Like his fighting style or not, it's impossible to deny that Wladamir Klitschko is one of the most legendary heavyweight boxers of all time. Yes he lost this particular fight, but he's 41 now. Before his decline Klitschko was the second longest reigning world heavyweight boxing champion of all time, and his 23 successful title defences is second only to Joe Louis (26) and ahead of boxers like Mohammed Ali (19) and Mike Tyson (9).
The extreme-right keyboard warriors at Leave.EU accusing Klitschko of "grovelling" in order to piggyback their pathetically cheap jingoistic agenda onto Anthony Joshua's hard-fought victory is an absolute disgrace.
Joshua had the decency and good grace to pay a heartfelt tribute to his opponent after the fight but these extreme-right cowards felt free to use Klitschko's epic defeat to peddle their own tawdry agenda. I bet the cowardly right-wing keyboard warrior who posted this Tweet would never dare accuse Klitschko of "grovelling" to his face.
3. So much disrespect
The extreme-right Leave.EU keyboard warrior who posted this was so disrespectful to one of the all time greats of heavyweight boxing they didn't even spell his name correctly in the hashtag. It's Klitschko not "Klitchsko" you ignorant scum.
It's funny how the extreme-right can switch from absolutely hating a guy because of their anti-Muslim bigotry (Joshua isn't even a Muslim, he just has an interest in all religious faiths) to piggybacking their own fanatical extreme-right agenda onto his victory isn't it?
It's almost as if they're 100% immune to cognitive dissonance isn't it?
6. It was an epic fight that Klitschko almost won
Anyone who watched the fight between the 41 year old legend and the new kid on the scene (who only started boxing 10 years ago!) knows that it was a truly epic fight. Klitschko knocked Joshua down in the 6th round and had him reeling for the next few rounds, had it gone slightly differently Klitschko could have won it.
This was definitely not the kind of easy fight the delusionally over-optimistic Leave.EU mob seem to imagine that the UK is going to have with the EU 27.
Joshua put on a brilliant performance to beat his opponent, but not many would put money on him to win against 27 other boxers all fighting him at the same time with a carefully pre-planned fight strategy would they?
8. Theresa May is no Anthony Joshua
Theresa May thinks that she can convince the British public that she's a "strong and stable leader" simply by repeating the phrase like a broken robot, but whether the people actually believe it and re-elect her appalling government, she's so obviously not.
How out of touch with reality would you have to be to actually imagine an erratic self-serving coward like that is the right choice to lead the UK into the most complex and risky diplomatic process the nation has ever faced?
9. Woeful tactics
Diplomacy is not all that much like boxing so I know I'm beginning to over-stretch the analogy here, but Theresa May's woeful so-called "negotiating strategy" makes her an obvious walking total knock out if she doesn't run away crying first!
The centrepiece of her so-called strategy is to do a "no deal" flounce away from the negotiating table which would trigger an economic meltdown to make the 2007-08 global financial sector insolvency crisis look like a walk in the park.
In boxing terms Theresa May has informed her opponent that if they hit her too hard she's going to run out of the boxing ring crying, forfeit the match fee and make an absolute embarrassment of the country she's representing.
If Theresa May does flounce out of Europe it'll be the UK economy that is left reeling from the ensuing chaos, and grovelling for trade deals with other nations (a "no deal" strop means the UK resorts to WTO tariffs with all nations, not just the EU ones).
Imagine the delusional over-optimism of the type of Brexiter who imagines that the likes of India, Turkey, China and the US wouldn't use the UK's position of weakness to their advantage with "you need us more than we need you, so what are you going to give us in return?"
The Leave.EU mob are a foul jingoistic bunch who tried to piggyback their fanatical extreme-right agenda onto the success of a great young fighter who was disgustingly abused by the extreme-right just a couple of months ago!
They're suffering from an astoundingly over-optimistic delusion that the UK is going to come out of this scenario with some kind of magnificent victory, when in reality there's no chance of any such outcome, especially if we end up with a weak, spiteful and dithering charlatan like Theresa May leading us into the fight.
