The Exile

Weekending: Nadine Coyle (Girls Aloud) Upskirt

2008-07-19T00:30:00.000-05:00

Here you go blokes - you can't say that your friendly Exile doesn't give you the sleaze that you know that you want. This rather nice upskirt shot is of Nadine Coyle of Girls Aloud fame.

Do you think that someone should teach tottie like this to sit properly? No? Neither do I.

Check back next week for yet more Girls Aloud upskirt photos!

Power to the (Mexican) people

2008-07-18T00:45:00.001-05:00

It rained like buggery last night; real monsoon rain, of the type that you never see in the UK. Needless to say, the power went out and the house was illuminated by candlelight for about three hours.

If you want to know why the power goes out almost every time it rains just have a look at this man in the photo. If you are wondering what he is up to, wonder no more, because he is nicking electricity directly from a power line's junction box.

Just about every junction box has a myriad of highly unofficial cables leading from it that go down to the houses below. Since these connections are cobbled together by just about anyone who has a ladder, and the nerve to take his life in his hands at the top of it, then you can imagine that as soon as it starts to rain the water gets into the box and the system trips out.

Every now and again the state-owned power company sends out its people to disconnect the unofficial cables, but the people just give the men a few pesos and they go back to work and report the job done. Occasionally a senior figure will accompany them just to make sure that they actually do the work. What happens then is that those same power company fellows will return later that night to do a reconnect, for a suitable consideration, of course.

As a result of all this hardly anyone in these United Mexican States pays more than a few coppers for their electricity, but every time it rains the candles come out.

Such is life. . .

Ford Fiesta: made with what?

2008-07-17T02:45:00.002-05:00

Is it just me or does this video really not make any sense at all? Have a click and see what you think - it only runs for 40 seconds. It is supposed to be about the Ford Fiesta, and the lurve that goes into its design and manufacture. . . Now anyone who knows anything about British design and construction will immediately suss that love is the last thing that anyone is thinking about. Especially if it is late Friday afternoon. . .

You can tell that I'm having a lazy night, can't you?

How much are social workers worth?

2008-07-17T00:45:00.003-05:00

How much do you think that a lump of social work shit is worth?

Let's think... So useless to the economy that they create nothing of value through their activities... So ugly that they even have to wear a brown paper bag when using their vibrators... So stupid that they can barely construct a sentence. You don't believe the last one? Take a look at the creatures on their home turf, and see how they write when they think that nobody else is reading their inane scribblings.

So how much do you think that fat, ugly, pieces of lower middle class filth like this are worth?

Nu-Labour's old Tory policies

2008-07-17T00:30:00.003-05:00

"The new middle-class Labour activist is quite happy to use the urban poor as voting fodder, paying lip-service to the mantra about alleviating economic inequalities." Rather a nice one-liner, I think, out of a piece by James MacMillan in the Daily Telegraph. The article takes this blog's line that Nu-Labour will lose the Glasgow East by-election because it has alienated is socially conservative, economically radical base.

However, another factor has now emerged which may turn what was still a close race between Nu-Labour and the Scottish Nationalist Party into a romp away for the SNP. That issue is welfare reform.

Nu-Labour is trying to introduce a work for dole scheme, and that more than anything else is liable to tip the balance away from Nu-Labour. About half the population of Glasgow East are on some form of benefit or another, and that is not their fault.

Working class people are quite willing to risk their lives down mines, be bored out of their skulls standing behind lathes, or be equally bored on a production line. However, what they expect in return is a decent wage. Being told to get sweeping for their benefits is not the same thing, is it?

What is needed is a working class political party that will cut away at the parasitic non-jobs that the middle class now enjoy and begin a policy of creating the tens of thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs that our people want to do.

Why do so many people have to drink unclean water?

2008-07-16T02:45:00.000-05:00

Certain things irritate and this video just happens to be one. It's aim is to make you, the denizens of the first world, feel guilty because over one billion people on this planet only have access to impure water. Thus you will presumably shell out some donations to keep members of the well-fed third world aid and development industry in lucrative employment.

