Check your 'Purcell & Black' for irregularities and residue every month when you're in the shower.

Ah, Steven Purcell. Him leaving Glasgow City Council has been like one of those horribly awkward and protracted breakups that ends up sucking in a whole social circle, and you know the basic story of what happened but you get the feeling there’s more to it. Gradually, ever more horrible, cringeworthy and sometimes fucking funny details just keep leaking out. Of course, situations like that are gifts for gossipy petty folk who can’t get enough of delighting in the right people’s misery, and us folk at Leftfield are no exception. So it was with no small amount of schadenfreude that we learned that the Castro Centre, the new incarnation of the Glasgow LGBT centre which was forced to close down with debts of £300,000 looks like it’s about to close as well, because of *drumroll* big debts and possible massive corruption.

Please understand, it’s not the fact that Glasgow is possibly about to lose its only dedicated LGBT community centre for the second time that’s causing this glee. The fact that it may close again is a frankly ridiculous and outrageous situation. However, a large amount of disturbing evidence has emerged from various sources that suggests that not only has Solidarity Labour councillor Ruth Black (who ran the last LGBT centre and left her post just months before the centre was forced to close with crippling debts) only managed to find herself back in charge due to good old Purcell brand ‘irregularities’, but also that the centre is being run poorly and downright dishonestly.

When the LGBT centre first closed, people were understandably angry and upset. Groups lost a meeting place they’d had for years, and this was of particular concern to support organisations like Crosslynx Glasgow (a trans support group) who had very real concerns about finding a venue where they’d feel (and be) safe. As well as this, groups received virtually no notice that the centre was about to go under, and faced a frantic scrabble to find a new venue in order to stop a loss of momentum and members. As if that all wasn’t frustrating enough, what actually happened to the LGBT centre is still shrouded in mystery; all we really know for sure is that when it closed it was £300,000 in debt and that there were angry refutations of any suggestion of irregularity or incompetence in management posted to the GLGBT website before it was taken down for good. Also, there were whisperings in the papers that Ruth Black had essentially run it into the ground, but the stock response was she had left her job months before the closure and so had nothing to do with it. Which is a pretty pish counterargument, but oh well! Maybe, we hoped, Glasgow would have an LGBT centre again soon, and it would be better run and hopefully be a fun, useful and supportive place for LGBT folk to hang about. However, what actually happened was that Glasgow Labour cronyism did what it does best; ignored what was best for the people a service is meant to, you know, serve, and instead just did what was best for their councillors.

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New figures have been revealed showing that women will bear the brunt of the ConDem coalition’s budget cuts.

As Tory Minister Bob Neill said a few weeks ago, ‘Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt.’

Shadow Welfare Secretary Yvette Cooper said:

“Women are bearing nearly three-quarters of the Tory-Liberal plans, while men are bearing just a quarter. This is despite the fact that women’s income and wealth is still considerably lower than men’s.
Even more significant, this doesn’t include the impact of public spending cuts. As women make up more of the public sector workforce they will be more heavily hit by the public sector pay freeze and the projected 600,000 net public sector job losses… Women are more affected by the cuts in things like housing benefit, cuts in upratings to the additional pension, public sector pensions or attendance allowances, and they benefit less than men from the increases in the income tax allowances.”

A gender audit of the budget showed that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes is to come from female taxpayers. The analysis looks at a net total of £8bn raised by 2014-15 through direct tax and benefit measures. It includes the effects of raising the personal tax allowance, the increase in capital gains tax, the freezing of benefits and the changes to pensions. Of the income to be raised by the recent budget, men will pay £2.2bn while women will pay £5.8bn.

It is well known in Britain that women are already more affected by poverty than men – government statistics show that almost half of all women have total individual incomes of less than £100 a week, compared with less than a fifth of men.

Instead of millionaire families like the Camerons, the Cleggs, and indeed Cooper and her husband Ed Balls – it’s going to be poor families and single mothers that are going to pay for the crisis in capitalism.

