I would like to raise some concerns with regard to the closure for a completely unspecified and indefinite period of the Monarch’s Way canal towpath in the Netherton/Rowley Regis area between between Windmill End DY2 9HU and Cornfield Rd B65 8HZ for path works.
Firstly that this stretch of Monarch’s Way was closed a few weeks ago with no warning, no advanced consultation with stakeholders or local residents and not even a single pedestrian diversion sign posted. And no clue how long the works are anticipated to take.
And more seriously, a perfectly acceptable on-road diversion route for pedestrians and cyclists would be possible via Windmill End, Springfield Lane & Pilkington Lane.
However – although I can’t fathom why the developers built it that way a few years back – the only official pedestrian access (that doesn’t require climbing over fences etc) from Springfield Lane to Pilkington Way is via the canal towpath – which has been blocked off with barriers.
Indeed, for reasons I can’t fathom, walking past today there seem to be barriers attempting to prevent any pedestrian access at all between Springfield Lane and the vicinity of 73 Pilkington Way B65 8HZ.
This not only cuts off a potential canal towpath diversion route mitigating the effect of the works on the canal, but also cuts off the vicinity of 73 Pilkington Way from its nearest shops on foot or by bike, and cuts off the shortest route – in the absence of the canal towpath – from Darby End to the bus stops for service 3 on Cornfield Rd.
Please could you explain how this has been justified? And how it doesn’t contradict the policy of Dudley and Sandwell Councils on encouraging active transport.
And why pedestrians and cyclists aren’t considered even worthy of a diversion sign or estimated timeframe when part of Monarch’s Way – a major national walking route – is suddenly closed with no warning at the height of summer.
Regards,
Alex Wright – Local Resident
What a terrible year.
The worst European war since 1945, perhaps the closest to World War III that we’ve been since the Cuban Missile Crisis, 8 million Ukrainians refugees – more than the population of the island of Ireland – and a similar number internally displaced.
My friends from my ERASMUS year in Germany going through scarcely imaginable horrors like those of my grandparents.
Ukrainian soldiers spending New Years Eve in the hellish mud of Bakhmut, reminiscent of my great grandfather in the trenches of the Western Front.
Still, without the bravery and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people the victorious Russian Army could now be digging in on the Romanian-Moldovan border, as Putin starts to wonder if Article 5 is as worthless a piece of paper as the Budapest Memorandum was.
Instead, Ukrainians in their millions chose to risk their lives for democracy and freedom over subjugation as third class Novorossiyan subjects of Tsar Vladimir the Terrible – or a worse fate.
Putin’s three day Blitzkrieg failed and his élite paratroopers failed to take Hostomel Airport. The occupiers’ packed dress uniforms for the anticipated Kyiv victory parade were never used and their three day food rations ran out. Volodomyr Zelensky didn’t flee and the Battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson were lost by the world’s largest land empire. As was the Russian flagship, the Moskva, to a nation that barely has a navy.
I hope the New Year will see more Ukrainian successes and an end to this horrible war of conquest. Since this is my blog – and not my original Facebook post – as for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself I hope that he will not see another New Year. Or Ukrainian Independence Day, for that matter.
I am glad to have met so many more Ukrainians this year and wish it could have been in better circumstances.
Щасливого нового року! Слава Україні і героям слава!
Video from Independence Day in August, a sequel to a 2021 video of a girl walking through Ukrainian history linked to below:
Ten months ago in the early hours of the morning – after months of blatant lies and gaslighting – an increasingly totalitarian and genocidal dictator launched a 3-day Blitzkrieg and attempted an Anschluss of a former colony. In doing so, the world’s largest land empire demonstrated exactly what its armies would have done to the Baltic States – and maybe Poland – if the advice of certain so-called realists and “anti-imperialists” had been followed, and these allies had never gained Article 5 protection.
It is often said that our nationality is for the most part an accident of birth, but millions of Ukrainians actually chose to fight for their nation and their democracy rather than become second- or third-class Novorossiyan subjects – if not a worse fate. And they continuously and actively renew that choice every morning, whether in the hellish mud of Bakhmut, the newly liberated towns of Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts, the “semi-safe” cities of western Ukraine or in the diaspora of millions.
This Gregorian Christmas Eve, my thoughts are with Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines of a total war for national survival and European liberal democracy, with the Ukrainian people – my friends among then – in the dark and cold under Russian bombardment and with the millions displaced from their homes. I am deeply sorry that Western deterrence – and perhaps our imagination – failed ten months ago. And – indeed – eight years and ten months ago.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
(John 1:5)
А Світло у темряві світить, і темрява не обгорнула його.
(Iвана 1:5)
Щасливого Різдва. Слава Україні і георям слава.
“Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery…
Vulgar we must consider those also who buy from wholesale merchants to retail immediately; for they would get no profits without a great deal of downright lying; and verily, there is no action that is meaner than misrepresentation. “*
_________________
Roman lawyer – and, of course – slave owner Cicero, writing in 44 BC, appeared to agree with Marxists to some degree on the concept of wage slavery then?
Apparently this attitude towards those who have to work for a living – and without whose labour they’d starve – was also shared by the aristocracy and super rich (eg Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy) by the early 19th century.
Or even as late as George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion (which My Fair Lady is based on), recalling the attitude of now skint aristocrats to the vulgar business of retail, whilst trying to marry off their daughters to save them from such a fate.
Quoted in Ch 11 of SPQR by Mary Beard (a chapter I’ve just started listening to on my way to work)
RIA Novosti – the Russian media company which has previously had a stake in the Telegraph – explains in horrific detail what they mean by the “deNazification” of Ukraine:
https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
English translation (Google Translate) below:-
What should Russia do with Ukraine
Back in April last year, we wrote about the inevitability of denazification of Ukraine. Nazi, Bandera Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and the instrument of the West for the destruction of Russia, we do not need. Today, the issue of denazification has moved into the practical plane.
Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people — most likely, its majority — has been mastered and dragged into its policy by the Nazi regime. That is, when the hypothesis “the people are good — the government is bad” does not work. The recognition of this fact is the basis of the denazification policy, all its measures, and the fact itself is its subject.
Ukraine is in exactly such a situation. The fact that the Ukrainian voter voted for “Poroshenko’s world” and “Zelensky’s world” should not be misleading — Ukrainians were quite satisfied with the shortest path to peace through the blitzkrieg, which the last two Ukrainian presidents hinted at transparently when they were elected. It is this method of “appeasing” internal anti—fascists — through total terror – that was used in Odessa, Kharkiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol, and other Russian cities.
And this quite satisfied the Ukrainian philistine. Denazification is a set of measures in relation to the nationalized mass of the population, which technically cannot be directly punished as war criminals.
The Nazis who took up arms should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield. There should be no significant differences between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called national battalions, as well as territorial defense that has joined these two types of military formations. All of them are equally involved in the extreme cruelty against civilians, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, do not observe the laws and customs of war.
War criminals and active Nazis should be roughly and demonstratively punished. Total lustration must be carried out. Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned.
However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the popular mass is also guilty, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism. They supported and indulged the Nazi regime. Just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, conducted as carefully and prudently as possible with regard to civilians.
Further denazification of this mass of the population consists in re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but necessarily also in the sphere of culture and education. It was through culture and education that the deep mass Nazification of the population was prepared and carried out, secured by the promise of dividends from the victory of the Nazi regime over Russia, Nazi propaganda,
internal violence and terror, as well as the eight-year war with the people of Donbass who rebelled against Ukrainian Nazism.
Denazification can only be carried out by the winner, which implies (1) his unconditional control over the denazification process and (2) the authority that ensures such control. In this respect, a denazified country cannot be sovereign.
The denazifying state — Russia — cannot proceed with regard to denazification from a liberal approach. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be challenged by the guilty party being denazified. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine means recognition of the impossibility of the Crimean scenario for Ukraine as a whole. However, this scenario was impossible in 2014 and in the rebellious Donbass. Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terror led to internal cohesion and a conscious unequivocal mass refusal to preserve any unity and connection with Ukraine, which defined itself as a Nazi society.
The timing of denazification cannot be less than one generation, which must be born, grow up and reach maturity in the conditions of denazification. The Nazification of Ukraine has been going on for more than 30 years — since at least 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism received legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the movement for “independence”, rushing to Nazism.
The peculiarity of modern Nazified Ukraine lies in amorphousness and ambivalence, which make it possible to disguise Nazism as a desire for “independence” and a “European” (Western, pro—American) path of “development” (in reality, to degradation), to assert that there is “no Nazism in Ukraine, only private isolated excesses.” There is no main Nazi party, no Fuhrer, no full-fledged racial laws (only their stripped-down version in the form of repression against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.
However, all of the above does not make Ukrainian Nazism a “light version” of German Nazism during the first half of the twentieth century. On the contrary, since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” (essentially political technological) frameworks and restrictions, it unfolds freely as the fundamental basis of all Nazism — as European and, in the most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in a compromise, based on a formula like “NATO — no, EU — yes”.
The collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Western Bandera cadres and their “historical memory” are only one of the instruments of the Nazification of Ukraine. Ukronazizm carries no less, but a greater threat to the world and Russia than the German Nazism of Hitler’s torture.
