A new Dr Who... a new Scotland?

I hadn’t noticed the little blue coffee shop in the park until the dug pished oan it. The guy opened the door an’ stared at me. Cheeky clown. Him aw dressed like some charity shop ned wi’ a big lang scarf an’ a wee funny tie.

“Wit time is it pal?” he asked me.

Ah took ma mobile out ma pocket an’ checked.

“Ha’ past eight, pal. Ye’ opening, like? I wudnae mind a wee caperchino …”

“Eh? Wit? Oh. Na, pal. This isnae a wee coffee shop. It’s a time machine and space roaket.”

He wiz pure taiken the piss.

“You’re a cheeky clown. When are ye opening?”

He looked down at Sparky.

“Ah supposed I’ve never had a wee dug as a space buddy. Or a jaikey clown fer that matter.”

“Hey, pal,” sez I. Less of yer jip.

He smiled at me. He looked like a junky, like. Nae teeth at the front an’ aw pale an stuff.

“Ah’ve jist regenerated. Ye’ don’t happen tae have a wee mirror oan ye?” sez he. Ah didnea know wit “regenerating” wiz. Our area wiz “regenerated” an’ the rents went up an’ then they sterted tae sell the hooses aff tae rich students an’ snobs. Ah kinda guessed he wiz sayin’ he had jist put his clobber oan. But his accent wiz no fae roon oor way. More like somewhere like an island or sumthin.

“No pal, but ma phone camera reverses like. “

I let him look at hesel’. He looked kinda upset an aw.

“Jings,” he sed, “no Dr Who nae mair. Mair like Dr oan the medics or somethin’!”

I hunea a clue wit he wiz oan about like. I jist thought, ‘Why would a jaikey clown be allowed to be servin’ caperchinos?’

“Are ye goanea get the coffee oan, like, pal?”

He looked at me again and smiled.

“Oh wit a clever TARDIS!” sez he. “Aw course!” sez he.

“Hey, pal,” sez I, “Ahm nae tardis.” I didnae nae wit he wiz oan aboot, but he wiznae getting’ away wi’ that.

“Naw, pal. Not you. The… ach, never mind. Come oan in and we’ll get ye a coffee.”

Now, ahm nae saft touch, like, But ah wiz a wee bit feart about going in there. He went in before me, an’ before ah could say onything, wee Sparky had followed him.

Now, when ah tell ye wit ah saw, ye’d think ahm pullin’ yer chain.

He sed, “aye pal, it’s bigger…”

“Christ,” sez I. “The inside isnae finished, pal. Huv you bin sleepin’ rough in here?”

“Naw pal. This is ma hame. Sit yersel’ down. Ahl get the coffee oan.”

Now, he pressed buttons an’ danced aroon and twisted we turny things. He was definitely oot a’ his scone. But then something strange happened. The whole place started to shake and make a funny noise.

“Aff we go to fight ma’ wors’ nightmare of a enemy!”

“Ah jist wan a wee caperchino wi’ chocolate powder oan the tap pal!” sez I.

He danced and pranced aroon’ the big funny table in the middle of the big room. An’ that’s when it dawned oan me. These coffee places had a nice wee bit a room at the back. I used to wonder where they stored aw their coffee and wee nut biscuits an’ aw, when the place wiz shut. Now ah knew.

“There! 1978! Jist afore she wrecked the place!”

He ran to the door and shouted, “Come oan tae ah show you pal!”

An’ what he showed me knocked ma sidey ways. A’ NHS that worked. Schools full of books. Students wi’ full grants tae tide them o’er while they learned. Work oan the shipyards, collierys, and people with plenty aw money tae pay their electricity and gas.

Wit me an’ Sparkey saw wiz well kept council estates, nae one up to their neck in debt because of mortgages an’ Wonga; and pawn shops nearly goan, nearly a thing of the past. We saw free prescriptions, free dentists, free opticians...

We saw fantastic music, an beautiful art aw by workin’ class men an’ women. We saw working class politicians making decisions for working class people an’ the Aristocracy dying off. We saw a world where people had hope. An’ then we saw her, sewing seeds of discontent, jealously and greed.

We zoomed through time an’ space… and we defeated Daleks and Cybermen and creepy wee statues you couldnea blink at.

