, but the

cooling mechanisms had been left off-line to cut power costs

l There was a broken valve on the tank that leaked the gas. The

valve damage made it impossible to feed nitrogen gas into the tank to form a ‘protective barrier’ above the MIC to keep other substances from getting in, which had been a standard safety practice

l Pressure gauges all over the plant were mis-calibrated l The plant’s vent gas scrubber, designed to neutralise escaping

MIC gas in the pipe network, was found to have been outof-order for weeks beforehand. It was also undersized for the scale of the plant. The gas passed through the scrubber completely unobstructed

l The flare tower, a chimney-like structure near the outlet of the

pipes, was designed to burn off escaping gas before it could enter the open air. It too was not working, because a stretch of damaged pipe had not been replaced in months. Without it, the gas had flowed around the flare tower rather than through it, and so could not be burned off.

l Mechanised hoses at the foot of the vent outlet were meant

to spray water into the escaping plumes of MIC, absorbing the toxic chemicals and bringing them back to Earth without allowing them to spread. However, when deploying the hoses, workers found that the mechanism was not powerful enough to spray water to a sufficient height actually to reach the gas

l There had been no attempt since the plant first opened in 1972

to inform local emergency services about the dangers of MIC, or what treatment should be given to people exposed to it.

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POLITICS AND EVENTS

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WALES FACE THE WORLD NUMBER 1, SCOTLAND GREAT CHANCE

DRAW FOR Sports wordsearch WORLD CUP QUALIFIERS IS MADE B P T C Q N N G K X O A R S E N A L L L

R O N N I E O S U L L I V A N G D O S R

Y F V M X M Y X Z E Y A H S K G S N A G

V N J E S O C R T J M I O J A A I U J S

Z A S B Q W Q Y U A P N Y I N S A P I C

T S L N U Y W L T L I H J G S R K M T L

E I D F K T P H I H Q I E M A E A M D A

K O J Y H I E V R A U L B U S P S H Q U

V W U U O C E S B V E S A M C I O K G G

A X I O V R D B E S L F Y B I V I S F A

T E C R P E Q H L T Y E E A T N M C F E

T O U O E T N A P A O I R I Y R O T M N

H R O L H S K T I Q N H N I C E A Y T M

K L B D F E F B U F N C M N H H N S T I

For clues, see the page opposite For the answers, please see the foot of the page

T

he draw for the qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been made, and, with the possible exception of Scotland, the Home Nations all face at least one stiff opponent each, in one form or another.

being allotted to Group C, pitting them against the might of fourtime champions Italy, and the unpredictable Switzerland.

Even Bulgaria and Lithuania, the other two countries in the line-up, are hardly pushovers, so Northern Ireland will struggle to qualify.

Northern Ireland face a real struggle to qualify

The Republic of Ireland face the ageing-but-still-highlyeffective Cristiano Ronaldo, as they have been drawn alongside Portugal in Group A. The Irish should still have hope though, as the rest of the teams are Serbia, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan, all of whom are relatively weak.

Northern Ireland have drawn the short straw, after

»

Wales’ task is also substantial, as they are in Group E against world number 1 side Belgium.

The Czech Republic will also be awkward opponents, although the Welsh should be confident of getting most of

The main threat to England comes less from a team, more from one individual; Robert Lewandowski

P P Z J R H O U Q S A R U D I T A O Z Q

K D C S Z C M X R K I E N I E U X N H O

Z Y E B F N H F R B S T I A F O E F G R

M Z E F M A W L R R W E C N S S U U Y F

D I R D A M L A E R O X H S J Q G R M X

X C H E L S E A W O M E N Q P R P Y O E

S R E G D O D S E L E G N A S O L P I U

V F A W A K I R O M N I L L O C E C F J

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The Scots should… fancy their chances of getting to a first World Cup this century

the points out of Belarus and Estonia.

Scotland will be quietly pleased with their draw in Group F. They are matched with Denmark, Austria, Israel, Moldova, and the Faroe Islands, none of whom are outstanding, and some of whom are very weak. The Scots should therefore fancy their chances of getting to a first World Cup this century.

And in Group I, England face Poland, Hungary, Albania, Andorra, and San Marino. The

main threat to England comes less from a team, more from one individual; Robert Lewandowski of Poland, who with Bayern Munich has proven one of the deadliest players in the world. That apart, England should have enough to qualify. by Odoni

Martin

Sports wordsearch answers

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Big winners in sport 2020 Sport has been massively disrupted worldwide this year by the Covid-19 pandemic. Even so, 2020 has still seen some great and historic victories for some of the best sports stars in their respective fields. We have a selection of the names of twenty teams or individual sportsmen and women hidden in the below grid. Can you find them all? Look at the pictures on this page for clues.