It’s also important to note, though, that this study hasn’t come out of a sudden commitment to women’s rights or fighting poverty by Cooper and the Labour Party, but it is an opportunistic move to make the Tories and Lib Dems look bad, and to trick us all into thinking that things would be better if only we had a Labour government – which, of course, they wouldn’t. Labour were just as committed to making cuts, and ANY cuts will always impact those at the bottom of society first – and that means disproportionately affecting women. If Yvette Cooper really gave a shit about women in poverty, she wouldn’t be in the Labour party.

Spot the difference: On the right, Frank McAveety and on the left, Frank McAvennie off of Only an Excuse

Scottish Labour have been again embarrassed as leading MSP Frank ‘the Wank’ McAveety was exposed as a pervy bastard.

McAveety was forced yesterday to resign as convenor of the Scottish Parliament Petitions committee and as Labour spokesman for sport. As if Labour hadn’t learned their lessons about microphones being left on already, he was overheard in the committee ogling a member of the public. You can hear what he had to say below:

This of course comes hard on the heels of Stephen Purcell, who like McAveety was leader of Glasgow City Council, being forced to flee the country after being exposed as a school closing, land grabbing, gangster tripping, corrupt coke hound.

McAveety has had a far from glittering career as a typical Labour careerist hack, working his way up the ranks by way of several spectacular acts of idiocy.

After Donald Dewar died, he dithered about whether to support Jack McConnell or Henry McLeish as his successor as Labour leader and First Minister. In the end, trusted by neither, he ended up without a job.

He got back into a minster’s seat in 2002, and in 2003 he was promoted to Minister for Culture, Tourism and Sport. Then came the infamous piegate.

"Just one more. I'll just tell them I was at some arty shit anyway."

When he was due to be answering questions in the chamber, he was nowhere to be seen. He eventually turned up really late, and told MSPs he’d been “unavoidably detained at the Scottish Arts Council Book Awards.”

This in fact turned out to be a load of bollocks. He had in fact been munching it up in the parliament canteen, where all the posh grub costs about a pound thanks to subsidies provided by you and me. Journalists had spotted him tucking into pie, beans and roast potatoes, and he was soon caught out as a liar who’d tried to cover up a leisurely lunch.

Funny as this was, it’s hardly the worst offence in the world, and we’re sure many readers can sympathise with someone bullshitting their way out of an extra long lunch at work. Of course, most won’t be on the £73 grand salary of McAveety at the time.

What was a worse error was when he tried to have a couple of anti-war protesters fitted up for “intimidating” him. By intimidating he meant “they said bad stuff I did and it hurt my feelings.”

While out canvassing he’d been challenged on his inaction to oppose Labour’s war mongering in Iraq, as well as the closure of the Govanhill pool. His response was to get the police involved and try to get the protesters thrown in jail. But the Sheriff laughed him out of court, saying surely politicians campaigning on the streets are “fair game” for people who want to voice their disagreement. Frank didn’t agree, saying that he’d “suffered the worst intimidation” he’d felt in his life.

The Sheriff responded that he “must have led a very sheltered life.” He added that Frank had “completely blown his credibility.”

He got his third (or is it fourth) shot at the big time in 2007, becoming Labour shadow minister for Sport and petitions committee convenor, a nice wee gig that will have boosted his salary again. Now that’s come crashing down around him as he’s been caught out perving.

Sheltered life: Protesters take on Frank the Softy

Probably a lot of people will say ‘So What?’ about this, but joking aside it is actually worth remarking on how the woman concerned must feel just now. Low level perving like Frank was engaged in is the thin edge of a spectrum that includes staring at women, shouting stuff in the street, all the way to groping or unwanted physical contact. It’s this kind of thing that means many women are made to feel really uncomfortable in public on a regular basis. For someone in a position of authority like him to do it legitimises this kind of behaviour in the eyes of other men, and will embolden some to go further.

Frank isn’t the first old pervy boy in the parliament. Let’s not forget former Presiding Officer David Steel, who when he saw SSP MSPs Carolyn Leckie and Rosie Kane coming up to vote was heard to declare “Well, the view has certainly got better in this parliament!”

