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oppositional poetry, prose, polemic
MILITANT
THE NEW 'REFORMS' ANNOUNCED FOR DISABILITY BENEFITS BY THE TORY GOVERNMENT, FAR FROM ALLEVIATING THE POVERTIES OF THE UK'S SICK AND DISABLED, WILL MASSIVELY INCREASE THEM, PILING ON YET MORE STIGMATISATION WITH THE SUGGESTION OF VOUCHERS REPLACING BENEFITS.
AS THE NATION IS ALREADY GRAPPLING WITH A MENTAL HEALTH EPIDEMIC WHICH IS THE DIRECT RESULT OF THE SAME GOVERNMENT'S VICIOUS AUSTERITY POLICIES AND WELFARE CUTS OF THE PAST 14 YEARS (WHICH HAVE ALREADY CLAIMED THE LIVES OF OVER 330,000 OF THE NATION'S MOST VULNERABLE CITIZENS), AND ITS CRIMINAL MISHANDLING OF THE COVID PANDEMIC, THE TORIES' ATTEMPT TO SOMEHOW MEDICALLY 'DOWNGRADE' CERTAIN MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, SUCH AS DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY (WHICH RISKS LEADING TO A TRAGIC ESCALATION IN SUICIDES AMONGST MANY THUS-AFFLICTED CLAIMANTS) AS AN EXCUSE TO REDUCE OR AXE CERTAIN BENEFITS, HAS SET OFF ALARM BELLS ACROSS THE ALREADY DEPLETED, IMMISERATED AND DISCRIMINATED-AGAINST DISABLED POPULATION OF THE UK THAT THE TORY GOVERNMENT IS ABOUT TO EMBARK ON ANOTHER TURBO-CHARGED ADMINISTRATIVE PROGRAMME OF MASS 'SOCIAL MURDER' AGAINST THOSE WITH THE LEAST RESOURCES TO RESIST. [THE PRIME MINISTER CALLS THIS A "MORAL MISSION" - BUT WHEN PEOPLE USE THE TERM "MORAL", IT NORMALLY MEANS THE OPPOSITE, AS WE ALSO SEE PRESENTLY IN THE CASE OF THE SELF-PROCLAIMED "MORAL ARMY" OF THE GENOCIDAL IDF IN GAZA]. THIS INSIDIOUS "CONSULTATION" FOR FURTHER SOCIAL CULLING MUST BE STOPPED IN ITS TRACKS!
GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE MOST VILE, VICIOUS, MORALLY CORRUPT AND CONTEMPTIBLE GOVERNMENT IN MODERN BRITISH HISTORY. FOURTEEN YEARS OF AUSTERITY, RELENTLESS CUTS TO PUBLIC SERVICES AND THE WELFARE STATE, THE SOCIAL MURDER OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SICK AND DISABLED CLAIMANTS... THE DISASTER OF BREXIT... THE "HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT" AGAINST MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES.... THE WINDRUSH SCANDAL... THE GRENFELL TRAGEDY... THE CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT HANDLING OF THE PANDEMIC AND LOCKDOWNS... THE SACRIFICE OF CARE HOME RESIDENTS... 'DO NOT RESUSCITATE' ORDERS... 'PARTYGATE'... THE XENOPHOBIC 'STOP THE BOATS' POLICIES AND THE FLOATING PRISON OF 'BIBBY STOCKHOLM'... THE LIST GOES ON AND ON... THE TORY GOVERNMENT OF 2010-24 HAS ALL BUT DISMANTLED THIS NATION OF ANYTHING GOOD OR DECENT OR FUNCTIONING. IT IS NOW WITHOUT DOUBT THE SINGLE MOST CRUEL, CORRUPT AND INCOMPETENT GOVERNMENT IN POST-WAR HISTORY. IT WILL TAKE YEARS TO REBUILD THIS NATION, BUT LET US HOPE IT WILL START NOW.
...it is wrong... to imagine that the currently fashionable and approved constitutes the work of permanent importance
Alan Bold (1970)
Modern English polite society... seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of honesty can make it.
A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob
George Bernard Shaw An Unsocial Socialist (1883)
The want of poetical power is the impelling force in the case of most versifiers. They would fain be poets, and imagine that the best way is to try to write poetry and to publish what they write. They will never see their mistake. Equus asinus still believes that the possession of an organ of noise is sufficient, with a little practice, to enable him to sing like a nightingale.