Bayern Munich Champions League winners

Leeds Rhinos win Challenge Cup

Collin Morikawa wins PGA Championship Kansas City Chief Super Bowl winners

Chelsea-women WSL champs

Arsenal FA Cup winners Real Madrid win La Liga

Tyson-Fury WBC Heavyweight Champion

Ronnie OSullivan wins sixth World Snooker Championship

Naomi Osaka wins US Open

Los Angeles Lakers win 2020 NBA Championship Man City Women win FA Cup

Olympique Lyonnais women win Champions League Exeter Chiefs European Champions

Essex win Bob Willis trophy

Mumbai Indians win IPL LA Dodgers win World Series Southern Vipers win Heyhoe-Flint trophy Ronnie OSullivan wins sixth World Snooker Championship

Juventus win Italian Championship

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THE GREATEST PLAYER OF THE 20TH CENTURY AND THE GREATEST

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Maradona’s drug abuse came to public attention, and officials at Napoli decided that they could take no more

L

oved and hated in equal measure by followers of the Beautiful Game, he cheated as much as he mesmerised. He courted controversy as frequently as he turned football into an art. But no one could ever deny the supreme all-round footballing ability of Diego Maradona, probably the finest player in the history of the game. Yes, even more skilful than Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, or even Pele himself.

Death of a genius Maradona died of a heart attack on Wednesday 25th of November in Tigre, sending his home country of Argentina, a nation that deified his name for nearly four decades, into three days’ mourning. Maradona was the man who won the 1986 World Cup almost singlehanded for Argentina in Mexico, and then led them to another

World Cup final in Italy four years later. He had made his international debut in 1977 at just 16 years of age, and despite his small stature, he stood headand-shoulders above every other footballer on Earth.

The Argentine people were joined in grief by the people of Naples. During his extraordinary 7-year stint in Italian football from 1984 to 1991, playing for Napoli, Maradona was the dynamo of a side that won two Italian Championships, one in 1986-87, the other in 1989-90. Napoli, historically very much a peripheral club before Maradona’s arrival, was suddenly a major power in, at the time, the finest football league in the world. arly signs of prima donna E behaviour Maradona had previously won the 1981 Argentine Championship with his boyhood idols, Boca Juniors.

He then had an uncomfortable but memorable two years in Spain with Barcelona. He won the Spanish Super Cup and the Copa Del Ray in Catalonia but also showed early signs of the temperament problems that

DIEGO MAR would blight his later career.

In ugly brawls on the field in Spanish football, it must be stressed that Maradona was more sinned-against than sinning. But he also got into constant public rows with the officials at Barcelona, who were ultimately happy to grant his transfer demands.

Hand and feet of God In the UK Maradona is generally remembered most vividly for two goals in a 1986 World Cup quarter-final for Argentina against England – one a work of pure devilry, the other a work of fine art. Argentina won 2- 1. The first goal was the Devil’s business, as Maradona leapt to try and head a high ball in the England penalty area. Realising he could not reach the ball before the England goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, would punch it away, Maradona clenched his own fist and used it to divert the ball over Shilton’s head. The ball bounced into the net, and to the shock of everyone – maybe even Maradona himself – the

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Tunisian referee awarded the goal.

Just a couple of minutes later came the artwork. It was a moment described in many quarters as The Goal of The Century. Maradona picked up the ball in his own half, turned sharply and ran across halfway, seemingly accelerating with every stride. English midfielders and defenders, still dazed by the injustice of the first goal, tried to close in, but the deftest touches with the sweetest timing took the ball away from every challenge and swept Maradona past no fewer than five opponents, into the penalty area. There the little genius went around Shilton and slid the ball home for probably the greatest individual goal ever seen at a World Cup. After the match, Maradona arrogantly declared the first goal to be “a little of the head of Maradona, a little of the hand of God.” The lack of apology needled the beaten England players ever after. But it is a shame that the second goal is overshadowed in this way, because it showed beyond

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doubt that he also had “The Feet of God”.

Controversies start to outweigh achievements Maradona scored two more goals to see off Belgium in the semi-finals, before inspiring his team to a dramatic 3-2 win over West Germany in the World Cup final. Through the tournament, Maradona had scored or set up 10 of Argentina’s 14 goals. In this, he eclipsed Pele’s achievements in the 1950s. Pele had been the greatest player in a team full of great players that won three World Cups. Maradona won a single World Cup, but as the only world class player in an otherwise mediocre side, he had won it almost by himself.

Although Maradona continued to offer many moments of unparalleled wizardry throughout the rest of his career, the 1986 World Cup proved to be his zenith.

Controversies mounted up, especially as the 1990s approached. He was repeatedly fined by Napoli for going AWOL at team training sessions and even

Maradona won a single World Cup, but as the only world class player in an otherwise mediocre side, he had won it almost by himself

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GOD’S HAND CHEAT STEALING THE WORLD CUP FROM BRITAIN No one could ever deny the supreme all-round footballing ability of Diego Maradona

RADONA DIES AT 60 some matches, he was secretly using cocaine with growing frequency, and was suspected of links to the local Mafia.

Despite Argentina reaching the World Cup final again in 1990, the truth was that Maradona was on indifferent form throughout the tournament and cheated relentlessly to carry the team that far. Deliberate handballs, shameless diving, and sly acts of violence against opponents when referees were not looking, were all as central to Argentina’s progress as his playmaking.