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The mainstream press will give Corbyn's speech minimal publicity, and hardly any of the scant coverage that does appear will frame the speech in terms of the rousing ovation that it received.
That's why I'm providing a transcript of the speech so you can judge it for yourself.
------------------------------------------------------ [Introductions] ...
It is a great honour to address
you, leaders of one of the most important professions in our society, those who
look after the education, the wellbeing, and the future of our children.
That is why Labour is making our
children’s education one of the cornerstones of our General Election campaign.
The choice in this election could
not be clearer – and it’s not the re-run of the EU referendum that the Prime
Minister wants it to be.
Britain needs a government for the
many not the few – one that’s ready to invest in our economy and public
services. But the Conservatives have demonstrated that cannot be them, preferring
to give the richest and largest corporations tax hand-outs worth tens of
billions.
The NHS and social care have been
pushed into a state of emergency. Housebuilding has fallen to its lowest
peacetime rate since the 1920s. Schools across the country face real terms cuts
in funding per pupil, and class sizes are rising – while those young people who
want to go to university face huge debts.
There is no greater responsibility
than ensuring our children get the education that they deserve. I know this,
you know this, parents up and down this country know this. But it is clear that
this Conservative Government has its focus elsewhere.
The NAHT has correctly pointed out
that this election is make or break time for our children’s education system.
As all of you will know, the
National Audit Office confirms that schools are facing a cut of three billion
pounds in real terms by 2020, the first real terms cut in education budgets in
a generation.
This is an absolutely staggering
figure and shows the need for a complete change of direction in how the
government of this country treats our schools.
And we have to ask ourselves: is
this how we want to treat the education system of our children? Is this how
Britain’s children deserve to be treated?
Do our children deserve to be held
back by a chronic shortage of teachers?
Do our children deserve to crammed
into schools like sardines?
Do our children deserve to be
taught by teachers whose morale is at an all-time low?
Not by any fault of the teachers,
they are the people who also bear the burden of government cuts, but the fault
of governments who fail to recognise the importance of investing in the lives
of children, and those who teach and support them, up and down this country.
That is why we must value teachers,
because if we don’t we lose them. And you know better than anyone there is a
recruitment crisis and that crisis will be made even worse if we don’t secure
the rights of EU nationals.
Last year 5,000 teachers from EU
countries qualified to teach here and there are thousands more working to teach
our children. So that’s why, as Keir Starmer set out this week, a Labour
government will guarantee the rights of EU nationals living here.
And if we lose teachers, we lose
subjects, we narrow the horizons of young people. So that’s why I passionately
believe in an Arts Pupil Premium so that every primary school child will
benefit from a £160 million cash boost to help pupils learn to play
instruments, learn drama and dance and have “regular access” to theatres, galleries
or museums in their local areas.
And yet, while all this is
happening, while funding to our children’s education is cut, multinational
corporations have received multi-billion pound tax giveaways
How can it be right that money is
being siphoned straight out of our children’s schools and directly into the
pockets of the super-rich?
We have to be clear, once and for
all, that enough is enough.
Throughout this General Election
campaign, we will be making absolutely clear our commitment to build a country
for the many, and not just the few.
A vital part of that will be
creating an education system that provides for every child regardless of their
background, or their parents’ income.
Labour will introduce
a National Education Service, ensuring excellent learning opportunities for all
from early years to adult education.
What we need now – and what you as
teaching professionals need now – are concrete answers and concrete solutions
to the problems that our education system is facing.
That is why Labour has set out a
plan to help give every young person the best start in life possible, by
introducing universal free school meals for pupils at primary schools. It’s a
policy that is fully costed, and will be paid for by introducing VAT on private
school fees.
There are clear educational
benefits to providing universal free school meals. It boosts the attainment and
level of education of our children. We know that these early formative years
are the most important in a child’s education and we have a duty to provide for
our children the best we possibly can throughout that period.