There’s nothing wrong with finding a woman attractive. For a man who’s already in a long term relationship with kids to be sitting ogling a woman and pointing her out to a fellow parliamentarian is kind of not cool though. (Incidentally, is anyone able to identify who was sitting next to him and was on the receiving end of this chat? Because it’s also worth remarking that they did nothing to challenge him, a tacit acceptance that it’s OK to treat women as on display for MSPs’ entertainment.)

Then there’s the whole “dark and dusky” thing. Someone has to come right out and say it: Frank McAveety clearly has racialised fantasies. This is pure speculation (we like speculating on things we can’t prove!), but I would guess he’s probably got a lot of that from porn. Pornography, as well as promoting violence and degradation of women, is riven with racism and racialised views of what women from different parts of the world are “like” sexually. Women from the Philippines, who are clearly a group that gets Frank a bit hot and bothered, are some of the most abused and exploited people around the world, not just in the sex industry but also by employers of migrant workers in virtual slave conditions.

A Gauguin painting from Tahiti: One for Frank's wank bank

Frank also references the painter Paul Gauguin, just to prove how cultured he is (“there’s a wee bit of culture for you”). Gauguin is well known for ending his days in a Tahiti, a French colony that he regarded as a tropical paradise where he could shag natives to his heart’s content in between painting them. He’s a contradictory figure, as although he did argue with colonial authorities, his art is also responsible for helping develop exoticised, sexualised images of Polynesian women back in Europe.

Frank clearly isn’t the worst example of sexism and racism we could throw at you. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a casual sexist or racist. How would you feel, subjected to his leering gaze? Or if you learned that he’d described you as “dark and dusky”, with clear undertones of “a horny exotic native type.”

What we can take away from the whole affair is that Labour produces a certain class of idiotic, careerist fuckwit, who can mess things up again and again but always end up with a cushy job with a salary higher than most of us will ever earn. For a man like Frank, being in the Labour Party provides you with a great career path to not working too hard, long lunches, and plenty of women to perv over in the public gallery. It’s high time we recognised these chancers for what they are: not defenders of the Scottish working class who vote them in, but parasites making a life for themselves on our backs.

Highlights of Frank’s parliamentary career

The McDonnell Systems Model 101

The Tory press are up in arms about a joke made by Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell at a trade union hustings.

You might remember that after the election we tipped McDonnell as one of the few good guys to get elected to the Westminster Parliament. Despite still being a member of the Labour Party, which as a whole is a right wing bunch of neoliberal warmongering shitebags, he as an individual remains a decent, principled socialist.

Now he’s one of six candidates to become the new leader of Labour after Gordon Brown stepped down. But he doesn’t even stand a chance of getting on the ballot paper, because unfortunately he’s a member of the wrong party, and not enough of his right wing fellow Labour MPs will nominate him.

The thing about being a socialist in the Labour Party nowadays is it might mean you can get yourself a platform in parliament like John has, but you can achieve bugger all with it when there’s not a chance of Labour moving in any serious way to the left.

So you might as well crack some jokes that will ruffle feathers!

At a GMB union hustings, John declared that he’d like to “go back in time to the 80s and assassinate Margaret Thatcher.”

We think this is a fantastic plan, and would like to suggest that when he fails to become leader of the Labour Party, John considers a new career as time traveling cyborg killing machine in the service of the Left. In this case he wouldn’t even have to waste his time ploughing through all the Margaret Thatchers in the phone book like Arnie had to in the 80s, as everyone would know Thatcher’s address.

The Tories are pretending to be outraged by this, with the Telegraph branding his comments “sickening” and “disgusting”, while the Conservative Home blog declared them to be “utterly despicable.”