Maradona’s tears at the final whistle, after West Germany won a highly controversial final by a disputed penalty, were for many observers an overdue comeuppance.

Drug ban Matters got worse the next year, as Maradona’s drug abuse came to public attention, and officials at Napoli decided that they could take no more.

Maradona received a 15-month ban from football, during which time, the club released him from his contract. They still retired his number 10 shirt, suggesting that the ban was ‘tough love’ in intention. Maradona had spells back in the game with Sevilla in Spain – he was fired for persistent absenteeism once again - and Newell’s Old Boys

back in Argentina.

Maradona tried to clean up his act, and did enough to be picked for Argentina’s 1994 World Cup squad. He started the tournament promisingly, but then failed another drug test and was thrown out of the tournament. That proved to be the final chapter of his International career. He finally retired from playing in 1997, at the end of a spell back at Boca Juniors. He scored 354 goals in 694 competitive appearances as a professional.

Coaching Maradona spent years away from the game, during which he put on a lot of weight, culminating in a first heart attack in 2004, partly induced by drug misuse. He recovered, losing a lot of weight along the way, before becoming a full-time coach starting with the Argentina national team in 2008. In his two years in charge, Argentina won 18 matches, but lost 6 – one a 6-1 defeat by Bolivia, a joint-worst defeat in national team history, another a 4-0 hammering by Germany in the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals. The Argentine FA chose not to renew Maradona’s contract.

Maradona managed various clubs over the next ten years, but his health continued to let

him down. Early in November this year, he had brain surgery for a blood clot. He came through that well, but the next heart attack followed just weeks later, and this proved an opponent he could not defeat.

Maradona’s career was as much a soap opera as a sportsman’s life. Those who despise him for his dishonesty on the pitch can hardly be blamed, but it seems wrong that a footballer of such astonishing gifts is remembered for that alone.

Diego Maradona had a perfectly weighted touch and control of a football, above any other player in history.

He could control a ball as perfectly as a contortionist could control his/her own limbs. He produced moments of almost mind-bending magic that no other player before or since has ever come close to replicating.

In spite of e v e r y t h i n g , Maradona’s passing at a relatively young age of 60 is a sad loss to football.

By Martin Odoni

He could control a ball as perfectly as a contortionist could control his/her own limbs

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HAMILTON CROWNED WORLD CHAMPION AFTER TURKISH GP Lewis Hamilton confetti parade

This season, Hamilton won 10 out of the 14 rounds

SERGIO PEREZ AND SEBASTIAN

Vettel completed the podium N

ew asphalt rain made race slippery unpredictable.

and the and

Lewis Hamilton has been crowned World Champion for the seventh time, equalling Michael Schumacher’s record.

The Briton, who started in sixth, made his way to the top in tricky conditions to seal the first Turkish Grand Prix since 2011. Sergio Perez and Sebastian Vettel finished in second and third respectively.

With an action-packed Turkish GP now over, we look at the main talking points of the weekend; -

»

For Vettel, his divorce with the prancing horse might not end up as sour as many expected to

Seven Heaven The first talking point was Hamilton’s achievement.

The 35-year-old now has seven World Championships, equalling Michael Schumacher on top of the alltime list. Hamilton struggled throughout the weekend in adverse conditions but adapted and soon took control, quickly acquiring a 20-second gap. The last phase of the race was a small rerun of his and Mercedes’ dominance this year.

Hamilton won 10 out of the 14 rounds gone so far, along with 9 pole positions. In a shortened and altered season, the Briton won the championship with 3 races to spare, with a 110-point gap to Bottas. Hamilton’s future is up in the air but if he does decide to sign with Mercedes for another year, Schumacher’s record will be in jeopardy.

Jekyll and Hyde Lance Stroll will rue his missed chance at a podium place. The Canadian had a qualification to remember, achieving pole position. From the front row, Stroll had a healthy early advantage. But the first pit-stop completely changed the course of the race.

The 22-year-old struggled with the new set of tyres, and dropped all the way to ninth.

A points finish is always a welcome boost. But after such a positive start, Stroll may struggle to sleep at night.

Fantastic Ferrari The Turkish GP saw the return of Vettel to the podium, with Charles

Leclerc right behind his teammate in fourth. Both drivers failed to make it into Q3 on Saturday, but on race day, an excellent drive coupled with good strategy saw Vettel and Leclerc shoot through the field. In what has been a terrible season for the

Lewis Hamilton World Champ

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The 22-year-old struggled with the new set of tyres

Italian team, this result will be a timely boost for Leclerc, who will be hoping to take this form into next year. For Vettel, his divorce with the prancing horse might not end up as sour as many expected to.

Most entertaining race of the year Sunday saw the most entertaining race all year.

Rain and new asphalt made it difficult for the drivers.

The amount of spins - Bottas spun six times - made the race unpredictable and more enjoyable to watch. The teams will now have a two-week break before returning for the first GP outside Europe this year - in Bahrain.

By Paulo Pedro