I didn't know the exact number of people who receive more than just water through their pipes until I saw this video, but I do know that I happen to be one of them. We have a filter that sort of cleans the water that is piped into the house from the city supply, and if the cartridge isn't changed regularly, then after about six months or so of daily use it gets so clogged with gunk that it jams up.

The funny thing is that when the water leaves the plant it is sparkling and clean, so what happens to turn it into a brown sludge? Basically, people tap into the water pipes to nick a free supply. They don't seal the pipes properly after they have made their connection, or don't seal them at all, and dirt gets in. It is that rather than worn-out pipes that causes most of the problems in Mexico City.

Not that you would realise any of that if all you had to go on was a video like this. That same video says that we can't live with this situation. Well, we can and we do. And we shall continue to live with it until the third world ceases to be so damned third rate at just about everything that it does.

Maggot to get state funeral

2008-07-16T00:05:00.000-05:00

It seems that Maggot Thatcher is to get a state funeral when it finally pops its clogs. The Guardian's readers are pretty clearly opposed to the notion, but even the Mail on Sunday crowd are not overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the idea, either.

Let's be honest, a state funeral for the old slag gives us a chance to have a demonstration and ruin the event for all the arse-lickers who want to turn out and weep.

That said, what happens to the creature's carcass after it has ceased to pollute the air that the rest of us have to breath is a side issue. The question still remains: how are we to destroy the scum who did well out of the whole Thatcher era; the vermin who voted Tory and left us on the dole?

The issue of that act of revenge is still outstanding and will remain so, whether Thatcher is alive or dead.

Return of the eXile

2008-07-15T00:15:00.001-05:00

As we reported a month ago, the Moscow based alternative newspaper, eXile, was shut down by the Russian authorities. It's now back under the slightly new name of ExiledOnline.com, and claims to be based out of Panama. If you believe that then you will believe anything, but if you enjoyed your web-based fix from Moscow - and over 200,000 people did every month, then you will enjoy visiting the new site - wherever it happens to be located.

Riding the EU gravy train

2008-07-15T00:05:00.000-05:00

You have just got to watch this video, shot in the European Parliament in Brussels. The footage was taken at 7.00am one Friday morning by a German TV crew. Check out the MEPs with their cases already packed, signing in to claim their massive whack, before darting off to the airport.

Well, that was their plan, until the camera crew arrived. Then they darted around trying to hide their faces from the camera. Trust me, it's like Fred bloody Karno's, it really is.

Here comes the donkey punch!

2008-07-14T00:30:00.000-05:00

Ever heard of the donkey punch? No, neither have I, so I'll watch the flick to find out what it is - and because it looks just like the slightly sleazy type of offering that your friendly Exile really enjoys.

Has Northumbria's time come round again?

2008-07-14T00:15:00.003-05:00

This is the flag of the Kingdom of Northumbria. It hasn't snapped in the northern winds for over a 1,000 years - is it time that it did once again?

If the Nu-Labour meltdown is a bad as this writer hopes, then the Scottish National Party will most likely be the main beneficiary in that country. It is likely that faced with a Tory government in London the SNP will call a Scottish referendum with a view to gaining a mandate for independence. If Scotland does become independent, where does that leave the people of Wales and Northern England?

Although the Welsh Assembly does not have the powers of the current Scottish Parliament, it is still a body that can ameliorate London's neo-liberal desires. If push came to shove, then Wales could follow Scotland out of the union because the Welsh have the structure, via their assembly, that could lead to that move.

Northern England would be left alone - and we have more in common with the Scots and the Welsh than we have will ever have with the arse-licking gaffers' men who make up the population of Southern England.

Nu-Labour did try to split England up into artificial regions, each with their own limited powers, but when the matter was put to a vote in the North-East the people rejected the wheeze, and quite rightly so. None of those proposed regions had any historical resonance, but that does not mean that we should think of England as one entity - because that is not how we see ourselves, in spite of what some, mainly southern, writers think.

