Jack Irvine contemplates 16 year old boys' bottoms

(With additional reporting by Sarah, Liam T, and Neevvy.)

Regular readers will know that Leftfield has carried the best coverage of Purcellgate in the Scottish media.

Leftfield favourite Purcell is now reported to have fled Scotland. In his absence he’s left behind a high powered and expensive team of lawyers and PR men to make sure that no one could ever allege he’s done anything dodgy. And that’s because he totally hasn’t, honest.

Heading the team is former editor of the Scottish Sun Jack Irvine. Now a PR consultant specialising in “crisis management” (what crisis?), he’s also been notable as a leading behind-the-scenes campaigner for organised homophobia.

Irvine was one of the main men behind the Keep the Clause campaign, which tried to stop the Scottish Parliament repealing a homophobic law that prevented schools from “promoting homosexuality.” Introduced by the Thatcher government in the 80’s, the real aim of this stone age legislation was to prevent children being able to learn about the possibility of being gay in sex education classes.

When MSPs finally got round to abolishing this nonsense, a powerful coalition of some of Scotland’s leading capitalists came together to try and defend legalised homophobia. The most famous of course was Brian Souter, head of Stagecoach buses, who got rich by cutting routes and driving rivals out of business. He’s also most notable for being Scotland’s most famous homophobe, as well as having donated £500,000 to the SNP just before their election to government in 2007.

But others involved in the Keep the Clause group included founder of the Sports Division stores and Scotland’s richest man Tom Hunter; Kwik Fit founder and multi-millionaire Sir Tom Farmer; Souter’s sister and Scotland’s richest woman Ann Gloag (who at one point was richer than the Queen); David Moulsdale the owner of Optical Express; and former head of Strathclyde Police, and then Metropolitan Police Commissioner under Thatcher Sir David McNee.

Many of these individuals also used Jack Irvine personally for their own PR. Irvine, who once described gay men as “Slobbering queers who want to get their hands on 16 year-old boys’ bottoms,” in the Scottish Daily Mirror, seemed the natural choice to run a political campaign of right wing homophobia on behalf of all these powerful Scottish figures.

The campaign was ultimately a failure, despite the attempts of Irvine and crew to engineer a fake “referendum”. Around 70% of Scots who received the ballots for this put them where Keep the Clause’s politics belonged-the bin.

Soapy Souter gets to grips with the "gay problem"

Irvine has found other ways to express his homophobia during the course of his career. In 1999, when Bank of Scotland announced a major business deal with rich televangelist, homophobe and general right wing bastard Pat ‘Knobhead’ Robertson, Irvine was on the front line defending BoS from gay rights protests. He also used a column in the Scottish Daily Mirror to peddle hate on a regular basis, such as this gem on the decision to equalise the age of consent for gay and straight 16 year olds:

“A pretty young boy of 16 can’t vote for his local MP, but he can now be buggered by him… So equality is the key, is it? In that case, shouldn’t 16-year-olds get the vote, be eligible to become, say, policemen? No? Why not? Because they’re not mature enough. But they are deemed mature enough to be bum chums for sleazy old pervs.”

But what keeps Irvine in sharp suits is his work for PR company Media House, which he founded in 1991, and which has helped him to the position where he’s been described as “Scotland’s answer to Max Clifford.” According to his biography page on the Media House website:

“Irvine specialises in international litigation and is a founding partner of Tactical Response, a confidential consultancy that advises boards on sensitive matters such as extortion, terrorism, fraud and abduction. They are operational on a global scale.”

That global reach will come in handy now that sources close to Purcell have indicated that “Mr Purcell has left the politics of Glasgow behind and is now resting and recuperating in the sun.” Leaving aside whether, as the former top man in the city, Purcell bears any responsibility for Glaswegian politics being a “mire”, we hope that as and when he does return to Scottish politics he’ll be refreshed by his experience on holiday. Indeed, he may even be able to recommend time on a beach for others with a chemical dependency stress and exhaustion. Most people with the same kinds of problems aren’t able to afford to recuperate in the sun, and find themselves in much less attractive surroundings. We hope Purcell one day finds the time to try and change the scapegoating and lack of support for people who may or may not allegedly have drug problems.