“What aboot her,” sez I? “Are you gonnae defeat her before she wrecks things again? Before pensioners die av the cold, before people lose work, before they lose hope, before working class people become almost another species to these taller, posher nuggets?”

“Naw,” sez he. “That’s aw up tae you nuggets in 2014. She’ll be in the groon’, but you can vote to turn yer wee country aroon. Tha’s why the TARDIS made me a Scot this time. Tae show you what an independent Scotland could look like.”

An’ then he dumped me an’ Sparky back in the park.

“Now get tae … and don’t make me huv tae dae yer work again. Daleks an’ the likes are my bag. Tories are yours. Go vote them oot a’ existence.”

An he wiz away. An I knew wit ah had tae do.

Ah registered tae vote an’ like millions o’ others, ah voted YES in September 2014…

Northern Ireland still needs peace, reconciliation, justice...

I just watched this weeks Panorama on Northern Ireland. It was horrific.

But not entirely surprising.

It told a new half truth about the murky, murderous political world I grew up in. And all the more disgusting because the "democratic" heirarchy of the "United" Kingdom meted out murder on its own population. It sanctioned the mowing down of young men by tommy gun toting, brainwashed psychos because "if you were standing in an area, you were a terrorist."

The dirty, Government sanctioned murder squad, the Military Reaction Force (MRF) were exposed and revealed not in the way its members had hoped, ie as a heroic column against terrorist, but as a bunch of black-ops agent provocateurs who stoked the fires of hatred higher and didn't care whose lives they destroyed on the way.

During the eighties, I stood in manys an area with manys a person from all corners of the political, boxed in, sectarian conflict and I could have been, by their awful assessment, discounted as guilty by association. I could have been shot in many areas in retrospect I wasnt safe. I had this perhaps niave determination as a teenager and in my early twenties that I would not be segregated and told where I was not allowed to go. Pubs, clubs, towns and friends criss-crossed dreadful, malicious, sectarian lines.

I think  I need to explain my views. This will ensure all "sides" criticise me for niavety; for excusing the "enemy."

I hate the elitist, aristocratic, pretence at democratic UK state. I am a Republican Socialist. I came from a Northern Irish unionist town. I come from a unionist with a small u, family.

I have been a Republican -anti-elitist for those of you who are still pousoned by the demonisation of words that challenge our Etonian owned excuse for a democracy- most of my adult life (and through out my late teens).

I know many "closet" republicans in Northern Ireland from my ex-hometown, though most of them are unionist, unlike me.

As far as Ireland goes, I personally believe it would be better off united- and I believe it would be a fairer place to live than it is separated. I am not a nationalist, either be that Irish, Scottish or British. I am an internationalist.

But, for years I had to do my best (sometimes unsuccessfully) to keep my belief in a proper, bottom up  democracy secret because of the odd belief that unionism and monarchism were on one side and republicanism and the want for a reunited Ireland were on the other side.

When I was 15 years old, I found a book in my (state) school library. It was a book on Marx by the father of present day Guardian columnist Martin Kettle. Back in those days when so called "socialist" organisations were murdering workers, on reading- and thinking "this is just as I think," and not wanting to be seen to be associating myself with terrorist groups many said at the time were funded by the USSR, I nicked the book and told no-one about it.

I could not not equate what I was finding out about fair, democratic, green, equal, socialism and what was being associated with it both in Northern Ireland and worldwide. I could not equate my feeling that it was unfair that people I knew struggled to pay bills, yet their tax money they struggled to earn was used to uphold a system in which one family were given millions of pounds and huge access to, and an inequitable amount of power.

Those are my views on Northern Ireland and the UK monarchal system in a (simplistic) nutshell. I now live in Scotland and want to see Scotland taking the reigns of its own destiny. I want to see Scotland free of the dreadful aristocratic, heirarchical system.  But I would not kill for that ideal, nor my ideal Ireland.

I would fight back if attacked. Although I am a non-violent protestor, I am not a pacifist. I would defend marginalised people and certainly if houses were being torched- friends, family, working class people of any ethnicity - could rely on my support as best as I can give it.

And this is what, for a short time happened on the streets of Belfast in 1968.

But then sectarian; tit for tat; drive by shootings; pub bombings, vicious, sociopathic... State Sanctioned black ops; psycopathic, poisonous, polluted, illogical politics smashed families, ruined lives... Poisoned minds. Killed.