But if time travel were to become available, surely one of the key priorities for its use would be to take out the woman responsible for smashing the trade unions, decimating working class communities and privatising everything in sight? Quite a few Labour members have said his comments were unacceptable and will damage Labour. But if anything it can only help the party in working class areas where hatred of the Dark One is still visceral, and where people will party when she dies. It drew applause and laughter from the audience of trade unionists. It certainly put him up in our estimation, given the amount of people who we’ve called on to be expelled from this world.

Right now John has 7 nominations, well short of the 30 odd needed to get on the ballot paper. He’s got til Wednesday to get the needed number, and it’s just not going to happen. The fact of the matter is that Labour are no way cool enough to elect someone who would say something like this. You can’t imagine any of the Milliballs clones saying something that would break their facade of replicant like attempts to appeal to the right wing voters of south east England.

Our message to any socialists and trade unionists still involved in the Labour Party is simple: Come with us if you want to live!

Check out this video of protesters live on air declaring Sky News to be the utter shite we know it is:

Eventually Sky had to cut away and just broadcast their logo for a bit. The protests were sparked after Sky presenter Kay Burley went mental at a spokesman for the protesters who were out in London and Glasgow (amongst other places) at the weekend, demanding electoral reform, which you can see below:

Kay Burley is also the journalist who brought us such clangers as claiming on September 11th 2001 “The entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been devastated by a terrorist attack,” as well as, most shamefully, asking the partner of serial killer Steve Wright, who murdered at least five women in Suffolk, “Do you think if you’d had a better sex life this wouldn’t have happened?”

What the current uproar on Sky News shows is that the Murdoch empire has bet everything on a Tory win, and sunk millions of its own money into promoting it. If they don’t get what they want, they’re likely to go absolutely crazy. How crazy? Check out Sky News political editor Adam Boulton pushing things with New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell to the brink of a fight. He jabs his finger, and sways like a pissed rageaholic, throwing his not inconsiderable weight around. Alastair Campbell is an odious piece of human garbage, who before he was engineering election wins for neoliberals had a career writing fake letters to porno mags. Who would have thought someone could go so nuts that Alastair comes off looking like the reasonable one?

Well he’s finally done it, like a bullied teenager forced into taking weed by his peers, Gordon Brown has bottled it and given into pressure. He has resigned after spending only 3 years in the job he has lusted after for practically his entire political career. After taking Labour to it’s worst result since 1983, Brown has taken the hint and left No 10.

Fuck it, I don't care anymore. You're all FUCKING BIGOTS.

A year ago, the Tories would have been ecstatic if Brown had stepped down -- now they’re running about like headless chickens, terrified that the one major stumbling block between a Lib-Lab coalition has been removed. Despite the Lib Dems being closer to the Labour party in the political views of their electorate and MP’s, it was clear that there was no way Nick Clegg was going to prop up a Labour PM as popular as the bastard offspring of Myra Hindley and Saddam Hussein.  Brown was despised in Middle England due to his being Scottish public relations difficulties.

Now with Brown out the way, a deal between the Lib Dems and Labour -- while not ideal -- is a lot more credible. There’s the obvious attack that’s going to come from the Tories and their allies about one unelected PM being replaced with another, but ultimately it’s the politicians who make the decisions, like it or lump it. And a youthful Blairite PM like David Miliband might not be too unpopular in the Home Counties marginals Labour need to retake in the future.

The biggest stumbling block left after Brown’s departure now though is the arithmetic. Despite taking 52% of the popular vote across the UK, Labour and the Lib Dems together do not have over half the seats. In order to form a stable Government, they would need to put together support from an eclectic mix of Democratic Unionists, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Nationalists.

The SDLP have already said their preference is for a Lib Lab pact, and the SNP have been calling for the Lib Dems to explore alternatives to an alliance with the Tories correctly saying that their vote would be badly damaged if they enforced a Tory Government on Scotland. Despite the SNP’s obvious rivalry with Labour it’s leadership know the Scottish people will judge them very harshly if they did anything to stop Labour from keeping the Tories out.