We also hope it’ll give him time to reflect on the contradiction of an out gay man employing such a notorious homophobe to defend him. Indeed, Irvine, who has used the infamous “but I have gay friends!” defence against accusations of homophobia, likes to claim his relationship with Purcell proves he isn’t a bigot.

According to another source “”Steven has always had an interest in the southern hemisphere and it is thought he might be spending some time there.” This mysterious and cryptic statement leads on to our bonus feature, Leftfield’s new favourite guessing game:

WHERE IS STEVEN PURCELL?

So, we can take out 50% of planet Earth from the equation. What options does that leave us with? Leftfield offers a few suggestions:

#Perhaps Stephen has hotfooted it over to Australia. He is rumoured to be about to surface on the new series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! where he will surely be a Glaswegian viewer favourite for those gruesome bushtucker trials. It’s possible that he’s been receiving advice from former contestants such as Daniella Westbrook (insert comment about deviated septums), Peter Andre (on how to revive a flagging career) and Brian Harvey, a man who knows all about addiction, since the day that he ate 47 baked potatoes and then accidentally ran himself over. It’s quite likely. Just sayin’.

#Maybe he’s in Colombia. Colombia is a lush and beautiful country, straddling the cool blue of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. To the north lie the impressive Andes mountains. To the south, the mystery and allure of the Amazon Jungle.

Steven P hangin' in Medellin

For the people of Colombia, Steven Purcell could certainly offer the wisdom of his extensive public service experience to assist with Colombian issues, for example he might be able to assist with a number of aspects of the Colombian exports system – agriculture, quality control, product testing… We know that Steven has been welcomed with open arms by several political organisations in the country who have received his direct financial support in the past. He is said to be keen to try out those local delicacies that have not yet reached the nutritionally challenged streets of Glasgow.

Colombian superstar Shakira was earlier overheard welcoming Purcell to her homeland, going as far as to say “Phwoar, I saw him earlier and I can tell you, even if he has lied about those SPT expenses, sure as hell his hips don’t lie”.*

*Shakira did not actually say this. Probably.

#This one may be a long shot, but you can’t deny that Antarctica IS completely covered in white powder…

So where is Steven? The first correct answer on a postcard will receive 1 dildo, slightly used, courtesy of Brian Souter.

Hey all you happy cheery women out there! Would you like to know which of your rights are being demolished this time? I bet you’re just bursting to know!!

With the Tory fist of power soaring across our skies thick and fast as crazy people decide to take a rebel move and vote the fuckers in, women should know that Nadine Dorries’s stupid Bill for reducing the time limit for an abortion from 24 weeks to 20 is coming back when Cool ol’ Cammy takes his throne… I mean seat.

According to Nadine I-Hate-Women Dorries, the UK will become the “abortion captial of the world”. Here’s a few things that would ACTUALLY work, just for your benefit, Nadine:

• Sex education for all! Not just those lucky enough to live near an non-denominational school. To be frank, no one gives two damned fucks about ‘God’s Plan for Life’ – We want to know what are the implications of unsafe sex and how the hell you prevent babies! And you know what? Not all of us have the money to travel miles away to go to a non-religious school, but I tell you what, you give me the travel money, and I will.
• Free condoms in all secondary schools. Nothing prevents a baby like a wee rubber bag to catch sperm! It’s a brilliant idea, innit? Well, you should slap a sexual health room and counsellor in each school to hand ‘em out and give the kiddies advice about this new, fancy sex stuff. Oh! Oh, what’s that you’re saying? It’ll encourage them to have sex too young? Well, here’s some news for you, Tories – Sex is pretty much the most awesome thing LEIK EVAR. If people want to have sex, they’re going to whether there’s someone to get safe sex advice from or not. Why not keep ‘em safe, eh?
• Have a wee pop at ending poverty. One of the reasons people don’t want kids is because WE CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY FOR THEM. If you’re dirt poor already, who the hell wants another mouth to feed, skin to clothe and body to warm. Not any of us. Give people more money and people will not have to worry about this. They can keep a child and care for it properly without living your whole life in desperate need of money, sinking further and further into depression, with your kid having a shoddy life too.
• Protect women. Go to greater lengths to cut sexism. There are predatory men because women are portrayed so heavily by the media as being completely available for the taking. Pathetically, only 1 in 20 of reported rape cases in Scotland end with a conviction. Many, many more cases go even with report because women know themselves that they will not find justice this way. Do not let our women suffer at the hands of these monsters and as a result. Futher more, they will not need abortions from non-consented conceptions.

