Oppositional Poetry Prose Polemic

WHAT A GRAYWASH!

The Sue Gray Report into 'Partygate', in spite of many damning revelations, has proven to be just another whitewash -or Graywash- following the Met's toothless 'investigation' resulting in no more fines for Boris Johnson in spite of photographic evidence that he was at the parties he denied took place, was in fact hosting them, and so has lied to Parliament and to the public several times... Now Johnson has just rewritten the ministerial code to remove a clause which stated ministers must resign if they are found to have breached it - this is his attempt to preclude his obligation to resign when the committee tasked to investigate whether he knowingly misled Parliament, finds him guilty... He has also, with such symbolic blatancy, removed all references to integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest from the code, almost as if retrospectively writing his own job description as he clearly sees it: to have no integrity, to not be accountable or transparent or honest etc... This is the behaviour of a tinpot despot, this man is a disgrace to his office and a menace to our democracy, he must be thrown out of Downing Street NOW!

Now archived by the

British Library

'Controlling Our Borders' Is Blurring Our Moral Boundaries

Boris Johnson's deplorable attempts to have vulnerable refugees deported to Rwanda is a sure sign of this nation's current descent into a form of fascism which more and more blatantly discriminates against minorities. Johnson, Truss and Patel should be hanging their heads in shame, but instead they continue to bang the table of border-controlling bigotry. Such is their hubris they even bat away the opposition of princes and Archbishops--the Church of England and the Monarchy, once cornerstones of the Tory creed. The protestors at the airport are examples to us all. Why shouldn't the UK welcome refugees from Albania, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, just as it does Ukrainians? Answering that question might bring a deeply uncomfortable answer about the abject moral state of our nation. The European Court of Human Rights has managed to stop this first deportation flight at the eleventh hour. Now all eyes will be on Johnson's deeply disturbing hint today that his Rogue Government might try and pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights in order to more easily deport refugees. We must all make a stand against this nascent fascism...

GOOD RIDDANCE TO BORIS -

BUT LOOK WHAT LEGACY HE'S LEFT BEHIND:

*The catastrophe of Brexit which has divided our nation, wrecked our economy, and empowered racism

*Peace in Northern Ireland hanging in the balance

*A completely alienated Scotland more determined than ever to achieve independence

*The UK's international reputation for honesty and reliability completely trashed

*The highest Covid death toll in Europe

*An NHS near to complete collapse with record waiting lists

*Universally condemned deportations of vulnerable refugees

*The shaming of the office of prime minister through Partygate and lies

MILITANT

THISTLES

...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)

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