The name “Ukraine”, apparently, cannot be retained as the title of any fully denazified state entity in the territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The newly created people’s republics in a space free from Nazism should and will grow from the practice of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of life support systems of the population.
Their political aspirations cannot in fact be neutral — atonement for Russia’s attitude towards it as an enemy can only be realized by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival and development. No “Marshall plans” for these territories can be allowed. There can be no “neutrality” in the ideological and practical sense compatible with denazification. The cadres and organizations that are the instrument of denazification in the newly denazified republics cannot but rely on the direct power and organizational support of Russia.
Denazification will inevitably also be de—Ukrainization – a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflating of the ethnic component of the self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and Novorossiya, which was started by the Soviet government. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, after its fall, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain unattended. In this official capacity, he moved under the leadership of another superpower (the power standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural borders and deprived of political functionality.
Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic states, Ukraine, as history has shown, is impossible as a national state, and attempts to “build” one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti—Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of a foreign and alien civilization. Debanderization itself will not be enough for denazification — the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore, the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de—Europeanization.
The Bandera elite must be eliminated, its re-education is impossible. The social “swamp”, which actively and passively supported it by action and inaction, must survive the hardships of the war and assimilate the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for its guilt. Those who did not support the Nazi regime, suffered from it and the war unleashed by it in the Donbass, should be consolidated and organized, should become the support of the new government, its vertical and horizontal. Historical experience shows that tragedies and dramas of wartime benefit peoples who are tempted and carried away by the role of the enemy of Russia.
Denazification as the goal of a special military operation within the framework of this operation itself is understood as a military victory over the Kiev regime, the liberation of territories from armed supporters of Nazification, the elimination of irreconcilable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, as well as the creation of systemic conditions for the subsequent denazification of peacetime.
The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government bodies, militia and defense, cleared of Nazi elements, launching on their basis the constituent processes of founding a new republican statehood, integrating this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for the denazification of Ukraine (newly created or redesigned, say, from Rossotrudnichestvo), with the adoption of under the Russian control of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification, defining the boundaries and scope of the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in the field of denazification, the creation of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.
All of the above means that in order to achieve the goals of denazification, the support of the population is necessary, its transition to the side of Russia after liberation from terror, violence and ideological pressure of the Kiev regime, after withdrawal from information isolation. Of course, it should take some time for people to recover from the shock of military operations, to be convinced of Russia’s long—term intentions – that “they will not be abandoned.” It is impossible to foresee in advance in which territories such a mass of the population will form a critically necessary majority. The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine consisting of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of alienation, however, will be found experimentally. It will remain hostile to Russia, but forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine with Nazism banned on formal grounds. The haters of Russia will go there. The guarantee of the preservation of this residual Ukraine in a neutral state should be the threat of immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements. This may require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border, there will be a territory of potential integration into the Russian civilization, which is anti-fascist in its internal nature.
The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with the military phase, will follow in peacetime the same logic of stages as the military operation. At each of them, it will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes, which will be the results of the corresponding stage. At the same time, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be defined as follows:
— the elimination of armed Nazi formations (which means any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, information, and educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;
— formation of people’s self-government bodies and militia (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories, protecting the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
—installation of the Russian information space;
—withdrawal of educational materials and prohibition of educational programs at all levels containing Nazi ideological attitudes;
—mass investigative actions to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology and support for the Nazi regime;
—lustration, publicizing the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who will not be subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
— the adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification “from below”, the prohibition of all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;
— establishment of memorials, memorials, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuation of the memory of the heroes of the fight against it;
— the inclusion of a set of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people’s republics;
— creation of permanent denazification bodies for a period of 25 years.
Russia will have no allies in denazification of Ukraine. Because this is a purely Russian case. And also because not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but also, above all, Western totalitarianism, imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, mechanisms of subordination to the superpower of the West and the United States.
In order to carry out the plan of denazification of Ukraine into life, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, realize itself as the last instance of protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve it and which the West ultimately abandoned, having lost in the struggle for itself.
This struggle lasted throughout the twentieth century and was expressed in the World War and the Russian Revolution, inextricably linked with each other.
Russia has done everything possible to save the West in the twentieth century. She implemented the main Western project, an alternative to capitalism, which defeated the nation—states – the socialist, red project. It crushed German Nazism, a monstrous product of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was the hand of friendship extended by Russia, for which Russia received a monstrous blow of the 1990s.
Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, offering the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia’s contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help it selflessly provided. Then Russia will go its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage — leadership in the global process of decolonization.
As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnership and allied relations with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and that are not going to put on its yoke again. Without the Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the dope, temptation and dependence of the so-called European choice.
* An extremist organization banned in Russia.
What is the best way to run a country?