Following these simple steps will reduce the amount of abortions needed each year by helpless women. The effects of simply reducing the available time period will only be that more women will resort to ‘back alley’ abortions and cause serious damage to themselves. Sure, the RECORDED abortion rate will drop, but the actual rate will not. Women will become ill and possibly die from what the Tories have forced them to do. That’s blood on your hands, Nadine.

I mean, JEEZE we even supplied a diagram!

Women are entitled to the rights that men have, to do exactly what they want with their bodies whenever they want to. Who is anyone to say that a woman should keep/give birth to a baby she does not want? That is up to the woman, if you ask me (Or indeed any sane person). To deprive women of this right is just tyranny. It’s just another way to ‘put her in her place’. Imagine if old Div Cam could get preggo? Just imagine with me for a second that he did. His belly swelled and the doctor said.

“Hold up old chap! You seem to have a little bundle of joy on the way! Since you apparently don’t have a vagina, you’ll just be having it by C-Section. That’s alright, isn’t it old bean?!”

And he’d say “Of course! I mean, I WAS stupid and slutty enough to have sex! DUH! Wouldn’t want to contribute to the abortion rates! I should just go back home and quit my job to prepare to dedicate at least 16 years of my life to raising my new child. Forget my flourishing career! I’m ready to be a mummy!”

Naw. He’d be legging it down to the abortion clinic screaming

“BY JOE! MY IMAGE! MY MONEY! IT’S ALL AT RISK! GET THIS THING OUT OF ME!”

Aye, what’s your answer to that, Na-demon Dorries?

Despite the global recession, record unemployment and demands to cut public spending across the world Forbes has revealed that the wealth of the richest billionaires has continued to increase. The global financial crisis has still not stopped the rich from becoming even richer. This year, Bill Gates has been toppled from the number 1 richest by a Mexican Businessman Carlos Slim.

Slim now has a personal wealth estimated at $53 Billion – thats an increase from last year of $18 Billion. Slim’s personal wealth is even more disgusting when you consider that his home country of Mexico still faces widespread poverty – the average Mexican income is only $14,500 and 17% of the country lives below the poverty line. Slim makes his money through his telecom empire Telmex, which operates as a virtual monopoly controlling 90% of Mexico’s phone lines.

Despite his personal wealth increasing by $13 billion, the much more recognisable face of Bill Gates has been bumped into second place. Gates may have made his millions out of a genuine creative ability to redefine how people work with computers, but in order to keep the company he founded – Microsoft – dominant in the market they have had to form their own monopoly like Slim. Microsoft are increasingly threatened by superior and free open source operating systems for computers and have instituted technical measures that will allow them to keep their market share at the price of holding back progress in computer technology.

In at number 5 is Lakshmi Mittal, once the UK’s richest man. Mittal is a steel magnate whose personal wealth stands at $28.7 Billion. Mittal’s Kazakh mines have been condemned by the coalminers working in them, for their appalling safety record. More than 90 miners have died in his mines since 2004, and many of the miners condemn Mittals lax health and safety precautions as being even worse than during the Soviet era. Mittal has also done damage to the environment in the pursuit of naked profit – in 1998 Mittal bought a steel plant for only £1 in Cork, 3 years later not only had he made the workforce of 400 redundant but left the Irish taxpayer of a bill of €70m for the damage his plant had caused to Cork harbour.