While the Tories Unionist allies are non-existent, the Democratic Unionists do have 8 MP’s in Northern Ireland who could be potential kingmakers in a coalition. Whilst they have officially said they are not opposed in principle to a Lib Lab pact, they are clearly on the right of the political spectrum and would fit more comfortably with the Conservatives.The arithmetic still does not add up though. A Lab-Lib-SDLP pact would not have a majority and neither would a Tory-DUP pact. The SNP, Plaid Cymru, Alliance and Green MP’s would hold real power over decisions.

There’s another issue which makes an elaborate coalition unstable -- English Nationalist resentment. While the Tories may have taken only 36% across the UK, in England they have a clear lead of 40% to Labour’s 28%. If a Government dependent on Scottish Labour, Scottish Liberal and other Nationalist MP’s from within the UK enact cuts on English public services you can bet the Tories, UKIP and BNP will attack them for enforcing a dictatorship on the English electorate.

Lets hope the SNP negotiate to ensure these scenes are never repeated again.

There’s already been discontent brewing south of the border on the issue of Labour’s legitimacy to govern England -- in 2005 Labour got less votes than the Tories in England for example, but more seats. This is alongside the West Lothian question where Scottish MP’s can vote on decisions that only affect England, and the Barnett formula where Scots receive more funding per head in public services than their English counterparts.

A lot of these concerns are pish -- 52% of English voters did support the Liberals and Labour, and the Barnett formula does not take into account Scotland’s massive subsidies to Westminster in Oil money. But the principle would remain -- Labour and the Lib Dem’s would rely on Scottish , Irish and Welsh MP’s to govern. Any negotiations to spare cuts from their respective parts of the UK would be attacked in the Tory press as robbing from England.

This would be a difficult situation for a Government in normal circumstances, but this is a Government that needs to enact brutal public service cuts the likes of which have not been seen in generations. When the schools, hospitals, and jobs start to go you can bet MP’s in marginal seats will feel the pressure to defy the whip to save their own skins. A lost by-election or two could scupper the entire Government’s spending plans. This is not a stable environment to make the UK a profitable place for capitalism again.

That’s why the Tories (and probably the markets too) are desperate to keep the Lib Dems in a pact with them. They are the most stable offer on the table, with both parties having a clear majority when put together -- and enough breathing space in case any MP’s rebel. But right now it appears the Lib Dems know they won’t get this chance again to hold so much power, and are demanding a voting system that takes their support into account. That could mean the end forever for single party Tory rule, and it’s whether or not that’s an acceptable price to pay for one stable Government that the Tories are mulling over just now.

Armando Iannucci already described in detail what a hung parliament might be like in 1997,

Since 2001 the BNP have made steady inroads into British politics, gradually building up a significant base in local councils, and expanding slowly but surely into other arenas – winning a seat on the Greater London Assembly and their highpoint last year, winning 2 seats in the European Parliament. It’s almost been a grudging acceptance by some people on the Left that the BNP’s growth could at best only be slowed in the short term, due to their high profile and the constant anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment in the British press. So it’s not surprising a lot of folk looked with dread to what was going to happen in Barking and Dagenham, the BNP’s stronghold.

It’s where the BNP’s leader Nick Griffin was standing against New Labour hack Margaret Hodge – who gave the BNP ammunition with her comments on housing – and it’s also where the BNP were the official opposition on the council. They had a real chance of both taking Hodge’s seat and taking control of the council – the BNP were throwing the kitchen sink at Barking, and telling their members and supporters they were on the verge of a breakthrough.

Instead they were annihilated – to the surprise of BNP supporters and antifascists alike. They lost all their council seats in Barking and Dagenham – Labour now hold all 51 council seats. Griffin’s vote was also down from 2005. He came nowhere close to challenging Hodge, and finished third behind the Tories. In his speech conceding defeat, Griffin said that they had lost the battle for Barking, and that the area was “colonised”

The BNP’s misfortunes weren’t limited to Barking and Dagenham – they lost councillors all across the country, and are down from 45 councillors to 19 (though English council elections don’t happen all at once, they have other councillors who weren’t up for election).

