Oppositional Poetry Prose Polemic

...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)

It's not so-called
"cultural Marxism" that's
the cause of an epidemic
of despair among young
people in the UK, it's 13 years
of immiseration and cruelty inflicted by the Tories: the hiking of university fees, unpaid internships, zero-
hours contracts, escalating rents, and the unaffordability of housing - the Tories have stripped a generation of hope!

War on Welfare Petition

Fascism is the last resort of failing capitalism, now the Tory Right is resorting to it...

National Conservatism
is a very real threat to our democracy...

Being a republican is not (yet) a crime - but lately it feels as if it is becoming one. The arrests of peaceful republican protestors have been deeply disturbing and against common notions of freedom of speech and the right to express one's opinion. The republican protestors have not been protesting against the nation's respectful mourning of the late Queen; rather, they have been protesting at the instant accession of a new king without any public consultation. Whilst we all know this is how the monarchy works, it is still perfectly reasonable for some republicans to voice their objections to a transfer of power which appears to be unaccountable. The UK needs to have a grown up discussion about these issues. Do we want to be a properly representative modern democracy, or do we want to remain only a nominal one? Do we want to become fully fledged Citizens, or are we content to remain Subjects who are citizens in name only? Should sovereignty remain with a monarch, or should it become something embodied in the wider body politic?

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WEDNESDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2023:

THE DAY THE TORY GOVERNMENT CONDEMNED THE DISABLED TO FUTURE DESTITUTION

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced in his autumn statement yet more punitive policies against the sick and disabled of the UK that will intensify government coercion and psycho-compulsion by forcing the incapacitated to find work or ultimately lose their already meagre benefit entitlements (the UK has one of the 'meanest' welfare systems in Europe), and even access to free prescriptions. Finding the rise in

sickness and disability post-Covid economically inconvenient (even though much of the increase is due to the devastating effects of long Covid, the trauma of the lockdown period, and subsequent mental health crisis, all exacerbated by the Tories' own gross negligence in handling the pandemic), the Tory Government is now redefining disability in order to spuriously find those too ill miraculously 'fit to work'. Its Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) is aided and abetted in this systematised malfeasance by private sector bounty-incentivised firms such as Independent Assessment Services (formerly Atos), Maximus and Capita through the thoroughly discredited work capability assessment regime. Since the first Tory welfare reforms of 2012 onwards, over 300,000 sick and disabled claimants have died prematurely or by suicide due to constant threats of sanctions, cuts and repeated assessments. That figure is now likely to double. This is SOCIAL MURDER according to the original definition. In a civilised society the disabled are protected. In British society, they are persecuted. This must be opposed by all decent and compassionate people. The crowning irony is that much sickness and mental health ill health in the UK are as a direct result of 13 years of vicious Tory social and (anti-)welfare policies. The Tories then blame their victims for their conditions, and punish them still further: it is a siege mentality against defenceless citizens, a vicious cycle of administrative violence against the most vulnerable in society, and it SIMPLY HAS TO STOP!

MILITANT

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