This week the political establishment and the right-wing propaganda rags have been celebrating 100 years since the 1918 Representation of the People Act which gave some women the right to vote in General Elections for the first time.
There are several extraordinary things about this celebration.
The first is that the 1918 Representation of the People Act wasn't an equalisation of voting rights at all, it was a deeply sexist and classist compromise designed to enfranchise a small number of property-owning women from the privileged classes, whilst maintaining the disenfranchisement of millions of ordinary woman.
Yes it was a small step in the right direction, but the way it was done is indicative of the sexist and elitist attitudes that still abound today in British society, and especially in Westminster and the right-wing propaganda rags like the Express, Daily Mail, and S*n.
The next thing to note is that this compromise legislation was only achieved through the sustained political activism of the Suffragettes (a word initially coined by the Daily Mail as a term of abuse).
Make no mistake about it, the political elite and right-wing media who are lauding the achievement of the suffragettes today are exactly the people who would have bitterly despised and disparaged them at the time.
The suffragettes protested noisily and often, they regularly associated with trade unions and left-wing political movements, they interrupted political speeches, they defied the law, they criticised the elitist political establishment, and many of them even resorted to destruction of property and acts of violence in the name of their cause.
As a result they were continually criticised in the press, harassed, arrested, and even fed through tubes that were brutally forced up their noses when they went on hunger strike.
- Now look at the new Tory drive to criminalise political protest.
- Look at the contempt with which the political elite and the right-wing press sneer at modern day activist movements.
- Look at the unbridled hatred of trade unions and the political left that pervades the ruling Tory party and the right-wing press.
- Look at the barely disguised contempt with which most politicians consider the views of the general public, and the contempt with which right-wing press hacks expect us to believe their campaigns of lies and smears against social progressives and the political left.
- Look at the contempt with which the Tories deliberately filibustered the debate on votes at sixteen for no other reason that they know that young people won't vote Tory because the Tories have nothing to offer the young except more debt, lower wages, worse services, and more expensive housing and education than any previous generation.
- Look at the way the Tories and the right-wing press smear the centre-left democratic socialist Jeremy Corbyn as some kind of terrifying extreme-leftist when he's never said anything remotely as militant as Syvia Pankhurst's declaration that she was going to "fight capitalism even if it kills me".
The absolute brass neck of the establishment elitists is extraordinary. They laud the social progressives of the past at the very same time as they despise and disparage the social progressives of the present.
The lesson from 1918 is clear. Society does not advance because powerful elites benevolently choose to improve things on our behalf. It advances because ordinary people stand up and fight for their rights.
And even when pople eventually overcome the combined resistance of the political elitists and the mercenary hacks who do the bidding of the right-wing press barons, the establishment elitists only give away compromises instead of the full freedoms that are demanded.
Every generation must keep up the fight for social justice because when the elitists who rule over and dictate what we see in the media us are not completely indifferent to our suffering, they actively make things worse by erecting new barriers to social mobility, new methods of persecuting the poor, the sick, the young, and the disabled, new curtailments on workers' rights, and new laws designed to silence those who would use facts and evidence to protest against them.
Any generation that gives up on the fight for social justice simultaneously betrays the brave activists who went before them by allowing their achievements to be undone, and betrays the generations who come after them by ensuring that they have to work twice as hard just to make up the ground that was lost during the period of widespread public apathy.
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If you're the kind of person to mindlessly accept the mainstream media presentation of events at face value, you'd now be under the impression that on Friday night a bunch of violent leftist goons tried to attack the hard-right Brextremist, Tory leadership favourite, and darling of the Britain First hate mob Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The reality, as is so often the case, is completely different.
Yes some noisy protesters turned up to interrupt a Jacob Rees-Mogg speech, but Rees-Mogg went over to talk to them and they certainly didn't "attack" him as claimed by desperately dishonest outlets like the (Daily Mail owned) Metro in their coverage of the incident.
As Rees-Mogg was talking to the protesters, one of his supporters waded in violently, striking a young woman twice in the face, escalating the scene from unruly but peaceful protest to a violent melee.
The mainstream media and a whole bunch of politicians (including a load of clueless Labour Politicians) mindlessly regurgitated the hard-right Guido Fawkes/Breitbart propaganda line that the violence was instigated by the left, when the video evidence proved that it was instigated by the white-shirted Jacob Rees-Mogg supporting goon.