This result might seem surprising given the BNP got their best result, in terms of votes a couple of nights ago – over half a million. But we don’t know how much of this increase is due to the BNP’s ability to field many more candidates than they were able to in 2005. For example the BNP vote in Scotland in 2005 was only 1,590 but jumped up to almost 9000. On the face of it this looks like a fantastic boost for them, but in reality it is largely due to being able to increase the number of seats they can stand in. They only stood in 2 in 2005 (Glasgow Central and Glasgow North East), in 2010 they stood in 13.

The only direct comparison we can make then, is the vote in Glasgow Central and Glasgow North East – and in both seats, the BNP vote was down from 2005. It’s particularly surprising in the North East, where there’s a lot of concern about immigration and asylum seekers and the BNP nearly held on to their deposit in the by-election last year.

These results couldn’t come at a worse time for Griffin, who has already had to deal with internal difficulties in the BNP – like Mark Collet allegedly trying to kill him, mutiny in the Scottish BNP, their website owner walking off, as well as other discontent around Jim Dowson’s practical ownership of the party. The BNP’s electoral meltdown will inflame the anti-Griffin opposition in the BNP, who may now feel that Griffin’s holocaust denying past is baggage that the BNP can no longer carry, and a new leader more in line with the image of the “new” BNP must be found.

The smarter BNP activists will be asking why their vote collapsed. The reality is that across the UK people who were willing to vote BNP as a protest vote in elections were Labour were certain to win will no longer do so under threat of a Tory Government. From Glasgow North East, to Stoke, to Barking, traditional Labour areas are prepared to hold their nose and vote for Labour to defy the Tories.

Setbacks for the BNP of course aren’t solely attributable to the threat of a Tory Government – it’s likely that thousands of voters would have gone to the polls to vote in fear of what a BNP council would look like, and would have probably chosen Labour as the far lesser evil.

The setbacks for the BNP shouldn’t make us complacent though – the BNP’s ideas still have an an echo among hundreds of thousands of people, and relying on a Tory Government to scare people into voting Labour to keep the BNP out is no long term strategy. If people won’t cast protest votes for the BNP out of fear of the Tories, they won’t cast protest votes for the Left or the Greens. If Labour don’t stand up to the Tories the BNP could posture themselves as the real party against cuts, for British Jobs for British Workers etc.

This shouldn’t mean we don’t celebrate though – it’s squeaky bum time for Griffin and co, whose seats in the European Parliament now look a lot more fragile than before. If the Tories do take power, they may do to the BNP what Thatcher did to the NF – steal their rhetoric on immigration, and steal their votes. And in Scotland they will have a very interesting time upholding “British” identity if the union foists upon us a Tory Government we didn’t vote for.

Here, you can see two maps of the election. To the left is a map of all the seats and who has taken them. To the right, those same constituencies are all shrunk to the same size, so that you can see where how much of a proportion of the total UK vote the population of Scotland represents – not very much.

With the prospect of the Tories retaking power (with the support of the fake radical and con man Clegg), Scotland is experiencing a nasty 80s flashback.

Last night’s election results powerfully reinforce the case for Scottish independence.

In the 80s, Scotland consistently voted overwhelmingly for Labour, but it made no difference. The vast majority of the UK’s population are concentrated in the South East, London and its surroundings. This is where British governments are elected. After 18 years out of power, Labour were elected in 1997 because they transformed themselves into a right wing, neoliberal party in order to win the votes of these seats.

Under the last Tory regime, the most notorious example of how they ruled Scotland with contempt came when they imposed the Poll Tax in Scotland a year early. That helped kick off a mass campaign of resistance that ultimately led to the formation of the SSP.

Poster for the SSP's protest in 2004, demanding a Scottish Republic

There’s nothing inherent about being Scottish that means we’re more left wing than people in the South East. Until the 50s, the Tories usually got the biggest share of the vote here. But for the last 50 years or so, the political consensus in Scotland has been that people basically want left wing, old Labourish policies. Since the 80s, although we’ve voted for that, we haven’t got it. Since Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party we couldn’t even try to vote for a government that would implement what most people want.

