VOTE PENGUIN YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE

"Hi my name is Professor Pongoo, I am a six foot tall penguin, the cousin of Pingu and I have come from another planet to warn people about Climate Change. I am standing as your candidate for Edinburgh Council and if elected I pledge myself to attend every council meeting as your elected penguin"

An unusual, but not altogether bad platform to fight an election campaign on I guess, and it so nearly worked. Pongoo with 444 votes was well ahead of the Lib Dem candidate 370 and also the Green Party candidate  on first preference votes but in a seat determined by the alternative vote he eventually lost out to the big three in Scotland (well big two and a tiny bit) The SNP, The Labour Party and the Tories.

It was brave attempt for the Independent candidate, and the man inside the suit Mike Ferrigan, and a warning to us all that apathy and a total loss of faith with our current political system is still a leading issue even amongst the minority 30% of the population who can still be bothered to vote.

Pongoo's near miss was for me the highlight of a Local Election night that overall was a predictable and completely mind numbingly boring affair all round. OK the Labour Party won a whole shed load of seats lost in previous elections and in fairness they won more seats than even the Tories who were talking their chances up, had predicted, The Tories lost seats and the Lib Dems flat lined.  And as the local government pendulum swings against the government in situ we should by now be used to such changing fortunes.

Meanwhile down in the smoke Boris held off Ken on a "We know he is a Tory, but we quite like having a Mayor who is as mad as a goose" vote.

Proof positive if you like that even the big three revert to farce when their core vote abandons them. In fact I dare say if Boris had himself taken advise from Pongoo and dressed up in a penguin suit then his vote would have been even higher, but then if Ken had donned a Salamander Lizard outfit? who knows the Labour Party might have took the mayoralty as well?
But a 30% turnout! just where are we all heading? I recently researched party membership of the big three in Britain over the last 60 years and found that the Tory Party can lay claim to the highest ever party membership figures of the three main parties (2.9m in the 1950's) followed by Labour (1.1m again in the 50's) The Lib Dems of course are a modern phenomenon but in their various guises they always struggled to reach such dizzy heights (highest found figure 145,000 1980 SDP)

So how does that all fare against today's party membership statistics, surely given the massive rise in population since the 1950's the number of our citizens actively involved in political life must still be quite high? Not a chance, the last estimated  figures in 2010 have the three party memberships as follows;

                     Conservative: 210,000 Labour: 190,000 Lib Dems: 45,000
That's less than 500,000 members between the lot of them! or an even more alarming way of presenting it just 1.5% of the UK population between all three of them. And if you really want a sense of the size of the decline then look no further than a comparison with UK membership of the three biggest Conservation and Wildlife charities. The National Trust alone has more members than all three of the political parties combined total, and when added to memberships of the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds then the Big Three nature lovers at 5.5m members trump the party hacks by more than 5m paid up subscriptions. Maybe the RSPB vote explains Professor Pongoo's success?

Coming back to local politics, you also have to remember that we currently have 469 local councils in the UK as well as two parliaments (England and Scotland) and an two Assemblies (Wales and Northern Ireland) so given that you have to be a party member to stand for election then roughly around 30% of those combined party members would be current candidates and 10% (1 in 10) will end up being elected. You should also worry that all three of the parties amongst their membership include a proportionately high number of eccentric individuals (best written about in another blog)

New parties are also not making any in roads into the public interest. Of the most successful in recent years and also the most vile UKIP have only ever reached membership high figure of 26,000 in 2003 (now down to 16,000) and the BNP a high of 9800 in 2008 which most believe has now fallen to well below 4000

So to put it bluntly we have one of the lowest political participation rates in Europe, our political system and its parties are tired, irrelevant to most peoples everyday lives and less attractive to most voters than a six foot man dressed up in a penguin costume. One in ten of those in a party will be elected and three in ten stand for election. These are chosen by the other seven in ten who inevitably include amongst their number the politically naive, the retired and inactive and a small bunch who it is best to simply describe as socially odd, nice to be with but frankly as mad as a box of frogs

I am a socialist, those are my political ideals, I am now after 5 years out in the cold able to rejoin the Labour Party if I so wished, they along with the Greens are currently the only parties I could ever entertain signing any membership form for in the future. But before I took such a massive step I would need to know, what were their parties plans for re-engaging with a British public who are currently completely turned off to UK politics.

I don't want a debate with the 30% of the 30% who bother to vote in Local elections, I want to engage with the 70% who don't bother to vote at Local Elections and or say they never will or never have voted.

And fun as it may seem, I don't want to have to dress up in a penguin suit in order to do it.

TORY RACISM ALIVE AND KICKING IN 2012

A few days ago the Government for the first time ever released figures relating to the number of foreign born people who are currently claiming working age benefits in the UK.