It’s a policy that demonstrates
how a Labour government would care for the many, and not just the few.
We will ensure that every single
child receives a healthy and nutritious meal which will not only boost
children’s productivity in the classroom but also helps to ensure their
personal wellbeing, no matter what their background.
Children
eating together is a great start in life.
So not only will the policy help
children throughout their time in education, it will also help teachers who
will see the benefits of improved concentration and improved attainment in the
classroom.
And it will help parents who will
not only save money but will have the peace of mind in knowing that their child
is getting a healthy school meal during the day
Investing in the health of our
nation’s children, is investing in our nation’s future.
If we are to truly place value on
our children’s education, we must also place value on the teachers, head
teachers and other school staff who deliver that education.
We must put an end to the
continual attacks on the teaching profession, end the downward pressure on pay
and conditions, the constant undermining of morale and the erosion of standards
that means we have more unqualified teachers than ever in our classrooms.
That’s why, as part of the
comprehensive programme Labour has set out today to strengthen rights at work
and end the race to the bottom in the jobs market, we have confirmed a Labour
government will lift the cap on public sector pay.
It cannot be right that those who
provide our vital public services have their pay squeezed year after year.
Britain’s public service employees deserve a pay rise.
And we must give the teaching
profession the recognition it deserves, not only in terms of pay, but also in
terms of status in our society.
We need to listen to you, the
teaching professionals, on how you believe schools can be improved and respect
the huge wealth of talent and knowledge that lies in the teaching profession as
a whole.
I have always believed that the
people who know how to a job best are those who do it day in day out. We must
start listening to parents, teachers and head teachers: you are the people who
know how schools should be run and you are the people who best understand the
needs of our children.
That is why Labour has taken our
lead from the NAHT – and from the other teachers’ unions – when we set out in
no uncertain terms our opposition to the expansion of grammar schools in this
country.
Not only does the mass
introduction of segregation in our education system not help the overwhelming
majority of this country’s children, it also returns us to what are frankly
Victorian notions of education based on a narrow curriculum.
The task is clear: we must build
an education system that suits the needs of our children and the opportunities
they will have in the jobs market of tomorrow.
And if we are to build an economy
worthy of the 21st century, we need a schools system that looks forwards, and
not backwards to the failed models of the past.
We must recognise that every
single child in this country has talents and every single child deserves the
chance to flourish and thrive to their maximum potential in whichever field
suits them best.
But our children’s schools do not
exist in a vacuum. I am always in awe of the local head teachers I work with.
Like thousands of children, I have learned so much from them.
And what I admire most is their
commitment – not just to managing their schools and to educating our children –
but the multi-faceted demands of the children in their community: their housing
issues, immigration problems, their mental health. You are the heart of your
communities.
You are part of a wider care
system and you need the other parts of that system to work effectively
alongside you, youth services, the NHS and social care.
Support for schools by these
services is essential to promote pupil wellbeing. The duty to directly address
pupils’ mental health needs ultimately rests with the social and care services.
No school should be asked to fund
health and social care services from the school budget. That is why Labour has
pledged to address the chronic underfunding for social care and the NHS.
As you all know schools are most
effective as places of learning when they work together with high quality
social care and health services to meet the needs of all students but
especially those who are most vulnerable.
One in ten children and young people
in this country suffer from a mental health condition and 75 percent of adult
mental health problems are found to begin before the age of 18.
We must prioritise the mental
wellbeing of our children. This is the least they deserve.
It is vital that we enable early
intervention and provide support when problems first emerge but to do this we
must build an education system that integrates social and health care.
Improving the way our society
deals with mental health is a particular concern of mine because I am
passionate to see opportunities for all.
That’s why I have been so
impressed by the work so many of you do for children with special needs and how
good special needs co-ordinators can liberate children from what has sometimes
been a lifetime of exclusion.
That focus on the individual child
is what drives our determination to reduce class sizes. We know that half a
million children have been landed in super-size classes of 31 pupils or
more.