Friends and family were killed in the name of Ireland, socialism, the union, the Queen, the Union fleg  and the Starry Plough. And none of these murdering bastards shooting unarmed civilians or bombing pubs or shooting construction workers, local policemen, milkmen, dancers, pop bands or mothers represented me, my friends nor my family. And none of them, from Thatcher, I. K. Paisley through to Martin McGuinness and shady, vicious Loyalist gangs represented my beliefs.

Because of these "leaders;" this minority of people who saw life as cheap; as collatoral... people I loved suffered. And continue to suffer on these false "sides;" these non-political sectarian divides created in order to stop working class people unite and take what us theirs from the grabbing, vicious aristocratic hands.

So no, Attorney General, John Larkin; the ordinary people from all parts of Northern Irish/ Irish/rUK do not want justice suspended. They, we, deserve to know who and why these people killed and maimed and poisoned our population. Our communities. Our mothers, brothers, fathers; sisters, babies and unborn.

As a republican and at present a UK "brit" passport holder and taxpayer, I support my nationalist and unionist, socialist and capitalist, ghettoized and middle class brothers and sisters in their want for truth and justice and need to build faith in society.

Murder is murder. Hatred is hatred. Bullying is bullying.

"Where did she go? Out. What did she do? Everything…”

“Fresh air?  Yeah, I think I remember breathing some of that once…”

Escape.  Routine.  Escape.  Capitalists know that is what drives us.  Escaping routine, drudgery; escaping our turning cog in the mechanism that is funding the rich in their escape from routine and drudgery.  And they tantalise us with escape on our TV’s and cinemas and games.  They dangle a carrot and drag us through months of consumerism in order to reach it.  Christmas; a summer holiday; a new house; a new car; next season’s clothes; a personalised number plate… spend on this and your life will be better.  If your sports team, the one that brings out four new sports kits every year, wins the league, you will feel better.  If you buy this hydrogenated fat injected piece of bleached, factory reared meat, your table will be like that of the rich man.  In the meantime, kill yourself with our new alcohol based fruit drink or these lung filling/killing vapours…

Escape is rare.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I would love to know the results of a survey of those who read the comic 2000AD in the late 70's/early 80's as to 1. how political they became and 2. what their political allegiances are.  I would nearly bet most of those who were, like me, exposed to writers such as Alan Moore; Alan Hebden; John Wagner and Alan Grant and amazing artists such as Ian Gibson, Carlos Ezquerra. Massimo Belardinelli and Mike McMahon veer to the political libertarian left.

Very few of their comic strips, at least the ones I remember, are not critiques of racism, sexism, consumerism and indeed, Capitalism itself. Drawing on their experiences in 70's and eighties Britain, the characters I remember from my early teenaged years struggle to escape or fight to entrench as "antiheroes," dystopian versions of our late capitalist- imperialist world.

Characters such as “Meltdown Man” fighting against an apartheid world, “Judge Dredd” fighting to enforce a neo-liberalist, segregated capitalism; “Flesh” - exploiting new technologies to feed markets that threaten our past as present markets have wrecked our futures and “Invasion! A violent imagining of Britain invaded by a Stalinist state; “The Ballad of Halo Jones,” showing Halo’s attempts to escape; showing other’s caught up in the grinding turning of the wheel (“the hoop”); showing the profiting elite escaping on the “Clara Pandy,” the escape and luxury the poor can only aspire to enjoy.

I used to spend hours on each comic. Engorging my imagination, speeding through the stories every Friday and then taking my time to study each amazingly drawn plate that night in bed.  I used to painstakingly draw each admired character myself- Dredd, Jim diGriz (the only drawing I still have is one I recently rediscovered of Angelina, The Stainless Steel Rat's girlfriend and a first love of mine...), Sam Slade, Nemesis, Hoagy, Bill Savage, the Harlem Heroes and Mach 1.  Pouring over these worlds.  Reading, imbibing, engorging my mind, escaping.

Halo Jones escaped.  She escaped the drudgery of unemployment in a working class scheme.  She escaped the benefits trap.  An intelligent, working class woman, wanting more than shopping malls in which she had to be extremely frugal, and full of competing, vicious poverty, she saw through the consumerism of escape in what they sold us; what they give us; what they need us to be.  She escaped and, finding the utopia of work, that endgame that will make your world better,  slaved for the rich on one of their intergalactic space-ships.  The promise of seeing the universe showed her the inside of a cruiser for the rich.  But one in which she managed to realise that the world she had been forced to live in was one of artifice created by others to keep her from being too much trouble to them.