The outrageous Tory opportunist Brandon Lewis even used the Orwellian misrepresentations of this incident smear Jeremy Corbyn and launch a new government crackdown on political protest to supposedly protect free speech.
A crackdown on political protest to protect free speech is bonkers enough in it's own right, but it's off-the-chart lunacy when it's coming from the political party who brought us the gagging law, unprecedented state snooping powers, a plan to ban academics criticising the government, and relies on an army of death threat hurling blue-kippers to crush any signs of dissent within their own party!
The mainstream media obviously didn't bother to investigate the identity of the violent right-wing thug who escalated the situation, because to do so would have totally undermined their carefully crafted propaganda narrative that the left, and ultimately Jeremy Corbyn, are to blame for the violence.
Fortunately independent media did bother to investigate, and the white-shirted goon has been identified as Paul Townsley, a martial arts instructor from Bristol with a penchant for campaigning for Jacob Rees-Mogg to replace Theresa May as leader of the Tory party.
Townsley's son then helpfully confirmed that it was his dad who instigated the violence at the event.
And then on the Monday morning the independent blog Skwawkbox delivered the huge scoop that the mainstream media completely missed; pictures of Townsley actually dressed up as a Nazi.
Jacob-Rees-Mogg has denied having any connection with Townsley, but this denial is now coming under scrutiny too, and if Rees-Mogg does have any political, financial, or business connections to this violent hard-right goon, he'd better come clean soon, because independent media will definitely find them.
Whether he has political or financial connections to Townsley or not, a refusal to condemn his violent actions at this point would clearly be another display of cowardice from the Brextremist in chief (after his refusal to condemn the Britain First hate mob who have been mobilising to support him).
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A report from Spinwatch has identified numerous schools, local councils and police forces that have been describing anti-fracking protests as "extremism", "extremists" and even "terrorist groups".
Labelling anti-fracking as "extremism" and "terrorism"
The Spinwatch report identifies examples from various parts of the UK including North Yorkshire, Merseyside, Dorset and West Sussex. The unifying theme in all of these examples is that the documents and presentations equating anti-fracking protests with terrorism and extreme-right fanaticism are all linked with the Tory government's Prevent Strategy, which was signed off by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary.
Of course we know that the Tories are totally in hock to the fracking industry, so it serves their purposes to have their opponents labelled as "extremists" and "terrorists", but surely nobody in their right mind thinks that it's acceptable for multiple schools, councils and police forces to equate peaceful anti-fracking protests with savage murderers like ISIS and extreme-right fanatics like the MP killer Thomas Mair.
One of the worst examples of these smears against anti-fracking groups was identified in the Prevent policy of Chesswood School in West Sussex. The executive summary of their prevent policy identifies fracking protests as an "extremist ideology" associated with "terrorist groups" and equates environmental opposition to fracking with Al Qaida and far-right extremism.
British values
The Chesswood School Prevent document then goes on to define "extremist" as "vocal or active opposition to British values".
Whatever their opinion on the merits/harms of fracking, I'm pretty sure that most reasonable people would accept that anti-fracking protests consist of vocal or active opposition to fracking, not a vocal or active opposition to British values.
The Chesswood School Prevent strategy then goes on to define "British values" as respect for "democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs, and those without faith".
The right to peaceful protest is an absolutely essential part of individual liberty. It's ludicrous to imagine that it's possible to have a free and liberal society without the right to protest against the actions of the government, major institutions or other individuals.
If anyone is guilty of disregarding "British values" it's clearly people who insist on smearing anti-fracking protesters as extremists and terrorists simply for opposing what they consider to be unacceptable environmental destruction. Anyone who denies the right to protest such issues is obviously denying individual liberty, and clearly opposing the Chesswood School definition of "British values".
If respect for democracy is a "British value" then many would argue that the Tory party are extremists because of their abject disrespect for democracy. Think about the Tory election fraud at the 2015 General Election, Theresa May's Supreme Court appeal to try to scrap the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the decision by the Tory run North Yorkshire County Council to allow fracking in Ryedale despite the 131:1 scale of public opposition to the plan.
Tory extremism
This concerted effort to define opposition to fracking as "extremism" and "terrorism" ties in with another of Theresa May's appalling right-wing authoritarian schemes.
Since 2014 the Tories have been pushing an extremism strategy that would allow them to revoke the human rights of people who have committed no crime whatever.