This government is failing on
education on its own terms. The Prime Minister herself has said that
super-sized classes are proof of a school system in crisis. So then why is it
allowed to continue?
Why are our children’s schools,
not getting the funding that they deserve? This is a choice. And it is the
wrong choice. The cut to schools funding is also a breach of their manifesto
the Conservatives’ pledge to protect schools funding.
Labour will ensure schools have
the resources they need.
I’m afraid I can’t give you a
sneak preview of the full Labour manifesto today but be assured if it’s a
choice between a tax giveaway to the largest corporations paying the lowest
rates of tax in the developed world or funding for our schools. Labour will
make very different choices from the Conservatives.
We have already started to set
some of that out not just our free schools meals policy.
And our commitment to reintroduce
the Educational Maintenance Allowance for college students from lower
incomes.
We are also committed to restoring
maintenance grants for university students so that no one is held back from
realising their ambitions and so that every schoolchild knows that the options
of further and higher Education are available to them.
We must not be ashamed to value
education, for education’s own sake.
Schools should exist to get the
very best from our children, to give them the best start in life, to enable
them to succeed in whichever walk of life they chose.
Whereas Theresa May’s government
has repeatedly cut resources and staffing we will invest in our children’s
futures because they deserve nothing less.
The excuses from the government
come thick and fast. They’ve blamed teachers for not working hard enough,
they’ve diverted funds to their vanity projects. £138.5 million wasted on
schools that have closed, partially closed or never opened in the first place.
We will not bring back a system
that blamed children and parents for not passing the eleven plus and getting
into a grammar school.
They blame everybody else, to
divert attention from their own damaging failures. They need head teachers to
tell them, own up, take responsibility and say sorry.
Labour will give schools the
funding that our children deserve, the funding that teachers and headteachers
deserve and the investment that our country and our economy deserves.
This election can be the chance
for a fresh start, with a Labour government that will invest to create shared
prosperity, protect our public services and build a fairer Britain.
A Labour government will work with
you, we will give schools the funding the need and we will ensure you and your
staff get the respect and resources you need.
We have a duty to our children and
we will meet it.
Thank you.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Meanwhile our "strong and stable leader" has taken a two month holiday from working on the problem at hand in order to fight a ridiculously self-serving snap election that she had repeatedly promised the public and the markets that she wasn't even going to call. Theresa May's dithering leadership has been absolutely woeful. It took her an excruciating 9 months of meaningless "Brexit means Brexit" platitudes before she finally triggered Article 50, then she pretty much immediately threw the nation into the turmoil of a self-serving snap election causing another two month delay in the UK actually setting out a negotiating position beyond her 12 incredibly vague points (some of them extraordinarily wishful fantasyland stuff that's never going to happen) and the astoundingly reckless threat to do an economically suicidal "no deal" strop if our "strong and stable leader" doesn't get her own way. To put this pathetic dithering into perspective, it's taken all 27 remaining EU states just one month since Article 50 was triggered to negotiate and ratify their negotiating stance. The UK clearly won't be making any progress on the problem until after June 8th because Theresa May and her three Brexiteers will be too busy campaigning until then. So it's going to be pretty much an entire year since the Brexit vote and Theresa May will still be dithering (assuming she doesn't somehow contrive to actually lose the election despite pretty much the entire mainstream media being on her side). How can 27 incredibly diverse nations (Poland has an extreme-right government, the Portuguese coalition government includes their communist party!) have finalised an approach to the Brexit problem in just a month, but Theresa May is still clearly and undeniably just making things up as she goes along, U-turning all over the place and hiding in Tory "safe spaces" instead of actually fighting a real election campaign? You'd have to be completely divorced from reality to imagine that such a dithering "oh let's have a surprise election now instead of concentrating on the problem at hand" approach is the strategy of a "strong and stable leader". It's the strategy of a dithering self-serving charlatan.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
I feel a tad patronising for actually pointing this out, but it's important to remember that just because someone repeatedly claims to be a strong and stable leader, and their chums in the right-wing press refuse to hold them to account over anything, that doesn't actually make them a strong and stable leader at all. The problem for this "best Brexit deal possible" argument for voting Tory of is of course that Theresa May isn't actually promising a good deal from the Brexit negotiations at all is she?