My mum switches on the record player at the wall.  “Where the mountains meet the sea, And lights spit stains on the scenery…”  The dystopia in my mind merges with the words… “And it’s breaking through…”  The speakers on either side of my bed boom out Toyah’s “Thunder in the Mountains.  I give my early teenaged self until the end of the song to get up… I take a towel and stumble downstairs to the bathroom, shower and pull on my High School uniform and school bag and walk fast up the hill, getting there just after the bell.  Routine.  A small cog.  Ready to turn the wheels that churn out their perma-freedom.

Conditioned in mass education for routine, for hierarchy, for learned helplessness – needing someone else to change your circumstances; waiting, not moving until they tell you to; waiting for the someone, the hero, the freedom fighter who never comes, because the hierarchy only want you to spend spend spend on temporary measures.  Permanent measures might mean they have to share the drudgery.  Permanent measures might mean you can share the reward…

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I collected every issue of 2000AD from issue one through to issues into the 400’s – some of the gaps filled by my friend Alex passing them on… and although a few years after I had stopped buying them, I remember my shock on finding out my dad had thrown them out. 

My decision to stop buying 2000AD was made not because I had lost interest- but because of perceived peer pressure. At the age of 15, my friends and I were in the throes of casting off all of the aspects of us that were not considered “manly; working class.” We were changing how we looked, spoke, socialised and how we treated each other. Being 15 is a constant battle not to say or do the wrong thing - one slip and you leave yourself open to social exclusion at worst, severe "mobbing,” as it would be known now in this futureshock world, at the very least.

I gave up comics. Cheeky Weekly, Plug, Warlord, Battle and the amazing 2000AD were replaced by drink, "love" affairs, music and clothes. All fleeting (except for music) and all part of growing up. 

The clock radio comes on; “The horse with No Name.”  Every morning it is the same music, played on a loop from an unmanned illegal radio station broadcasting from just over the Irish border, outside Dundalk.  I slowly emerge from whatever utopia or dystopia my mind has created during my final REM sleep.

Halo Jones escaped to another world, where she was unemployed again, where she escaped into alcohol, drudgery, poverty; and then escaped again as an economic conscript in a rich man’s war for markets.

I drag my early twenties carcass out of my bed and stumble downstairs to the bathroom, shower, grab some toast, iron a shirt, dress and almost run out of the front door into my green Fiat Strada.  I hit 60, belting up the road to the factory, through the gates and run in to clock in just in time.  Routine.  I long for the weekend, the escape, the pub crawl, the craic, the music, hoping to find escape in a glass or a girlfriend or some mad, drink induced confidence that drives an adventure.

My late teenaged life had the hope of holidays, night-clubs, pubs, music, Ibiza.  Escape.  Music, drink, drugs, food, buying stuff, sport, reading, big speakers booming Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, The Waterboys… all of the time, wanting.  Wanting escape, and the next thing they sell me will bring me nearer to that escape.  A new love; a holiday; a jacket a shirt a pair of boots; a weekend drinking session;  an expensive ticket and a couple of hours watching a band…  Escape. 

I escaped to university in my mid-twenties to find new routine, new drudgeries… the ivory tower of escape only created in me a new marketing target for them.  The latest, fashionable wine, crisps and bath salts; aged whisky/whiskey; expensive chocolates.  An ever decreasing circle of consumerism and a realisation there is no escape unless you are so rich you can change your routines whenever and however you want.  A different cog.

My phone shrieks shrilly and I fumble to get it to stop.  I don’t think I reached my final REM… I have no memory of utopia or dystopia.  I stumble into the bathroom, shower my middle aged body, walk the dog, have my fruit, porridge and coffee and drive/cycle or take the train to work.  I get there just in time… Routine.  An older cog.