It's own headline figure of 371,000 soon became headline news in all the Tory Press

370,000 MIGRANTS ON THE DOLE

said the Telegraph who added:

"The migrants, who can claim unemployment, housing and incapacity benefit, are costing taxpayers billions of pounds a year."

NON EU IMMIGRANT BENEFIT SCANDAL

screamed the SUN and told us in a follow up story that:

"FURY erupted last week over the news that we are paying dole to 371,000 foreigners." 

The Daily Mail not wanting to be upstaged by its red top fellow bigots went even further

  THE FOREIGNERS BEING PAID £2 BILLION IN BENEFITS A YEAR INCLUDING 371,000 ON THE DOLE 

and then let Tory Employment Minister Chris Grayling rant on for them when he said:

Conservative general election poster 2010 Romford

"It is not acceptable that people from other countries can claim our benefits if they have not worked or paid tax in the UK. We will root out those claimants who cannot prove their immigration status and in turn they will be stripped of their benefits.

Forgive me if I don't go on to give extra blog space to some of the more rabid and reactionary comments on the web from the usual suspects responding to the Governments carefully crafted press release, but I am sure you get the picture ""bleeding immigrants coming over here, taking our jobs, the food off our table. they're taking the piss, taking advantage of hard working British folk, claiming this, claiming that, living in big houses rent free when young British couples can't even rent a flat from the council..........you get the picture I am sure.

But hang on a minute what was Chris Grayling saying about people from other countries? and those who have not worked or paid benefits in the UK?

You see it turns out that about 54% of those "foreigners" Chris Grayling is ranting on about are actually British Citizens! and most of whom have worked and paid tax here in the UK. A further 29% it seems have been given indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and others are people from the European economic union who are entitled to claim whilst working in the UK. That's right working! because despite the smokescreen a large amount of the 371,000 above are working but receiving "Top Up" benefits to subsidise the low pay of unscrupulous employers.
So just how many of those 371,000 are actually foreign migrants illegally claiming benefits and left amongst Chris Graylings targets for rooting out?  er.... just under 2500! it seems, hardly the headline we were fed is it?

In fact the deeper you dig into the figures the worse it gets for the Government Of the 5.5 million people of working age in Britain who are currently claiming benefits, yes 371,000 are foreign-born, which equates to 6.4 per cent of the total number of people on benefits. That means 6.6 per cent of working age non-UK nationals currently get a state handout, as opposed to a massive 16.6 per cent of British nationals. And not only do less foreign born claim benefits from the state but they also pay more taxes to keep the 16.6 per cent of Brit's in the life style they have become accustomed to.

The ONF data goes hand in hand with Home Office research published in 2002 to assess that people do not arrive in the UK hoping to exploit the welfare state. This research found that immigrants pay more tax that they take in benefits, which was partly explained by the age structure of the immigrant population, which is disproportionately of working age and therefore consuming less state-provided services and paying more taxes.

Furthermore, the UK isn't exactly the welfare paradise for immigrants that some newspapers seem to refer to. Asylum seekers for example are not allowed to claim normal welfare and live on a paltry amount below that which the Government states is the minimum necessary for UK benefit claimants to be able to live. Many live in destitution, sometimes homeless, especially those who are appealing their case. The Refugee Council states that, “most asylum seekers are living in poverty and experience poor health and hunger.

So what therefore lies behind this official government press release and the predictable venom spat out by the right wing press to a nation wanting to believe that their current economic woes are all the work of Johnny Foreigner"?

The answer? RACISM, PURE AND UNADULTERATED.

Conservative General Election poster 1964 Smethick

It may be less up front than this poster left from the 1964 General Election, but this Tory leopard has obviously no intention of changing its spots

Tory governments in the past have played the race card as a smokescreen to their own internally created troubles and as always the media are only too eager to distribute racist and nationalist ideas such as blaming minorities and/or immigrants for unemployment, for so-called ‘benefit fraud’ and for the lack of resources like housing school places or hospital beds. It is easy to scapegoat vulnerable minorities and this official government endorsed racism ultimately sends signals out that foreign people are fair game for wider abuse from the public.

But Hate Crime is Hate crime in my view no matter who the perpetrator and I only hope that some of the British Citizens amongst the 371,000 affected above takes on Mr Grayling and his despotic government and makes a complaint to the Police

The CPS views this type of crime very seriously and say that "it has a real and lasting effect on individuals, communities and the whole of society. By letting people know what they can expect from the CPS when we prosecute racist or religious crime, we aim to improve confidence in the criminal justice system."

They add:

"Racist and religious crime is particularly hurtful to victims as they are being targeted solely because of their personal identity, their actual or perceived racial or ethnic origin or their actual or perceived belief or faith. Black and minority ethnic victims can also be targeted because they belong to other minority groups and may experience multiple discrimination."

This shoddy coalition government including the Lib Dem's who are backing them up in Parliament, and staying noticeably silent on issues such as this above should hang their collective heads in shame.