John Davidson (1857–1909)
It is necessary for the socialist poet to have more impressive technical equipment than his apolitical contemporaries because his task is that much more important.
Alan Bold (1970)
New Review Alan Morrison on Barry Smith's Reeling and Writhing
New Review Dominic Rivron on Bob Beagrie's The Last Almanac
New Review Alan Morrison on the Selected Poems of Clive Branson and the Collected Poems of Montagu Slater
New Review Alan Morrison on Alan Price's The Cinephile Poems
New Review Alan Morrison on Niall McDevitt's London Nation
New Review Alan Morrison on John McKeown's Ill Nature
New Review Kevin Saving on Matthew Hollis's The Waste Land – A Biography of a Poem
New Review Alan Morrison on Clare Saponia's Federal Gods
New Review Alan Morrison on Fran Lock's Dogtooth and Contains Mild Peril
New Review Alan Morrison on Geoffrey Heptonstall's Sappho's Moon
An Irreplaceable Presence In Poetry An Obituary for Niall McDevitt
A Poet of Compassion An Obituary for David Kessel
A Eulogy for David by his son Tom Kessel
New Reviews Felix Cassiel on Nancy Charley's How Death Came into the World
Felix Cassiel on RM Francis' Subsidence and Jo Colley's Sleeper
Philip Williams on Peter Branson's The Clear Daylight
Felix Cassiel on Owen Gallagher's Clydebuilt
Alan Morrison on Michael Crowley's The Battle of Heptonstall and Bob Beagrie's Civil Insolencies
Felix Cassiel on Karl Riordan's The Tattooist's Chair and Deborah Moffatt's Eating Thistles
Felix Cassiel on Andy Green's This Noise Is Free and Caroline Maldonado's Isabella
Alan Morrison on two new Shoestring collections by Andy Croft and Alexis Lykiard
Alan Morrison on Geoffrey Heptonstall's The Rites of Paradise
Reviews Dave Russell on James Joyce
Dave Russell on Duane Voorhees' Gift – God Runs Through All These Rooms
Felix Cassiel on Victoria Bean's Liberties
Felix Cassiel on Richard Skinner's Terrace
Felix Cassiel on Francis Combes' If The Symptoms Persist
Felix Cassiel on Goran Simić's New and Selected Sorrows
Alan Morrison on Stephen Sawyer's There Will Be No Miracles Here
Alan Morrison on Bernard Saint's Roma and Michael Crowley's First Fleet
Leon Brown on Mike Leigh's Peterloo (2018)
Jenny Farrell's Marxist Reading of Wuthering Heights
New Fred Russell on The Roots of Racism
New Marx & Morry David Betteridge on reading Karl Marx
Alan Morrison on Andy Croft's Letters To Randall Swingler
Alan Morrison on Ian Parks' Citizens
Dave Russell on Stevie James' A Lonely Man Circling the Earth
Kevin Saving on A Quiet Passion, Deaths of the Poets and The Bughouse: the poetry, politics and madness of Ezra Pound
Reviews Alan Morrison on Andy Willoughby's Between Stations
Alan Morrison on Larry Beckett's Paul Bunyan
Dave Russell on Wendy Young's The Dream of Somewhere Else
New Poems Jerome Berglund, Stuart McFarlane, Gordon Scapens, Alan Price, Lynn White, Strider Marcus Jones, Tom Kelly, Farid Bitar,
Sheila E. Murphy, Simon Haines, Christopher Barnes, Naomi Foyle, Paul Jeffcutt, Helen Jones, Vanessa Sadri, Yasmin Khan, Roger Ettenfield,
Mircea Boboc, Michael Wyndham, Olecksandr Korotko, Stephen Mead, Joel Schueler, Antony Owen, Tasos Leivaditis tr. N.N. Trakakis,
Sanjeev Sethi, John Seed, Elaine Cusack, Charles March III, Keith Moul, Roger Ettenfield, Douglas Penick,
Stephen Kingsnorth, Tanner, Rudy Baron, Steve Pottinger, Ilhem Issaoui, Alan Price, Fiona Sinclair, Ken Simpson,
Sam Silva, Jim Morris, Keith Armstrong, Eduard Schmidt-Zorner, Rachel Hegarty, Liam O'Neill, Alan O'Brien,
Fred Johnston, David Butler, Moya Roddy, Michael Lee Johnson