My escape, my route out, a cog in the machine that will hopefully change this world through words, through creativity, through politics.  My son’s world of routine – the drudgery he wants to escape from - the hierarchy of adults, parents, routine... his escape, education, gadgets, parties,  science on YouTube and computer games that render those worlds - though without the social commentary and all of their computer games just excuses to kill "the other." Few of the shoot'em ups he plays go beyond the, granted more primitive world, of the Space Invaders/Defender/Firebird of my day. But they do take up time.  The time I spend on studying the imaginations of Moore, Hebden, Gibson and Belardinelli.  The time I spent on making my own worlds on the page, both lined and blank with pencil, pen, adjective and colouring pencil.  None of the games conclude so beautifully and satisfactorily as a graphic novel.  And escape is still commercial.  Still enriching the corporate few who can escape whenever they want. 

“It feels like a web, straining against me, growing taut, finally snapping strand by strand, and then I’m out.  Just out.” Say’s Halo Jones at the end of the unfinished Ballad. 

“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.” - Gandhi

Hurry up Moore and Gibson and let us know if she really escapes her drudgery, her poverty, her alcoholism, her need to escape. 

I need the escape.

I start typing, escaping into the past when things weren’t such a drudge…

In remembrance...

Thinking of those in our family effected by war. Alexander Mulligan, who died a very young man in WW1 and our Great Grandad, his brother Thomas, who came back from that war so traumatised he wanted to kill the local factory owner for "encouraging" so many to their deaths. He also died a young man- a victim of war, with undiagnosed trauma that led him to drinking himself to death- and had such mental scars, ensured our grandfather never lifted a gun.

The War effected my Grandfather's family- our family- for many years afterwards. One of the most poignant things we as a family have is a gift of an engraved match box a German POW he looked after made him in a POW camp he was a guard in, after he was moved from the front. This proves to me he was a good man who saw the lunacy of poor people being sent to foreign fields to kill other poor people. He befriended "the enemy," another poorman, no doubt, sent to war by aristocrats who were rowing over markets and stolen resources.

On the other side of my family, I am remembering James Scott, who left 5 children.  And my granny Scott's wee brother, her only brother, Dorrie.

I think it is extremely important to remember our family. I really hope remembering will help us move towards a world in which there is no wars. The idiocy of armed conflict is something that has effected me and the country I grew up in deeply- I witnessed as a child the impact of diametrically opposed ideologies wasting lives and talking about brothers, sisters, children, mothers, fathers and loved ones as "collatoral damage."

The scars of war run very deep. And for many years they effect societies abused by those killing for gain (or sending others to die for gain).

I hope the rest of this century is a century of healing for our young people... But it hasn't started off very promising. I really feel if our remembering is not tempered by a fight for peace, then these wonderful, beautiful, valuable people died in vain.

I wear a white poppy as a supporter of non-violent activism and as someone opposed to armed conflict.

I have a friend- 90 year old Ron who was stationed in India in WW2, who is an inspiration and has fought for peace all of his life. He lost many friends and his family fought hard for peace at a great cost to their lives. I assure him I will always strive to fight for peace as long as I am fit.

My wee bit about Russell Brand

"Hey! Revolutionary socialists! You are much better revolutionaries than me. I quite liked Russell Brands rant. I'll step aside now and allow your revolution by formula to continue."

This was my facebook status yesterday. I was angry - also tired and grumpy- at the many lefties on my timeline picking over Brand's life, words and hairstyle.

I've already written about Brand and Paxman- the clash of the hirsute - a few days ago. I don't agree with all of his "solutions," but hey- his analysis of working class representation in public life was the best I have seen on the Public Schoolboy Broadcasting Corporation, for quite a long time... Well, if you don't include the unedited Darcus Howe footage from the anti-Tory/anti-brutal policing riots a few years ago...

HERE

And it was delivered with enthusiasm to a Paxman who for once, really didn't know what to do with it. I'll save my opinion of Jeremy for another time- let's just say some of the nonsense he has recently been spouting regarding World War One Generals and rich officers is straight from his middleclass, privileged heart.

Back to my very important Face book interactions. Rosie Kane, my favourite Scottish Socialist revolutionary, who admittedly said she was feeling tired and grumpy, criticised Brand. Fair enough.

After a long couple of threads, she said, "What if I agree with what Russell Brand says sometimes, but think he's a total bawbag... Thats ok... Eh?" 

Which is again, fair enough. ( I hope she doesn't mind me quoting her...) It ended up, I probably agreed with Rosie, on most counts, though I err on the side of what he said I don't only (mostly) agree with, but think it was really important he did- even though he was plugging a comedy tour.