If Theresa May's extremism policy becomes law, then law-abiding citizens could be banned from attending protests or public events, and have all of their online activities pre-vetted by the police.
All that would need to be shown in order to impose these restrictions on people's human rights is that there is a suspicion that the individual could become involved in "harmful activities".
Theresa May's definition of "harmful activities" includes "a risk of public disorder", "a risk of harassment, alarm or distress" and the extremely vague "threat to the functioning of democracy".
So if Theresa May gets her way people could have their rights to free speech, free assembly, the presumption of innocence and peaceful protest scrapped simply because some police officer says they suspect the individual may at some future point cause "alarm or distress" to specified or unspecified persons.
With such extraordinarily low thresholds it's easy to see how the government could use Theresa May's extremism orders to shut down legitimate peaceful protests. All it would take is for a police officer or fracking company employee to claim "distress" because of an anti-fracking protest, then individual law-abiding anti-fracking protesters could be rounded up and stripped of their human rights, banned from protesting again, and forced into a monitoring regime to censor everything they write on the Internet.
Before he resigned in shame after his EU referendum gamble backfired David Cameron summed up the objectives of this policy when he said that "for too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'."
It's extraordinary that a serving Prime Minister could get away with expressing such a sinister intention to interfere in the lives of law-abiding citizens, but the mainstream press gave him a free pass on it.
The mainstream media also gave a free pass to Theresa May who is the architect of this policy of stripping law abiding citizens of their human rights, and now this fanatical right-wing authoritarian is the Prime Minister, and still the mainstream media refuse to draw sufficient attention to her autocratic tendencies and her outright contempt for human rights.
Conclusion
It's impossible to not see the connection between this concerted effort to define anti-fracking protesters as "extremists" and "terrorists" and Theresa May's policy of stripping law-abiding citizens of their human rights.
The Tory party are clearly intent on serving the interests of the fracking industry. The widespread effort to brand anti-fracking protesters as "extremists" is clearly useful to the frackers, as will be the Tory policy of stripping people of their right to participate in public or online protests based on nothing more than a suspicion that "alarm" or "distress" may be caused.
You'd have to be staggeringly naive to imagine that the mainstream press would put up a fight to protect our human rights from this next Tory assault, especially given the way Theresa May's appalling Snoopers' Charter drifted into law with barely a whimper of opposition from the media. So it will be down to the public to stop the Tories from achieving their wet dream of labelling law-abiding citizens as "extremists" in order to criminalise peaceful protest.
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So Nigel Farage has resigned as UKIP leader again, and this time it's unlikely he'll be breaking his word by returning one week later.
Washing his hands of the mess he made
In his resignation statement he said "I have decided to stand aside as leader of Ukip. The victory for the leave side in the referendum means that my political ambition has been achieved" before going on to have a sly dig at the politicians who will have to stick around and clear up his mess by calling them "career politicians". Justifying his unwillingness to stick around and see through the monumental change he campaigned so tirelessly for by having a populist dig at those who will be actually be left dealing with the consequences is yet another measure of the despicable character of the man.
Anyone who thinks that Farage's parting rant at the EU wasn't an shameful national embarrassment clearly knows nothing about Britain's proud record of international diplomacy, nor gives a damn about the fact that the people Farage was insulting are the very people who Britain will have to negotiate with over the next few years to work out what the post-Brexit settlement between the UK and the EU is actually going to be.
Slinging a load of insults at the people you are going to have to negotiate with looks like a spectacularly counter-productive strategy, unless of course you're planning to wash your hands of the whole affair and leave others with the awkward task of negotiating with the people you just pissed off .
This is the beginning, not the end of it
The idea that the referendum vote for Brexit is the "be all and end all" of the whole thing rather then the beginning of a very complicated process is an utterly bizarre, yet widespread delusion.
Just witness the way so many Brexit voters leave furious "sore loser" and "get over it already" type comments when people are trying to discuss the likely future consequences of Britain's haphazard departure from the EU, as if the vote for Brexit was the end of the affair rather than the beginning of it!
Before the referendum people like me argued that Brexit would be a viable proposition for consideration if the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson had actually bothered to come up with any kind of coherent plan for how the post-Brexit UK economy should be restructured, but without such a plan, a vote for Brexit would be a vote for unpredictable chaos.