England historically can be divided into three, and possibly even into four, states that have a history all of their own. The old Kingdom of Northumbria fits in very nicely with what is today Northern England. Historically it came under the Dane Law, and culturally speaking its values are far removed from those of the south.

The Midlands corresponds to the Kingdom of Mercia and the south to that of Wessex. The fourth would be Cornwall, if they chose to go down that road. The chances are that they wouldn't, any more than Mercia would, and both would probably remain with Wessex as a truncated England. And good luck to them if that is what they want.

Northumbria - Northern England - really needs to be thinking about its future and for that to happen we need to start pushing for an assembly of some kind that will represent the people of that area.

If we don't, then we shall remain under London's sway once Scotland and Wales have called time on the union. A permanent colony, permanently outvoted in the English, Westminster Parliament, a parliament that is increasingly under the sway of Brussels and the European Union.

Would it not make more sense for Northumbria, Scotland and Wales to form a union all of their own? A union that would stand outside the EU and which would be dedicated to repairing the damage that the last 30 years have done to all three of us?

Nu-Labour seems to really hate the British working class

2008-07-14T00:05:00.000-05:00

This story is now over a year old, but it is worth digging up as an example of why Nu-Labour will lose the next election and why they deserve to lose it.

Corby is a former steel town that was murdered by the Tories in the 1980s. Bastard jobs are now few and far between, but the town did manage to attract 80 government clerical jobs via the Home Office.

Last year those jobs vanished because Corby is not "diverse" enough for ministers' tastes. Translated into simple terms, it's an English town and Nu-Labour wants to give jobs to anyone but the English.

The rumour that Nu-Labour basically hates the working class is ceasing to be just a tale that people repeat in pubs. It seems to be based on some pretty hard evidence.

This being so, why should we vote for a party that not only does not reflect our class interests, but which treats us with such utter and total contempt?

Weekending: Sarah Harding (Girls Aloud) Upskirt

2008-07-12T00:05:00.003-05:00

You wrote in saying that you wanted Girls Aloud upskirts and Girls Aloud upskirts you have got. This little blonde bomber is Sarah Harding, and the other four darlings who make up the remainder of the warbling troupe will feature during the rest of July.

Click to enlarge, blokes. Click to enlarge.

Haltemprice and Howden: Labour's stooge flops

2008-07-11T00:05:00.002-05:00

As expected David Davis romped home in the Haltemprice & Howden by-election. What will sadden Nu-Labour supporters, always assuming that there are still any left, is that their stooge candidate, Jill Saward, could only manage sixth place, coming in behind both the National Front and Gemma Garrett.

A warm welcome to all our new Times readers

2008-07-10T00:30:00.001-05:00

This is just to welcome our new readers who are arriving courtesy of the link to this blog from the Times.

Politics makes for very strange bedfellows and the fact that the Murdoch-owned Times is now linking to the Exile only goes to prove that point.

What do we have in common? The Times, I suspect, has a readership that is largely middle class and largely employed in the private sector. The Exile has to concede, albeit with gritted teeth, that such people are actually productive of wealth, rather than purely parasitical upon it.

What this means is that for different reasons we both want to do over the same creatures. You because it is your taxes that are paying for these parasites; your friendly Exile because it is his class that is treated as helots by them.

It may be that the Tories will adopt some of these strategies for their 2010 election campaign. As the British economy worsens, savings are going to have to be made, otherwise the readers of the Times are going to have to pay rather more tax than they are used to at the moment. Cutting the social work industry down to size would be one way that a Tory government could do that with little or no electoral cost to itself, given that members of the social work industry tend to be avid Nu-Labour supporters. It might even be popular with the working class. . .

So let's draw a line under the past, shall we? We hate lower-middle-class social work scum with their pathetic little poly degrees and their puerile desire for status, and so do you.