The total number of billionaires on the list has increased from 793 to 1011, and their average net worth has increased to $3.5 billion, an increase of $500 million from last year. Interestingly the number of billionaires outside of the western world has rocketed – the number of Chinese Billionaires has doubled, and there are more Billionaires in Russia now than any European country.

Alongside Chinese Billionaires there has been an increase in the number of Indian Billionaires – showing that despite the massive poverty in India, there are a few who are able to live lives beyond the imagination of their workforce. In both China and Russia the dismantling of large parts of the planned economy and the welfare state has allowed a massive transfer of wealth to these Billionaires, which accounts for their ability to challenge the dominance of western Billionaires on the rich list.

The next time David Cameron, Nick Clegg, or Gordon Brown tell us about the necessity of sacrifice, about how were all in it together, or that it’s unreasonable for people to demand a defence of their jobs or living conditions remember this list. For the past 30 years Thatcherism and its equivalents in Europe and the US have made the rich richer than they could have possibly imagined in the 70’s, at the costs of the welfare state and the right to work. Now even in a global recession – the worst in 80 years – they are still getting richer, and expect us to pay for their mistakes.

Anti-abortion nutjobs SPUC are holding their “International Youth Pro-Life Conference” this 19-21 March in Clydebank.

We’ve fought the racists and fascists on the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh -- now it’s time to fight the woman-haters.

SPUC not only want to stop women getting abortions -- they’re also against condoms, the pill, and sex education. WTF?!

A woman’s right to control her body is a fundamental human right. Women should have total control over their reproductive system, being able to make free and informed decisions about how they live. Every undermining of a woman’s right to choose whether, when and how to have children is an attack on all women.

Every day, 200 women die because they couldn’t access a legal abortion.

After the general election in May there’s the very real prospect that abortion rights will come under heavy attack. Tory MPs want to make it more and more difficult for women to access abortion. If enough of them are elected there could be a majority in the Westminster parliament for gradually taking women’s rights to control their own bodies away piece by piece. That means we need to get organised now, and start undermining the ability of anti-abortionists to meet and organise against women. Just as we do with racists, we also need to do with misogynists.

Women’s abortion rights need to be defended.

FUCK SPUC!

Protest! Saturday 20 March, outside Beardmore Hotel, Clydebank. 8.30am.

Hundreds of local residents and people from across Glasgow marched through the city earlier today in memory of Red Road flat residents the Serykh family, who were driven to suicide last weekend reportedly following the failure of their asylum application.
The demonstration gathered at the Red Road flats, one of the main areas in which Asylum families are ‘dispersed’ in the city, and marched on a route to the city centre, before a rally just off George Square. The march was noisy (with a samba band!) and got a really good reception from passers-by, especially when we reached the city centre and held a brief sit-down protest outside the City Chambers. Despite the overhanging sadness of last weekend’s events, the march had a celebratory atmosphere – of hundreds of people coming together to show Glasgow’s true face as a welcoming city that opens its doors to refugees and asylum seekers, and refuses to be taken in by the lies of the mainstream media and politicians who try to use those seeking sanctuary in our country as scapegoats for the problems of the system.
You can read more from Leftfield about the asylum system and the Red Road flats here.

SSP PUBLIC MEETING: end the government’s terror against asylum seekers! for decent housing, jobs and incomes for ALL!
Wednesday 17 March, 7.30pm. Church Hall, Quarrywood Avenue, Barmulloch.
With speakers Kevin McVey (SSP candidate in Glasgow North East) & Waheed Totakhyl (Scottish Afghan Society).

the marchers pours into george square

no borders, no nations, stop deportations!