In the 80s, hating the Tories became virtually synonymous with being Scottish. There was an important reason for that – Scots pretty much didn’t live in a democracy, they didn’t get the government they vote for.

Last night, Scotland overwhelmingly voted Labour again. Things are slightly different now. Although the Labour Party in the 80s was a long, long way from being perfect, people aren’t voting for something that even approaches what they want any more, they’re voting against what they don’t want – the Tories.

Perhaps the most important consequence of the undemocratic governments of the 80s in Scotland was that it became impossible for the British ruling class to not concede a Scottish Parliament. Holyrood was a concession to try and buy off Scotland, staving off the anger of Scottish people that they don’t get the government policies they want.

But the fact remains that the vast majority of people can’t vote to get rid of Trident nuclear weapons from Scottish soil, we can’t vote against neoliberal economic policies, and we can’t vote for a full welfare state and an end to the scapegoating of people on benefits. These things are all still controlled by the London government.

In the aftermath of the election, who will form the next government isn’t clear. In this situation, the need for a republic couldn’t be clearer. The UK government operates in the name of the Queen. The UK is still a monarchy, governed by crown powers. That means that the actions of the UK government, and who ultimately will form that government, isn’t decided by the people, but is controlled by the unelected elite, in the name of the Queen. That’s why the SSP has stood consistently not only for independence, but also for a republic. The SNP say they want independence, but they won’t make a clear commitment to getting rid of the monarchy and establishing a Scottish republic – which would mean Scotland ultimately was still controlled by the traditional British elite.

Scotland became part of the British state 303 years ago. But the Scottish state never ceased fully to exist. Throughout that whole time, there was still a separate Scottish legal system, official church and education system. Since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, the scope of what the submerged Scottish state controls has got much greater. But in the face of a possible return to the power of the anti-Scottish Tories, its time that everything done by the state in Scotland/the Scottish state is brought under full democratic control. The only way to do that is to establish a completely independent, democratic republic.

Protesting for a Scottish Republic, on Calton Hill in 2004

This would mean that the national question would no longer dominate Scottish politics. Nobody would blame England for our social and class problems. People would be able to completely focus on the role of Scottish bosses (and their international partners in England and around the world) and Scottish governments in oppressing the Scottish working class. The SNP would probably split as well, with the many socialists who are members of it but want to see independence first focusing completely on the social struggle.

We’re socialists, and anti-capitalists. We want to see Scotland go further than the reformist politics of old Labour. We want Scotland to move towards the full abolition of capitalism, transforming relations in Scotland so that nobody is exploited, working to make a minority get rich while we get poorer. But there’s a basic issue of democracy here. The vast majority of people in Scotland don’t want the right wing, neoliberal policies of the British governments of the last 30 odd years. If the Scottish state is to become a democracy, then we need an independent, democratic republic.

Bonuses: Check out this article about the need for a republic. And check out this wiki article for full details about the Declaration of Calton Hill and the SSP’s protests for a Scottish republic.

"I just voted . . EVERYWHERE!"

The polls have closed. The votes are in. Now it’s time to bring us the results of Britain’s most important election that isn’t decided by phoning a premium rate number.

All the papers are projecting an SSP landslide in every seat we’re standing in, but we’re trying to keep our feet on the ground.

What does excite us more than Nick Clegg feels about having sex with his 31st woman is the fact that this will be the first ever UK general election to be LIVEBLOGGED in Leftfield. We’ve got two different teams bringing you live updates, one in the count in Glasgow with Socialist candidate and SSY member James Nesbitt, and one with the SSY blog newsroom bringing you updates from around the UK (as they come on the telly.)

Will David Cameron get to piss on the ashes of Broken Britain? Will Gordon Brown continue to do that weird thing with his jaw in the middle of sentences from 10 Downing Street? Or will Nick Clegg get to bring us his brand of “new” politics by returning the Whig party of Pitt the Elder to power?