Let's fuck them over together.

How the social work filth justifies its crimes

2008-07-10T00:15:00.005-05:00

Did you know that 21 per cent of all children held on the state's at risk register are there because of emotional abuse? As Camilla Cavendish points out in her Times piece, that is up from just 14 per cent in 1997. What, you may ask, is emotional abuse? Well, it is a "nebulous phrase" that "has no strict definition in British law," and which only a bovine social worker could believe has any utility. Basically, it is a catch-all, designed to allow the state's agents to judicially kidnap British children. Some councils use it, others don't - so whether it will be used against you really just depends on where you live. It is as brutal and cynical as that.

One can understand why the social work filth like this idea, as a person charged with this will find it difficult if not impossible to prove his innocence. Furthermore, the definition of emotional abuse differs from council to council. In Nottingham it involves "an ingrained pattern of interaction," whatever that means, but in Enfield it includes "swearing" and "discriminatory remarks". So God help you if you are in the Monday Club, say, and you tell a Paki joke.

To make matters even more lethal for just about any family that comes under the social work filth's baleful gaze, first impressions seem to count for a lot, at least according to Eileen Munro, reader in social policy at the London School of Economics. The consequences of this, according to Dr Munro, lead to:

. . . a devastating impact in child protection work, in that professionals (sic) hold on to their beliefs about a family despite new evidence that challenges them. It can be equally harmful whether they are over or underestimating the degree of the risk to the child. They may continue to believe parents are doing well, even though there are successive reports of the child's being distressed or injured. Innocent parents wrongly judged abusive can face the frightening experience of being unable to shake the professionals' (sic) conviction, however much counter-evidence they produce.

Let's consider this in more detail. If you are working class then you will recognise social work filth as the spiritual heirs of the old factory foremen. They are jumped-up working class and you will treat them as such. If you are from a genuinely middle class family, then you will recognise that fat lump of shit sat in your living room as the arriviste scum that it is. It is one thing for a barrister, say, to patronise people like that, but it is quite another when that same creature tries to behave as the barrister's overlord, or even his equal. Either way, whether the family is working class or middle class, trouble is on the horizon.

To make matters even worse, given the background and low educational levels of the average piece of social work filth, getting them to admit their error is going to be next to impossible. To understand why that is the case you have to imagine for a moment what it is like to be an ambitious little scrote - one of Nu-Labour's target voters, the aspirational maggots of this land. They get their A-Level results and, lo and behold, they realise that all the aspiring in the world isn't going to alter the fact that a scratty old poly is all that will have them. With a so-called degree from one of those institutions, social work is about the limit of what they can realistically hope for.

However, they are still aspiring little scrotes, so demanding respect, telling people over and over again just how professional they are is something that they have to do. They are reassuring themselves as much as anything else.

As part of that process they will attack working class people because they have to prove - again to themselves - that they no longer belong to that class. When faced with genuine middle class people their aim is to show that they are just as good, if not better, than the people that they are tormenting. Classical, lower-middle-class arriviste scum, in other words, and it would be a foolish man who expected them to behave in any other way.

In the short term there is really nothing that we can do to protect our families from these creatures. In the longer term, it strikes this writer as only right and proper that both the old working and middle classes put aside their differences and work together to put these creatures firmly in their place.

How you can tell that the war against Iraq isn't over yet

2008-07-09T00:05:00.000-05:00

As I write, various wankbloggers and other assorted tosspots are proclaiming that the surge is working, victory is just around the corner and light can be seen at the end of the tunnel as far as the war against Iraq is concerned. The good thing about this collective wad shoot is that it means that the war will go on and a lot more occupiers will go home in boxes, but that means that the war against Iraq is far from over.

How do I know? That's easy - the guerrilla standard hasn't been raised over Baghdad yet and the collaborators are not dangling from lamp posts.