But it’s not just the Greek people that are militant. Oh no, Greece also has some of the most militant, revolutionary canines in Europe! Writes a Greek anarchist of their four-legged friends: “They always hated police and authority, lived in Exarchia and the university and came with us in every demo. Some are still with us, some have died, always dreaming of a free world.”
One dog in particular, who we believe to go by the name of Kellanos, has become a minor celebrity round Athens, as a regular participant in every demonstration there over the past few years, never shying away from the front line of battle. Think I’m joking? Take a look at these…

24 February 2010

PAWS-ING FOR THOUGHT: 4 March 2009

9 May 2009

12 December 2008

24 February 2010

Leftfield salutes the efforts of Comrade Kellanos and the street dogs of Athens in their valiant struggle to bring about a fairer world for all creatures, two-legged and four-legged alike, and thinks the dogs of Scotland could learn much from their waggy-tailed comrades of Greece. Canines of the world unite! You have nothing to lose except your collars and leads!

If you’ve been watching the news in the last month or so, you could be forgiven for thinking the Earth has gone a bit crazy. Devastating earthquakes have hit Haiti, Chile, Turkey and then Chile again.

But in fact, the recent spate of earthquakes is not in any way unusual. In any given year, we can expect on average one richer-scale 8 earthquake, 17 quakes between 7 and 7.9, and roughly 132 with a magnitude between 6 and 6.9.

So why does it seem like 2010 has already been such a terrible year for earthquakes? In this case, it’s not the Earth which is changing, but human society.

Human society on Earth has recently entered an unprecedented new phase: for the first time ever, more people live in cities than in the countryside, on the land. The vast majority of these people live in recently built slums. These slums go by many names-favela, township, ghetto; they all add up to the same thing. Migrants from around the world, torn from the land by capitalist economic policies, pour into cities in search of a living. Faced with the failure of municipal governments to accommodate them with decent housing, they build their own homes with whatever they can find.

This process has been going on since the beginning of the capitalist era. The Highland Clearances were one of the first examples of poor people being chucked off the land, as wealthy landowners prepare to use intensive methods to extract the maximum profit they can from their land. Today’s clearances are taking place in rural China, India and Africa. They’re driven by the policies of the international financial institutions like the World Bank or the IMF, who force governments to make their agricultural sector only produce profitable commodities for export.

But at the time of the Highland Clearances, there was at least an industrial revolution that provided work for the mass of landless people flooding into cities like Glasgow, Manchester or Birmingham. Today, factories work differently, with more automation and advanced machinery than was possible in the 19th century. So although countries like China are rapidly industrialising, there will never be enough work to provide for all the people migrating to the coastal cities. The result is that those workers who do find a job labour in near-slavery conditions fro absolute pittance wages.

A favela in Brazil

Meanwhile, the majority are forced to try and survive in what’s been called the “informal sector”, or the black economy. They peddle goods on the street, they scavenge rubbish dumps for anything valuable, or they become involved in crime and the one profitable industry within reach-the drug trade.

Left wing sociologist Mike Davis has chronicled what he calls ‘The Planet of Slums,’ in a book of the same name. It started out life as an article which is well worth a read, and is available for download here.

Many of these third world cities are built close to geological fault lines, making them prone to earthquakes. But the really devastating thing is that so many people now live in poorly built housing, which is extremely vulnerable to collapse. This means that the numbers dying from earthquakes on average is increasing. Therefore, more media coverage.

There’s pretty much nothing we can do to predict or prevent the occurrence of earthquakes. But what we could do is start a major global programme to make sure everyone on Earth has a properly built home that could better withstand one, which would drastically reduce the numbers that die.

More than that, we could start looking at how to change our global agricultural system. In global capitalist agriculture, production isn’t geared to providing people with an opportunity for meaningful work, or feeding the vast majority. What most agricultural production in the third world is geared towards is to producing the products wanted on the supermarket shelves of the rich countries. A different kind of agriculture worldwide could give most of the world meaningful work and feed the world’s population without

People scavenging a rubbish dump for survival in Cambodia

harming the environment.