There are two major schools of thought on how to run a country: left-wing and right-wing. First I will explain the advantages and disadvantages of each, then I will try to explain what I think is the best way to run a country.
One way is left-wing. In this ideology, egalitarianism is very important: the idea that everyone is equal. One major left-wing movement is socialism, where everyone works for the good of the State, and in return the State helps them.
Advantages of socialism are that people work together for the good of everyone else, and the poor are often helped. Also, one rich person does not get all the money while workers toil away in factories for them, as the community as a whole is supposed to own the means of production.
Disadvantages are that if everyone is equal, you could reason everyone should have equal pay. Then someone who has worked really hard might complain about how he received the same wages as someone who hardly worked at all. The theology can also to extremes, like in Communist Russia, where one-party politics and totalitarianism prevailed.
At the other side of the political spectrum is the right-wing movement. The British Conservative Party and the American Republican Party are examples of more right-wing parties. The right-wing ideals are more concerned with the individual than the left. They believe in the free market economy, and less tighter controls over business.
Advantages are that, in theory, the hard-working are payed more than those who work less. Some people may also like the less egalitarian society (especially the people in power).
Disadvantages are that right-wing policies often don’t help the poor as much as left-wing policies. Right-wing polices that are too extreme can lead to nationalism and dictatorship. For example, the Nazi Party in the Third Reich was on the extreme-right (ironically, ‘Nazi’ was short for ‘National Socialism’, even though the Party were on the opposite side of the political spectrum!).
I think the best to run a country would be to use ideas from both. The hard-working should be rewarded, the poor and unemployed should be helped to get jobs. There should also be a minimum wage to make sure employees do not exploit workers. Businesses should not all be owned buy [sic] the community however, but they should be regulated: not aloud [sic] to do whatever they want. I also believe in the idea of egalitarianism: everyone should have a say in how the country is run, and everyone should be equal before the law.
In the British General Election, I would have voted either for Labour or for the Liberal Democrats, and in the American Election, I would have voted Democrat.
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Page 1 of 1
Alex Wright
History
8 Sep 2001
Did you know there are American leftist activists and academics who don’t just want to “defund the police” – the worst political slogan ever that for most proponents apparently doesn’t mean want it sounds like.
Some of them profess to want the abolition of prisons. And some of them literally mean they don’t think confinement should be a punishment for any crime at all, even serial killers and child rapists. Or, presumably, George Floyd’s murderer Derek Chauvin.
This hilarious take-down by socialist Ben Burgis really demonstrates a lot of my issues with this utterly insane policy proposal:
https://benburgis.medium.com/derek-chauvin-and-prison-abolitionism-a-socratic-dialogue-1e976c1e6b23
Particularly love this part:
P[rison] A[bolitionist]: “Well, it’s not just about that long-term hope. I also want to do things now to get us closer to the horizon of abolition. So I also support reforming the system in ways X, Y, and Z.”
Me: “So do I! All of those reforms sound great to me. Let’s work towards them together and not use a slogan that makes it sounds like you’re saying that rapists and murderers shouldn’t continue to be involuntarily confined, and which thus alienates like 99.9% of working-class people of all backgrounds.”
PA: “To hell with that. You and I are totally different.”
“
Personally I would perhaps go further than Burgis, and question the very notion of how a functioning modern society could exist without prisons.
For instance, without the threat of either imprisonment or execution, what exactly would deter families from launching vigilante attacks to avenge their murdered or sexually assaulted kin? Or – indeed – a cycle of vendettas?
Prison abolitionists may argue that many murderers and rapists aren’t jailed under the present system. I fail to see how that’s an argument not to imprison any of them, but regardless there is still a chance they will be caught and serve long prison sentences. If prison abolitionists had their way they’d know the odds were zero.
If prison is replaced by community service – ie forced labour, fines or blood money or whatever, how would the punishment enforced on individuals who refuse to comply without the threat of imprisonment or some use of force?
What about failed suicide bombers?
Or indeed, if insurgents who surrender can’t be detained, what would prevent an armed overthrow of the prison abolitionists’ utopian regime by those who disagree with it?
Assuming this utopia even has a police force or army to rebel against of course and hasn’t abolished them too.
Looks like in covid times Jehovah’s Witnesses are using handwritten letters for evangelism? Just received a letter in my Black Country flat.
I won’t pretend to be any kind of expert on New Testament Greek but pretty sure the God’s name “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” – often written as the LORD* in English translations of the Old Testament – isn’t in the New Testament.
Unless the JWs consider St Paul’s use of “kyriou” (Lord) – referring to Jesus – to represent Jehovah?
(The letter below references Ephesians 3:14-15)
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/ephesians/3.htm
*A translation of the Hebrew “Adonai”
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Occasional thoughts of an English Politics graduate 