Look, the "strategic" victories that the warmongers are wanking over only exist in their little minds. There are no strategic victories in a war like this because the Iraqi team aren't fighting to hold territory. Their aim is to keep the war going until the foreign team gets sick of it all and goes home.

The various home players are changing their strategies and that accounts for the relative lull in the fighting. That said, the Iraqis still managed to cull 29 Americans last month, and God knows how many collaborators. Sadr is turning his militia into a cell-structured guerrilla force, very similar to the one that drove the French out of Algeria. That force may be getting advice from Hezbollah up in Lebanon because some of the attacks that they have recently mounted show all the hallmarks of professional training.

The point is that with a well-trained cadre of guerrillas fighters - say a couple of thousand or so - the Sadr boys can keep the war going pretty much forever. When the Americans do call it a day, then the militia can be reactivated to fight the civil war for control of the country, but for the moment, why bust a gut?

Like I said, this is not about territory, this is all about keeping the war going. If the Iraqis can do that then eventually they will win.

Times starts anti-social worker campaign

2008-07-08T01:15:00.006-05:00

Camilla Cavendish of the Times is running a series of articles all this week on the family courts and the social work filth that gains so much from them. Aside from the articles you are also being asked to write in anonymously if you have had experience of the social work filth interfering in your life. The aim is to see if there are geographical clusters where the filth have been at their most insolent. There is also an on-line form that you can use to register a protest with your MP, and a series of links are being created to campaigning groups.

Why has The Times started this campaign against the family courts? Well, your cynical Exile reckons that since most Times' readers work in the private sector it may have something to do with the sheer cost to those taxpayers of providing employment for the bovine lower middle class.

That's fine, and let's have one war at a time. We need to put aside our distaste for the Murdoch press - and the scabs who keep it going - as there are bigger fish to fry. It is our class that most comes under attack from these creatures, so let's all be nice to Camilla and help her do over the social work filth, shall we?

How to change the way that people think

2008-07-08T00:15:00.003-05:00

Lets hope that your pre-school kids either don't go to a nursery group or are willing to eat any old muck if they do. If they turn their noses up at some unfamiliar foreign crap, then they are liable to be branded as racists and you are liable to have the social work filth knocking on your door.

Could anyone make this shit up? That is the recommendation of the National Children's' Bureau, which is funded to the tune of £12 million a year by the government. Obviously the NCB jobsworths have to justify that ludicrous amount of money somehow, and the report that they have just issued is part of that process. Equally obviously the social work filth are going to be wanking with glee as yet more power and yet more resources come their way. However, is it just about providing employment for lower-middle-class thickoes, or is something else happening in our country?

What seems to be happening is a drive to force people to think along certain lines and to force them to suppress internally any thoughts that go outside the prescribed limits. You are going to be liberal, runs the argument, and if you are not then we are damn well going to force you to become a nice, post-modern liberal.

This makes more sense, and will be a lot cheaper for the state, than the Thatcherite policy of brute repression. Forcing the miners back to work cost the state millions - how much nicer it would be if only the nasty working class stopped thinking all those nasty, plebeian thoughts and just accepted the post-modern way of doing things. That seems to be the train of thought and this policy seems to be part and parcel of that strategy.

Leading on from this, the political class has to finish the work that Thatcher began a generation ago. Her gang only managed to destroy the unions, but they left all the other autonomous organisations intact. The family, the sense of community and the churches have all come under fairly sustained attack over the past decade. The aim seems to be to break these bodies down precisely because they do not rely on the state for their support. In the case of the family, had those defence structures that strong family links provide not existed, then the miners would not have been able to withstand the state's onslaught for as long as they did during the Great Strike of 1984-85.

It is within this light that we should consider Nu-Labour's recent attacks on the Catholic Church. The church provides a whole set of structures from adoption and education to moral values that are outside the state's orbit and which run counter to the ideology that the state is trying to impose.