"Fearmongerer" shrieked the Brexiters every time we tried to point out that the Leave campaign was based on anti-immigration hysteria, uncosted and hopelessly unrealistic spending pledges, naive wishful thinking and outright lies, and that above all, that they had no real plan for what comes next.
Now it's becoming increasingly clear to everyone that there was no great plan after all.
The post-Brexit chaos
In the aftermath of Brexit the reality is beginning to sink in. David Cameron resigned because he didn't want to be the one to press the economic self-destruct button by submitting the Article 50 notification. He damned well should have done because he was the one who decided to gamble the entire future of the UK in return for a bit of short-term party political advantage at the 2015 General Election, but he didn't.
The majority of Labour MPs then decided to wash their hands of responsibility for clearing up the Brexit mess by focusing their attention on a ridiculously ill-timed coup attempt against their own leader instead of concentrating on the infinitely more important task of explaining what the Labour Party policy would be for reducing the social and economic insecurities caused by Brexit might be.
Boris Johnson was the next to wash his hands of the whole Brexit thing by refusing to stand in the Tory leadership election, leaving a field of five staggeringly unappealing candidates (is Jeremy Corbyn really that much more inherently "unelectable" than that disgusting bunch?).
Now Nigel Farage has washed his hands of the whole affair too.
A hard-right Tory future
Given the way the majority of Labour MPs decided to commit collective suicide rather than attempt to outline any sensible policies for dealing with Brexit (something that Corbyn and McDonnell have admirably tried to do despite the pre-planned anti-democratic internal rebellion going on behind their backs), it's pretty much clear that whoever wins the Tory leadership election is going to be the one to determine what form Brexit actually takes.
Whether it's the terrifyingly right-wing authoritarian Theresa May (who wants to scrap your human rights and replace them with a set of Tory allowances), the uber-Thatcherite anti-intellectual Michael Gove (the man who handed £billions worth of publicly owned schools over, for free, to unaccountable private sector interests) or an outsider like the dark horse Andrea Leadsom (who seems the most likely winner to me because she's far less smeared in shit than the other four candidates), Farage's legacy is going to be the Toryfication of Britain.
Nigel Farage's legacy
Enabling the Tory party to set about restructuring the UK far more comprehensively than Margaret Thatcher could ever have dreamed of is quite some achievement for a Thatcher-worshipping ex-Tory activist like Nigel Farage. I always maintained that UKIP was a Tory Trojan Horse political party designed to hoover up the votes of the dissatisfied and under-informed in order to deliver even more of the Thatcherite economic madness that is the actual cause of most of the social and economic problems faced by deprived communities across the UK.
Aside from giving a disgusting bunch of right-wingers who were too corrupt, incompetent or downright bigoted even for the Tory party (Neil Hamilton, Janice Atkinson, Bill Etheridge, David Silvester ...) a way back into mainstream politics, Farage's other main political legacy looks set to be the restructuring of the UK economy, constitution, legal system, foreign relations and society in general in line with the hard-right ideology of whichever of the five universally unappealing candidates ends up winning the Tory party leadership.
As for the party Farage fronted for so many years, whoever succeeds him as the leader of UKIP will have a hard task on their hands holding the party together when the actual reason for their existence has disappeared. However, whatever remains of UKIP looks certain to be an utterly toxic force in British politics which will continue to soak up the dissent of the communities most badly hit by hard-right Tory economics in order to drag the Tory party ever further rightwards.
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Have you seen the open letter from Jo (the disgruntled financial sector worker) to Russell Brand that has been described as "hilarious" and "scathing" by the mainstream press?
I have, and I have a few points to make about it.
TL;DR
The letter was far too long - and that's some criticism coming from me, given the length of most of my articles, including this one. I console myself with the fact that when I write my long articles I like to employ internal structure (such as subject headings) in order to break it down a bit into coherent and accessible pieces, rather than just jumbling together a long rambling diatribe.
The only reason that I bothered reading Jo's seemingly endless whining until the end was that after only the first dozen or so paragraphs I knew damn well that there would be plenty of ammunition for one of my "12 things ..." articles, otherwise I would almost certainly have dismissed it as TL;DR (too long; didn't read).
Hilarious? Piteous more like it?
The letter wasn't "hilarious" as claimed by the mainstream press, it wasn't even funny. If endless callbacks to Jo caring more about his cold lunch than society was meant to be a joke, it simply wasn't funny, and it remained unfunny despite the constant repetition.