What she actually did in her January 2017 clown costume speech was to horrify pretty much everyone apart from her extreme-right fans in the tabloid propaganda sheets by dumping the threat of a mutually ruinous "no deal" strop on the negotiating table. Remember that an economically ruinous "no deal" cliff edge Brexit followed by Britain turning itself into a low-wage, low-welfare corporate tax haven is precisely what the extreme-right Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party have always wanted*.
The appalling scenario Theresa May threatened the rest of Europe with is exactly what quite a lot of her Tory MPs actually see as the best possible outcome!
The threat of a "no deal" flounce was clearly more of a sop to the extreme-right element of the Tory party than anything even remotely resembling a coherent diplomatic strategy, because shocking and enraging the people you have to negotiate with is a ridiculous thing to do before the talks have even got underway. If you believe a belligerent threat like if you don't give me what I want I'll do a "no deal" flounce away from the negotiations and then set about turning the UK into a tax haven is going to deliver the UK a really good deal, you really don't know anything about diplomacy at all do you? It's simply not possible to persuade a much more economically powerful opponent to give you the best deal possible in a 27 vs 1 diplomatic negotiation by starting off with an open threat to blow up an economic bomb over their countries and turn yourself into a tax haven aimed at extracting wealth from their economies rather than actually earning your own.
Just try to have a think about how Theresa May's behaviour looks on the continent.
Try to consider why there's an ever-so-rare total agreement amongst the EU 27 that they're not going to allow Theresa May the quickfire corporate friendly UK-EU trade deal she wants before she's even guaranteed the rights of EU citizens living in the UK or addressed the problems that Brexit has created for the Irish peace process. Do you honestly think that Theresa May using the lives of EU citizens like gambling chips in the reckless game of brinkmanship she's determined to play with the entire social and economic future of our nation is a good strategy for achieving the best possible deal with the EU?
Or do you admit that this is actually the kind of behaviour that would strongly harden attitudes on the continent against Britain (especially if the British public give her a thumping majority as a reward for behaving in this unconscionable manner)? If you want any kind of good deal out of Brexit, then it's painfully obvious that a bellicose and belligerent intellectual lightweight like Theresa May is one of the last people in the country you'd trust to lead us into the negotiations, especially given that she's the one who threw the threat of a ruinous "no deal" Brexit flounce onto the negotiating table in the first place!
I'm not telling you who to vote for on June 8th, but what I will say is that if you vote for Theresa May in the expectation of getting a good Brexit deal, be prepared to be bitterly disappointed.
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Longest fall in value of wages since records began Under Tory rule British workers have suffered the longest sustained decline in the real value of their wages since records began. The fall is so bad that it's the joint worst wage collapse in the developed world with Greece. The difference of course is that Greece did that to their workers because they were forced to by the Troika, the Tories did that to British workers because they wanted to.
A vote for Tories is a vote for an NHS in crisis NHS recruitment crisis One of Theresa May's first acts as Prime Minister was to scrap NHS bursaries, which caused an astonishing 10,000 decline in applications for nursing courses. Add into the mix the fact that NHS staff from EU countries are quitting the NHS in record numbers and there's a massive NHS recruitment crisis on the cards.
A vote for Tories is a vote for a massive NHS staff shortage Systematic abuse of disabled people The amount of appalling schemes and degrading assessment regimes disabled people have to go through under this Tory government is absolutely shocking. There's so much of it I've written a full article detailing over a dozen of the worst things.