Hard though it may be for socialists to accept, we have to make common cause with bodies such as the Roman Church, not because we like them very much, but because the alternative is so very much worse. If the political class has its way then we, the working people of Britain, will be reduced to the level of Sparta's Helots. The state will decide what we need and its agents - the social work filth spring to mind - will be charged with ensuring that we get it. We will have no way of protesting because all the structures that we once used to organise our protests will have been dismantled.

England's flag is racist say the police

2008-07-07T00:15:00.004-05:00

You had better not have the English flag in your car, especially if you are driving through Wiltshire. Bob Smith was told to remove his by one copper as it might offend immigrants.

As the press have now got hold of the story, the cops are frantically backtracking vigorously and trying to deny that the incident even happened, which rather begs the question, what would this 18 year old have to gain by inventing a tale like that?

It looks to your friendly Exile as if some copper, probably bored out of his brains because there are no strikes to help break, decided to give grief to one working class lad. It's unlikely that the average lower middle class BNP friendly plod really gives a damn about what Johnny Foreigner thinks, but that won't stop him using the language of post-modern multi-culturalism for his own ends.

We know that the filth will use whatever means they can to give grief to people of our class, but it does annoy this writer that what used to be the working class party has given them the ideological tools to do the job.

Catholics may be the latest group to desert Nu-Labour

2008-07-07T00:05:00.003-05:00

Nu-Labour is in political "meltdown" according to Alex Salmon, the Scottish First Minister. He has a point as Cllr George Ryan, who was widely expected to be the Labour candidate has withdrawn from the contest, leaving the party without a standard bearer and with less than three weeks to go before the polls open.

Cllr Ryan has claimed family problems as the reason for his withdrawal, but your cynical old Exile is dubious about that one. There are few problems that cannot be solved by the income that would arrive courtesy of the House of Commons' gravy train - something else is going on, so let's do some speculating about what that might be.

Glasgow East is not just a working class constituency, it is also a Catholic working class constituency. Now this has little to do with theology, but it does have an awful lot to do with tribal, intra-working-class identity. It is not about going to mass, but it is about how people define themselves and how their identities are proclaimed.

Nu-Labour has basically become the anti-Catholic party in the eyes of many people. As Jim Dobbin MP wrote:

There was the attempt by Alan Johnson, when education secretary, to force faith schools to take 25 per cent of non-believers. Then there was the adoption agency legislation to stop discrimination against gays and lesbians which finished up discriminating against the Catholic Church. Catholic adoption agencies are now closing. . . There are five million Catholics in the country. If the government think they can disregard even a small number of these voters then they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

The problem is that the post-modern Nu-Labour Party does think that it can disregard Catholics social issues in the same way that it felt that it could ignore traditional working class economic demands. The party just felt that since they did not believe in all that stuff then neither did anyone else - and if they did believe, well, they had nowhere else to go.

However, in Scotland, they do have somewhere else to go - they can dump the Labour Party and vote for the Scottish National Party who are now the favourites to win the seat.

This may be why George Ryan has decided not to contest the seat. He has seen the writing on the wall and doesn't want to be remembered as the man who lost Glasgow East. Far better to wait until the whole Nu-Labour wankfest is over and a new party has been created to represent the socially conservative, economically radical working class once again.

Weekending: A second Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) upskirt

2008-07-05T00:15:00.004-05:00

Hogwarts Academy may be a figment of authoress J.K. Rowling's imagination, but there is no doubting the magical powers of Emma Watson when it comes to bewitching all you upskirt fans out there. The Exile's stat-porn has been very satisfying ever since we published the first Hermione Granger upskirt photo last week. This suggests that another look at her upskirt charms is in order.

So here it is and there you go. The usual rules apply for all you Emma Watson upskirt fans: just click on the photo and watch the magic happen.

Nu-Labour - Nu-Britain

2008-07-04T19:15:00.004-05:00

Credit where credit is due to Harry's Place for giving the head's up to this one. A man was videoing on a London street when two community support officers decided to give him grief. One of them can barely speak English and his mate looks fucking retarded to me.