I found Jo's letter about as hilarious as I found Russell Brand was when he and Jonathan Ross and made those abusive phone calls to an old man who used to be famous. Like 2008 vintage Brand, Jo's letter was was annoyingly self-centred and desperately unfunny.
How backwards can you get things?
In my view Jo got it completely the wrong way around when he said "much as I disagree with most of your politics, I've always rather liked you".
I used to find Russell's narcissism and puerile sense of humour really annoying. It's only since he started to grow up and engage with the political world that I've actually begun to warm to him.
It's incredible that someone could think that Russell Brand was better when he was an unfunny egotistical bully, and has begun resenting him since he started developing a bit of a social conscience.
Perhaps it's a reflection on how established the right-wing greed-is-a-virtue mentality has become that Jo actually liked Brand when he was an unfunny and egocentric money-grabber, but now that he's decided to listen to his social conscience and stand up for people who need a bit of help (like the Focus E15 mums), Jo reacts with fury.
Where does debt actually come from Jo?
The letter defended bankers' bonuses and complained about the concept of "debt" as a problem. It's almost as if our poor, hungry financial sector worker doesn't even understand that the reason that there is so much debt in our economy is that the private banks invent 97% of the currency that we use out of nothing, then rent out these debt backed wealth tokens as interest bearing loans. Hence all the debt - because if nearly all of the money in the economy is invented out of nothing by the banks and rented out to us, then destroyed by the same banks when it is repaid, where exactly does all of the money to pay the interest come from?
The institutions Jo works for and defends (despite claiming not to be a spokesman for them) are to blame for the fact that there is so much debt in the system, yet he's using "debt" as a stick to beat Brand with!
It's no wonder the banks collapsed if financial sector workers aren't even aware that the institutions that they work for are responsible for the ever increasing indebtedness of our economy.
At the person criticisms
Jo's letter is absolutely riddled with at the person criticisms (often refered to in latin as "Ad Hominem" attacks). Repeatedly slamming Brand for the fact that he is a millionaire is an extraordinary stance for someone who is so desperate to defend bankers' bonuses.
That Jo repeatedly resorts to personal attacks rather than developing coherent critiques of Brand's politics suggests that Jo doesn't care about actually winning the argument, he just wants to smear his opponent as much as possible, content in the assumption that most people don't have the critical thinking skills to differentiate between a blunderbuss barrage of personal attacks and a well structured counter-argument.
Rabid capitalists?
"You know what would have happened if a rabid capitalist had just turned up unannounced?"
Accusing Russell of being "rabid" by implication is a clear example of an ad hominem attack, but Jo's thought experiment is clearly a load of rubbish too. Lets say a Private Equity Fund billionaire who has made his fortune buying out and asset stripping countless viable businesses and outsourcing all of the jobs to China (someone I'd classify as a rabid capitalist) turns up unannounced in order to invest a few hundred million of his ill-gotten gains in RBS. Do you think he'd be turned away and physically forced out of the door by security for not having an appointment? If somehow he was, do you think the poor sod who decided to set security on such a wealthy potential investor would remain in his job for long?
Alternatively we could imagine our Private Equity Fund billionaire kicking up a stink in the lobby in front of a load of TV cameras, but it would be up to Jo to explain why such a ridiculously implausible thing might happen.
The issue clearly isn't that Brand had no appointment as Jo tries to pretend, it's that he was kicking up a fuss.
The "good deal for the taxpayer" argument!
Jo's letter makes the absurd argument that the RBS bailout was a good deal for the taxpayer. Since RBS was bailed out to the tune of £46 billion, the losses at the bank have reached, erm ... £46 billion.
It's almost as if all that public cash was poured into a black hole of debt never to be recovered. As all of this cash has been squandered RBS has continued handing out hundreds of millions per year in bonuses, because it apparently takes high calibre, hard-working people to squander £46 billion in free money from the taxpayer.
Jo spends most of his letter whining piteously, which is annoying but not necessarily dishonest, but this "good deal for the taxpayer" bit is either a display of being stunningly misinformed about the financial sector he works in, or it is derived from downright dishonesty.
Selectiveness
Defending bankers' bonuses at bailed out banks could be considered a brave stance considering the understandable amount of public anger, but cast alongside Jo's pitiful refusal to address stuff like the Libor and Forex rigging frauds and the PPI insurance fraud ("I do not speak for RBS, so cannot say anything about the recent FX trading scandal or PPI or any of that shit"), it's clearly spectacularly cowardly and self-interested stuff.