Ordinary working people on the land have fed humanity for centuries. What we need isn’t a return to some kind of medieval idyll that never existed. It’s the right of people to live and work where they choose, without being forced to move to survive, leading to a more equal distribution of the population across the land. This would also be safer, because it wouldn’t cram so many millions of people into megacities vulnerable to natural disasters. It’s what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels meant when they called for “the abolition of the distinction between town and country” in The Communist Manifesto.

Regular readers of this site will know of two attempts by the so-called “Scottish Defence League” to march in Glasgow in Edinburgh to demonstrate against Muslims in this country. On both occasions the SDL have been kettled, unable to march – and in Edinburgh unable to make even a token static protest. On both occasions democratic, grassroots and broad anti-fascist organisations have been formed, with SSY members working with different anti-fascist campaigners to physically stop the SDL from marching. These organisations have been responsive in nature, and have only formed in the cities where the SDL have planned to march – but it has left us with a network of anti-fascists, in Glasgow Anti-Fascist Alliance and Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance.

This Saturday both groups will be coming together to have a national anti-fascist meeting to discuss the way forward for anti-fascists in Scotland. The SDL have been convincingly thrashed both times they have attempted to march or demonstrate but it is now clear the SDL are changing tactics and the anti-fascist alliances must respond to this. They have shut down their facebook, bebo groups etc and now are reliant on a hardcore of their members to come out and demonstrate. They have given up trying to publicly advertise their demonstrations and are now reliant on contacting those who have already been on previous demonstrations.

This in itself is a victory, as it severely stunts the possible growth of the SDL as an organisation but it also makes it harder for anti-fascists to combat them. After the Edinburgh disaster for the SDL, they announced they would be having a memorial event in Lockerbie on the 27th of March. Again this shows they have been thrown out of the cities in Scotland and marks a retreat for them. However instead of demonstrating on the 27th the SDL organised a demo last Saturday – this was entirely in secret, with no press coverage of any kind. Again, a blow considering the media coverage they obtained in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

What it does raise though is the possibility of “lightning demos” – where the SDL contact a few dozen of their trusted members to organise a brief, static demo in major cities in Scotland – possibly outside key targets for them, such as Mosques or the Parliament. The anti-fascist movement needs to be able to respond to this effectively, particularly as the conditions will be very different from in the past in terms of policing etc.

We also need to discuss how we deal with other fascist organisations, such as the National Front. Long dormant across the UK – and in particular Scotland, where they never had anything like the base they had in England – they are now planning a “Kriss Donald memorial” later this month. The NF is trying to stoke up racial tension and exploit the tragic murder of a young boy for their own fantasies of racial war.

The biggest threat we need to face is not forces on the street however – its the established party of the far-right across the UK, the BNP. The BNP took 2 MEP’s last year, alongside their dozens of councillors and GLA seat. They are trying to make the break into political respectability, and with Griffins infamous appearance on Question Time are making some inroads. While the BNP have no councillors in Scotland, and have never picked much support north of the border its clear they are now trying to break on to the Scottish political scene. In the Glasgow North East by-election they came 4th, not far off beating the Tories and holding on to their deposit.

The BNP are now talking about standing in up to 12 seats across Scotland, which would be their largest set of candidates in any General Election in Scotland. While the BNP do not have any chance of winning the seats – and are very unlikely to hold their deposit in any of these seats either – these elections will be used to boost their profile for the 2011 Holyrood Elections. The BNP will be trying to get a PR seat by winning 5-6% across a region, most likely Glasgow.

At the moment this appears unlikely, particularly as Scottish Elections don’t give the BNP media coverage on the basis of their successes down south. What their strategy most likely will be is to boost their profile in national elections across Scotland in preparation for the 2012 council elections. All the BNP need here is 16 – 20% in one council ward to take a councillor. The BNP built their base in council halls in England, its logical they would use the same tactics up here – where they do not need to win a FPTP election.