I don't know what he is like outside his TV/film personna, but I kind of think if he was 'in my gang,' he wouldn't be the member I'd sit beside at the bar for pre-clubbing drinks (back in the day when I did such things). I think now that I don't do such things, he would be the member of the gang me and the rest would say, "do you remember when Rusty used to..." or "Rusty was a wild man..." Rusty would not be in our company as he would be away being an international comedy God and had texted us before hand to say, "can't make it guys. Am meeting Bono for a pint and a curry in Reykjavík to give Bjork a bit of support in her new vegan cafe... Love yiz!" We'd sit there and sup our huge Costas and be secretly, even from ourselves, as jealous and resentful as fuck, while saying, "he was a lig!" Anyway, you get the gist. Nice bloke, but probably would annoy the fuck out of me.

I argued that it was good that he had these views splashed across the media, and, "Not only splashed across the press- but to many of the previously politically switched off he is credible.

He aint the messiah... But he confused the feck out of the public school boys and girls of Newsnight."

Lots of the left criticism centred on his undeniable sexism, his wealth and his being set up, or setting himself up as a hero.

What none of the criticism I have read  takes in to consideration, in my uncared for and uneducated opinion,  me being a lowly teacher with ideas above my station/me being a teacher who is way far removed from the class on account of my huge mortgage and no longer drinking hard drink or smoking fags or hating football or liking Strictly Come Dancing or not having read and written 10,000 word analysis of all Lenin's works including his Primary School essay entitled, "My Teddy Bear is my Equal," is that Brand has been more or less saying these kinds of things for years. As for being a hero- I really have no time for "heroes." It was Tommy Sheridan's constructed and self promoted hero status that kept me away from the SSP and I only decided to join in 2003 when I met Rosie before her being elected to the Scottish Parliament- who was down to earth and kindness looks out of her.

Brand says he is no "leader" or hero- but he is in a position now where the things he has been saying for years are being heard. Look on Youtube for his stuff he did on regional TV and on his blog- anti-facism and anti-capitalism going back years.

I think more than anything, it says more about our rich Private school educated media and political system that in the rare situation that a working class person gets near the political media it is as an entertainer, and he is lambasted from all sides, rich, poor, fascist, anarchist and marxist.

We are in the same situation today- almost the same inequality of working class representation in the higher echelons of this pretence of a meritocracy, in which Harry Pollitt and other union/working class "leaders" of the early- last quarter of the 20th century found themselves when they thought that the only way to truly make a difference (or one of the ways) for the class was to send their children into the Oxbridge lions den. As Brand has said, the rich feel at home in the corridors of power, when we, the working class are not only there as reverent visitors, but on the rare occasion of working our way in there to try to make a difference, are made to feel very uncomfortable by those who "belong there." Our discomfort is accentuated by the surroundings AND by those who we try to represent, who can be easily whipped into critical hysteria by the millionaire owned and run media- including the very heirarchical and Oxbridge controlled BBC. "He can't be like us because he has sat his arse on an old oak bench and was educated/He is not like one as he was brought up in one of those houses we give to the cogs in our profit pyramid scheme."

I am not a fan of Brand's comedy, and certainly not his misogyny, but I am glad that what he has said is getting such publicity. Brand is inconvenient to them now- he fucked off out of their clutches and by sheer brass necked talent, he has become an international celebrity- giving the boy from poverty a voice they cant control.

I do feel the same "knock him down" syndrome is in use against Owen Jones, who again isn't quite revolutionary enough for the loud, fists in the air, catechismal students of how a revolutionary should be; what HE should wear and HIS level of poverty isnt quite what they have read as being correct to be their saviour.

Who is perfect? Certainly I am not. And I will never be in the position of Brand or Jones or Michael Rosen to spout my less than 'dead revolutionary' perfect opinion, but what with working class politics, working class needs and equality being completely shafted at present- our working class organisations wrecked by rabid toryism and sectarianism encouraged by those within with axes to grind and perhaps a class to help keep in power- I am glad of the odd Brand or Jones or Rosen or Zephaniah just to remind these Etonian, exploitative, greedy, monarch ring kissing, power usurping bastards that their time using our resources and wielding oppressive power is limited.