If he's going to use the "I cannot say anything" excuse in regards to several multi-billion pound frauds, it's bizarrely hypocritical to extensively defend other aspects of RBS business practices.
Jailing corrupt bankers makes more sense than just confiscating their bonuses
Claiming that bankers' not getting paid their bonuses for having committed crimes is sufficient punishment an absurd argument. It's like saying that muggers and armed robbers should be allowed to get off with their crimes, as long as they just pay back the money they stole. There should be an awful lot of bankers in jail in the UK and US after the global financial sector insolvency crisis, money laundering for Mexican drugs cartels, Libor, Forex and PPI, but the only big one who got locked up was Bernie Madoff, and we all know why ... he stole from the rich.
Tax-dodging
Jo makes a number of claims about the way the Mayfair film production company has benefited from tax-loopholes in order to raise funding for films with which Russell Brand is associated. There may be some legitimacy in these claims, but they're a bit bloody rich coming from someone who so desperately defends RBS, which is a company that has been caught instructing businesses not to pay their tax and avoided £500 million in tax, even after they were bailed out by the taxpayer.
"Return of the Fucking Jedi"
This is one of the most bizarre arguments I've ever seen: "Return Of The Jedi has never, on paper, made a profit. Return Of The fucking Jedi, Russell. As an actor, and even more so as the producer of a (officially) loss-making film, you've taken part in that, you've benefited from it.". The thing that makes this ridiculous argument so especially weak is that we all know that Jo would undoubtedly defend himself if we were to use the same ludicrous debating tactic with claims that HSBC (a bank he doesn't work for) made money from laundering money for Mexican drugs cartels and terrorist organisations, but because Jo is part of the financial sector, he's benefited from it, and that Jo must be a Mexican drug lord and Islamist terrorist by default.
Personal space
Of all of the issues in Jo's seemingly endless diatribe, the claim that Russell Brand aggressively invaded his personal body space seems to me to be by far the most serious.
Apparently this is the film footage of the incident. From what I can see Russell does get a bit close to the guy, but the fact that Russell smiles broadly at several points and the way that he touches him on the arm with his right hand imply an overly-friendly demeanor, not the spectacularly aggressive confrontation described in Jo's letter.
As someone who has suffered social anxiety and personal body space issues, I can see how it is potentially possible to misread situations as a lot more aggressive or critical than they actually are, but Jo's claim that Russell's nose was "two inches" from his face is clearly an under-estimate, the descriptions of the situation as "pretty fucking aggressive" and "an aggressive invasion of personal space" are clearly exaggerations, and the comparison to "primates squaring off for a fight" outright hyperbole.
Conclusion
The only reason that this ridiculous letter got all over the press at all is that Russell Brand is "clickbait". The newspapers know that by publishing this ridiculous letter they'll get a load of clicks on their websites, and a boost in their online advertising revenues.
Admittedly the reason I've published this riposte to the letter is that Russell Brand is "clickbait", however at least I can console myself with the facts that:
A. Unlike the mainstream press I've been honest enough to admit that I've used "clickbait" in order to get people to read this article.
B. I won't be making any revenue from ad clicks because I don't put any ads on my website. The only way this article could make any money whatever for me is if people have seen it as worthwhile enough to make a small donation after reading it (the "pay as you feel" principle).
C. Using "clickbait" probably isn't so bad if the readers are drawn into reading an article that is ostensibly about Russell Brand, but actually contains a lot of information on important issues such as financial sector corruption, debt backed fiat money creation and the spectacular failure of the RBS bailout, whilst also exposing some appalling debating tactics for the reader to try to avoid in future.
Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only sources of income for Another Angry Voice are small donations from people who see some value in my work. If you appreciate my efforts and you could afford to make a donation, it would be massively appreciated.
One of the things that delights me about having an ever growing audience of politically engaged people is that I can help people get more involved in politics. Some people like to contest that the only way to make a difference is to get out on the streets and protest, but this is wrong headed. Street protests are obviously an important component to dissent but many (especially the elderly, the disabled and those with children to care for) find street protests difficult and/or intimidating, especially given the concerted efforts by the establishment to undermine the right to peaceful political protest and to militarise the police.