The anti-fascist movement not only needs to deal with the far-right in their political organisations but with a wider acceptance of racist views in society in general. It’s now commonplace to hear migrants being blamed for taking jobs, and attacks on Muslims as being disloyal, terrorists etc. Most of the people who make these kind of comments would never vote BNP, but they can influence the major parties through voting for them to accept these ideas.

If the organisations, and more importantly the ideas of the far-right are going to be beaten anti-fascists have to evolve a strategy beyond “Don’t vote Nazi”. We need to flesh out, and campaign as for a strategy that undercuts why people are attracted to racist parties and ideas. That means uniting working people for positive demands around housing, education, employment and wages. SSY hopes that the national anti-fascist meeting this Saturday begins that process, and helps to build a national Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance.

Saturday, March 13, 2010
6:30pm – 9:00pm
upstairs in the Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh

Warning: This post contains some upsetting stuff about dead ducks.

The above video is one of several shot by William Todd Powell, a senior biologist working for the Province of Alberta in Canada. It shows a duck struggling to escape from a tailings pond, where oil company Syncrude dumped the toxic leftovers of its operation to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Over 1,500 migrating ducks landed on the pond, covering themselves with the deadly residue. The vast majority of them died. Now Syncrude is facing a trial for its failure to protect the ducks, and the company could face up to $800, 000 in fines, and executives ultimately could get 6 months in prison.

Syncrude admit that they had failed to properly install noise-making equipment to scare the ducks away from landing on the toxic pond as they were migrating.

The disaster could have been covered up were it not for the courageous efforts of tipsters like Powell. Although legally obliged to do so, Syncrude had failed to inform authorities of what had happened. But when Powell and other wildlife officials got on the scene, their shocking images and video stormed around the internet, and forced action.

Footage of a Greenpeace action against the tar sands.

The whole affair has brought into sharp focus the environmental battle to stop exploitation of the tar sands. As the possibility of peak oil begins to bite, the fossil fuel industry is desperately looking for new areas to exploit to keep their profits flowing. The tar sands in Canada offer the prospect of huge new reserves, but they are very difficult to extract. This means huge amounts of energy are used in the process, causing massive carbon emissions. It also means enormous destruction of the natural environment, including much land that is home to Canada’s embattled indigenous people as well as pristine boreal forest. The fight to stop further exploitation of the oil sands is one of the most important battles against climate change and ecological destruction in North America, if not the world. Exploitation of the tar sands alone is enough to make Canada fail to meet its obligations under the Kyoto agreement on global warming.

Lawyers for Syncrude have entered a plea of not guilty to the trial, claiming there was nothing they could have done to prevent the disaster. Shamefully, they have attacked William Todd Powell, and, supported by the corporate media in Canada, accused him of “showboating”. Syncrude argues that Powell should have “shot the ducks with a gun not a camera” as that would have been more humane. Leaving aside the complete heartless hypocrisy of the statement, this ignores the fact that actually Alberta wildlife authorities did shoot the ducks that were in range to put them out of their misery. However, the pond is so vast and the number of ducks so huge, it was only possible for them to reach a fraction of them.

Ed Stelmach: Twat in a hat

The Conservative Premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, is unfortunately in the pocket of Syncrude and the other oil companies. His government has given approval to a massive expansion of tar sands operations, as well as spending millions on trying to improve the image of the dirty oil project. Responding to the disaster, he bizarrely chose to call the horrific duck deaths an “opportunity” to show the world Alberta “means business” when it comes to environmental protection. Quite how footage of dead and dying ducks does this is unclear.

In an even more ridiculous gaffe, Stelmach also told reporters recently he had not seen the notorious duck images, even though they had been headline news on TV and in the papers in Alberta. His comments outraged many, as they felt they showed a total lack of concern for his own responsibility in the disaster. In response, opposition politicians gave him photos in the legislature, and Greenpeace delivered blown-up and gift wrapped photos in person.