Eventually they give up and take their hooks, but this is Nu-Labour Britain today. A land where foreigners and their mongish mates give orders, all brought to you by that same party that Harry's Place supports so enthusiastically.

Post 1,000

2008-07-04T04:15:00.000-05:00

I just thought that you might like to know that what you are reading is my 1,000th posing at The Exile. I started the blog back in October 2005 and almost three years later I am still plugging away with it.

In those days the war against Iraq took up an awful lot of postings, but since Britain largely dropped out of the conflict, my interest in it has waned. The fact that Iraq and the USA are still going at it hammer and tongue isn't something that interests me greatly. The thought of two such nasty shitholes tearing each other to bits was fun for a while, but then more important things came on the horizon.

Helping in my own small way to stick the boot into Nu-Labour and its fairly loathsome ideology is something that the blog does a lot of these days. I suspect that this will continue for a while, until something else comes along that takes my interest.

One thing that is unlikely to change is my atavistic dislike of the pompous, the ideologically pure at heart and the lower middle class with their pathetic, status driven desires. I shall continue to taunt them and sit back with a smile on my lips when those prime mongs rise to my bait.

The Exile is my toy, when all's said and done.

Glasgow East should mark the end of Nu-Labour

2008-07-04T03:15:00.000-05:00

All being well we can start the funeral oration for Nu-Labour on the 25th of this month. It should be in the early hours of the morning on that day when the results of the Glasgow East by-election will be in, and the seat looks set to fall to the Scottish National Party.

Unlike Henley, which was a safe Tory seat, and Crewe and Nantwich, a seat that could be marginal in a bad year for Labour, Glasgow East is the third safest Labour seat in the whole of Scotland. In 1997 it returned a Labour MP with 66% of the vote, a share that still remained at almost 61% in 2005. How on earth could this seat fall?

Turnout is part of the answer. In 1997 62% turned out to vote, but by 2005 that had fallen to just 48%. As we saw in Crewe, it is the traditional Labour voters who are now refusing to be voting fodder for the Nu-Labour middle class machine.

In Glasgow East the SNP are the main challengers, but the great Tommy Sheridan might throw his hat into the ring as well. Sheridan was the man who led Scottish opposition to the Tory Poll Tax in the late 1980s, and in spite of his legal problems he is still a man who commands a lot of respect north of the border. Besides, those problems are mainly due to a spot of extra-curricular shagging and the Murdoch press. Neither of those are going to hold him back in that part of the world. He won't win the seat, but he might just allow the SNP an easy and comfortable majority.

In many ways Glasgow East represents this writer's Britain in microcosm. As the Spectator points out, official unemployment stands at just over 6%, but if you factor in the hidden unemployment that comes from long-term sickness benefit claimants and single parents, then the figure jumps to half the workforce.

Once upon a time the Labour Party existed to represent those people, but now it ships in immigrants by the bucketload to keep wages low, and to take all and every available job. The contempt that Nu-Labour demonstrates for the class that gave it birth by that policy alone is breathtaking, but when we add in the fact that everything that the party says and does is aimed with an eye to the so-called aspirational vote, then we can see that there is nothing that remains in that party for us.

In spite of these factors, and as we have pointed out before, Nu-Labour could probably have got away with all this, given the benefits payments and the fact that most working class people don't read party statements, but where they really fucked up was by turning that same aspirational set of cockroaches loose on us. By building them up as our colonial administrators, Nu-Labour virtually guaranteed its own demise. The point here is that we as a class could live with the mill owners because they were remote figures who did not feature in people's day to day lives. It was the foremen and under-managers that everyone loathed. Today their spiritual descendants are the social work filth, council officials and general pen-pushing scum.

In spite of everything, Glasgow East is a big catch for any opposition to take. Nevertheless, if it falls from Nu-Labour's grasp, then we can start to celebrate the demise of that most loathsome organisation that acts to ensure that we remain powerless and poor for ever.