I often ask people (if they feel strongly about an issue I've highlighted) to get involved by doing things such as writing to their MP, writing to businesses to explain the reasons for boycotting their products, contributing to public consultations and signing petitions. In my view these activities are just as important as street protests and pickets.
I recently posted the Avaaz Internet Apocalypse petition on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page for anyone who is opposed to the plans to introduce a "two-speed" Internet, where corporations will be able buy special favours from Internet Service Providers at the expense of the wider Internet (non-profit organisations, campaign groups and independent blogs like my own). One of the regular cynics that trolls my page then popped up with an appalling appeal to apathy, saying that petitions are "pointless wastes of time that give people a false belief they are making a difference" and challenged me to "list me 5 petitions of the last 10 years that have made a difference".
I'll do better than that, I'll list 10 petitions of the last 5 years that have made a difference. To be honest, even this challenge (which is 4x as difficult as the one I was actually set) is a bit easy to someone that does like to sign and share petitions.
1. Hugh's Fish Fight: I used to have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his posh-boy cookery show, but he has earned an enormous amount of respect from me after leading the campaign for the abandonment of the extraordinarily wasteful practice of EU fish discards (throwing millions of tons of dead but perfectly edible fish back into the sea). Over 870,000 people signed the Hugh's Fish Fight petition and in December 2013 the EU finally legislated to reform their fisheries policy and abandon the ludicrously wasteful discards policy.
2. Universal Basic Income: A 2013 petition in Switzerland has triggered a referendum on the introduction of Universal Basic Income. The referendum has yet to be held, but the fact that the public in Switzerland will have a say on the issue is entirely down to the people that signed the petition in the first place.
3. Barbarity in the Maldives: One of the most emotive petitions in recent years was one concerning a 15 year old rape victim who had been sentenced to public flogging for the "crime" of sex outside marriage. After more than 2 million people signed the 2013 Avaaz petition, the conviction was overturned.
4. Bank charges: In 2012 A Change.org petition with over 300,000 signatures led to Bank of America abandoning plans to introduce a $5 monthly banking fee within a month of announcing it.
5. The Food Poverty Debate: In 2013 A petition on the UK government epetition website resulted in a parliamentary debate on food poverty. Unfortunately the Tories stonewalled the debate, but they earned themselves an awful lot of bad publicity as they laughed and shouted their way through the debate. The absurdly evasive and misleading speech made by Esther McVey was derided as the "one of the nastiest frontbench speeches I’ve heard in more than 43 years" by parliamentary veteran Gerald Kaufman. Although the petition didn't result in changing the Tory policy of forcing the most vulnerable people in society into destitution (which, after all, is one of their core political strategies), it certainly opened a lot more people's eyes to their sheer callousness.
6. ACTA: An American led drive to censor the Internet was abandoned due to an extremely strong public reaction against it. The EU cited a 2012 Avaaz petition with well over 2 million signatures as a key factor in their decision to abandon their participation in ACTA.
7. The Olympic Tax Dodge: One of the most stunningly successful petitions in recent years was the 38 Degrees campaign against a tax-dodging deal arranged by the IOC for sponsors of the 2012 London Olympics. Within just a few weeks every single Olympic sponsor pulled out of the tax dodge under a tide of negative publicity.
8. Save the Forests: 38 Degrees led the campaign to stop the Tories selling
off nationally owned woodland. Over half a million people signed
the 2010 petition and the Tories were forced to cancel the sell-off.
9. Neoncotinoid pesticides: A 2013 Avaaz petition with 2.6 million signatures drove the EU decision to impose a temporary ban on neoncotinoid pesticides which have been linked to colony collapse disorder in bees.
10. Ryan Ferguson: Ryan was freed after a 2012 change.org petition with 250,000 signatures helped to secure him a retrial in which his absurdly dubious murder conviction was overturned.
These ten are some of the most high profile petitions of the last five years and they are obviously not the only ones (feel free to mention other "petitions that have made a difference" in the comments section).
Of course petitions are not the only way of protesting against injustice (direct action, street protests, spreading awareness, boycotts, strikes, pickets and attempts to engage with the political system are some of many other avenues) but I hope I've made it clear that it is possible to make a difference by signing a petition.
The fact that I've so easily surpassed his request for evidence is a clear demonstration that people like my "petitions are a pointless waste of time"
troll are either hopelessly ignorant about the subject they are
pontificating about, or they are cynically lying through their teeth in some pathetic attempt to dissuade other people from even trying to make a difference.
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