“Not even looking at the front page of papers in this province? That’s something that is not responsible for a premier to do. They are taking Syncrude to court, but are they actually examining their own actions?” said Mike Hudema of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace activists deliver gift-wrapped photos of the dying ducks to Ed Stelmach

Stelmach and his spokespeople have offered various different stories to try and get out of looking stupid over his claims. Stelmach now claims he thought reporters were asking if he’d seen the photos before they were introduced in court, which they clearly weren’t. His team have also claimed that they give him news clippings each morning with the pictures cut out. “He doesn’t have the luxury of opening a paper in the morning,” said his communications director, Cam Hantiuk. “He missed the visuals.”

The fact is that the disastrous tar sands development is being driven by the corporate greed of Syncrude and others, and whatever the results of the trial they will continue to have huge control over the political process in Canada as elsewhere. The heroic work of William Todd Powell in exposing them shows the world a model of a responsible public servant. Unfortunately, Canadian governments see work like his as less of a priority than defending dirty developments, as wildlife services across the country face budget cutbacks and lay-offs.

The horrific duck deaths just underline the need for grassroots activism that works on the ground to undermine the power of the oil lobby and their paid-for politicians.

tesco's ideal employee

Young people are lazy, illiterate, untidy, useless and have an ‘attitude problem’, one of the most highly-paid people in the country revealed yesterday to a conference of supermarket executives. Lucy Neville-Rolf, who earned £1.6 million last year in her job as an executive director of Tesco, blames the ‘education system’ for its failings to create a perfect society of conformist minimum wage robot clones, in a speech which rolled out just about every clichéd anti-youth prejudice in the book. I mean, it is about time these pesky young folk were brought into line and started showing some fucking gratitude for their shitty minimum wage temp contracts, isn’t it?
Well, Lucy agrees, adding into her anti-youth tirade that ‘a society where people don’t feel the need to work to gain material possessions will not be a stable or successful society.’
Well, Leftfield disagrees. The reality is that Lucy Neville-Rolf, Terry Leahy and all the other Tesco executives are an unnecessary bunch of parasites who scrounge off the hard work of tens of thousands of low-waged workers in supermarkets in the UK, in banana plantations inthe Caribbean, and all over the world. Obviously, Lucy, Terry and co. are deeply concerned with the continuation of a society that places an obsession with ‘material possessions’ above all else, as they’ve managed to get bloody well jolly rich off the back of it. Indeed, Tesco’s turnover continues to grow, with profits now topping £3 billion annually, and that’s even with a workforce that’re apparently all  lazy, barely employable teenage slackers!

Undoubtedly, Neville-Rolf hinted in her speech at serious issues in our education system, in her claims that  school-leavers “Cannot do reading. They cannot do arithmetic. They cannot do writing.”. There are tens of thousands of young people every year slipping through the system and leaving school lacking basic numeracy and literacy skills -- but the only reason this concerns Tesco is that it’s affecting their profit margins, not because they actually give a shit about the state of education in this country. If they really do care that much, maybe they could consider not going to such extreme lengths to avoid paying their taxes here…?
Tesco already employees 40,000 people under the age of 19, and seemingly want to see the whole school-system re-oriented to be a rolling production line of cheap labour to suit their own interests. In all their moaning about the state of education, something they’ve done in the past too, they seem to miss the point that education is important for education’s sake. This sentiment the education system purely acts to ready people for a live of wage slavery is pretty worrying at a time when schools and colleges are facing massive budget cuts from central government.

Lucy Neville-Rolf says that young people seem to think that the ‘world owes them a living’. Why the hell shouldn’t it? Everyone has the right to a job with decent pay and conditions, and  just because the bosses at Tesco would rather we lived in a corporate paradise of low-taxes and the conditions of cheap labour (ie. mass unemployment), doesn’t mean it’s suddenly acceptable to start shitting all over young people. After all, do you think Lucy Neville-Rolf would go into her work smiling, happy and looking forward to a fun day of shelf-stacking if she was on £5.86 an hour? I doubt it.

BONUS: TESCO INVADES DENMARK!!
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