A vote for Tories is a vote for slumlords renting shit houses to people with nowhere else to turn
Public transport chaos As a result of the shambolic Tory privatisation of the railways the UK has the most expensive, most over-crowded and least reliable rail service of any comparable developed European nation. What's more is that the profiteering private companies who operate the services take more in government subsidies than it cost to run the entire system under British Rail!
A vote for Tories is a vote for crap, over-priced and over-crowded rail services
A vote for Tories is a vote for the most expensive rip-off deal the UK has ever signed up to Social care crisis The Tories have slashed £4.6 billion from the social care budget at a time of rising demand due to the UK's ageing population demographics. This social care funding crisis has coincided with the biggest increase in the death rate since the 1960s, and is putting an immense amount of pressure on already overstretched NHS services and unpaid carers.
A vote for Tories is a vote a social care system in crisis
A vote for Tories is a vote for tax-dodging corporate outsourcing parasitism
Fire service cuts Between 2010 and 2015 the Tories slashed 30% off the fire service budget resulting in the loss of 10,000 firefighter jobs and the closure of 39 fire stations. Between 2015 and 2020 they intend to slash another 20%. In 2015/16 the number of fire deaths increased by 17.4%.
A vote for Tories is a vote for more people dying in house fires
Sweetheart tax deals One of the sickest things about the Tory government is the way they allowed HMRC to draw up sweetheart tax deals with massive corporations like Google, Starbucks and Vodafone. Why should Google get to negotiate a 3% tax deal when ordinary working people have to pay what they actually owe? A vote for Tories is a vote for more sweetheart tax deals with multinational corporations
A vote for Tories is a vote for extreme surveillance and an end to the concept of privacy
Dictators and despots Theresa May and the Tories love sucking up to dictators and despots like the Islamist tyrants in Saudi Arabia and the Turkish autocrat Recep Erdoğan. The disgraced Liam Fox was even in the Philippines to suck up to the brutal dictator Rodrigo Duterte and talk up our "shared values". A vote for Tories is a vote for closer relations with dictators and despots Contempt for human rights Theresa May has a burning contempt for your human rights. She has expressed her determination to tear up the European Convention on Human Rights on many occasions, and join Belarus as the only European nation that doesn't adhere to the human rights legislation that was bestowed on Europe by the British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee.
A vote for Tories is a vote to scrap your own human rights
A vote for Tories is a vote for the lady who is for turning
Threat of a "no deal" Brexit strop perhaps the most worrying thing of all is the way Theresa May has made the threat of a "no deal" Brexit strop the centrepiece of her diplomatically inept Brexit negotiating strategy. If the EU 27 call her bluff and she ends up walking the UK over a "no deal" Brexit cliff edge the social and economic consequences will be catastrophic. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that the imposition of WTO tariffs, the flight of businesses, border checks and all the other chaos that would come with a "no deal" flounce would wipe between 6.3% and 9.5% off the national GDP. To put that in perspective the recession that followed the 2007-08 global financial sector insolvency crisis (you know, the one we're still trying to recover from) wiped 4.8% off GDP.
A vote for Tories is a vote for the threat of an even bigger economic meltdown than the last one Disclaimer I've limited myself to 30 things because I don't have all day to sit here writing and backing up all my assertions with sources, but there are so many other things that didn't get a mention (like legal aid cuts, sack-at-will legislation, numerous spectacular court defeats, filibustering Tory MPs, £1,200 unfair dismissal tribunal fees, Secret Courts, the gagging law, hundreds of Sure Start centres closed, massive tax breaks for fracking companies, mental health funding cuts, the rape clause, the garden bridge fiasco, highest childcare fees in Europe, In-work benefits cuts, bigoted and homophobic Tory MPs, loads of new PFI scams, countless dodgy privatisations, hidden air pollution reports, a blank cheque for the private companies that operate Trident, refusal to help the UK steel industry, Troy Brexit liars like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, prisons chaos, slashed adult education budgets, economically illiterate cuts to flood defence spending, the anti-democratic Great Repeal Bill power grab, cosying up to Rupert Murdoch ...).
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