Which particular colour will the bucket of shit we’re going to get served be? There’s only one way to find out, or one decent way at least, which is to keep refreshing this site obsessively all night. It begins . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

As we’ve already reported today, The Sun have been relentlessly trying to persuade us to vote Tory. The reason for this is that the Murdoch empire that owns it has sunk millions into pushing the Tories, in the hopes of getting a government that will give them everything they want.

One of the things they want is to be able to keep using pornography to sell their papers. For decades, The Sun has put pictures of nearly naked teenagers on page 3 to help keep them as the number one “news”paper in the UK.

Unsurprisingly, many women are unhappy about the way that page 3 exploits women, encouraging Sun readers to objectify them and think of them solely as sex objects. There’s been frequent calls to try and stop The Sun pushing pornographic pictures of young women.

Since 2003, The Sun have accompanied the pictures with what they call ‘News In Briefs’. This basically consists of putting words in the mouth of the young women they’re exploiting, in order to push their political agenda. Supposedly, we’re led to believe, these women are not only hired to bare their chests, but also because they share the extreme right wing agenda of the Murdoch empire. Not only is this exploiting the models, it’s also manipulating the readers through a twisted version of sexuality, in order to try and get them to support their sinister agenda. You can check out some of the examples here, such as “Poppy thinks Tony Blair was absolutely right to send the troops into Iraq,” or “Tina thinks the G20 have taken the right decision to inject a trillion dollars into the financial system.”

It’s hard to tell what they intend you to think as you read these captions. Is it meant to mean, ‘These are intelligent young women who have made a free choice to be glamour models.’ Or are is it just a way to mock the objectified women even further, by making the patently ridiculous claim that they really said the things attributed to them?

The election special of ‘The News in Briefs’ concerned the noises that some MPs have made about taking action against page 3. Normally I would just link to it, but I’m not sending hits to right wing porn, so here’s the text:

“SIXTEEN Page 3 Girls in all their glory represent the very image of freedom in this country.

But if Labour or the Lib Dems win the election, this could be the last time they are allowed to pose together.

MPs Harriet Harman and Lynne Featherstone will move swiftly to change the law and ban Page 3 forever.

John Locke: Not happy about his theory being appropriated to justify pornography

Our national treasures – who even enjoy the Royal seal of approval from our future King Prince Charles – will be no more.

And at a stroke the very liberties that put the Great into Great Britain will be torn asunder.

The radical ideas of the 17th-century philosopher John Locke helped shape our freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and, later, America’s Constitution.

Lib Dem frontbencher Featherstone was cheered by women’s rights activists when she declared she would “love to take on Page 3″.

But our Poppy said: “The basis of Lockean thought is his theory of the Contract of Government, under which all political power is a trust for the benefit of the people.

“His thinking underpins our ideas of national identity and society. Please don’t let those who seek to ban our beauty win. Vote to save Page 3!”

There’s so much wrong with this article I don’t know where to start. That’s why we’ve lined up Leftfield’s own page 3 stunnas to give our own left wing take on this particular nonsense.

Bob from Airdrie says: “I resent the way they say that banning page 3 would put women on the dole queue, because it implies being a ‘glamour model’ is actually a proper job.

The fact of the matter is it’s not a proper job, it doesn’t come with a wage. Models are not employed, they’re rented from an agency, and paid a tiny portion of the fee that that agency takes. A small minority get to make a bit more money by becoming celebrities, but the vast majority either have to get an actual job, or become even more exploited by going fully into the horrendous pornography industry.

It’s a big lie that glamour models are liberated women who have made a choice, and who make loads of money. They’re exploited and paid a pittance. Page 3 models are not employees, they’re products, as far as the Murdoch empire is concerned.”

Doug from Kirkcaldy says: “This whole so-called controversy is ridiculous, because it’s clearly a transparent ploy to shore up the vote of progressive women for Labour and the Lib Dems.

If Harriet Harman actually took page 3 seriously, she’s had 13 years in government to do something about it. She’s been deputy leader of the Labour Party since 2007, and it’s proven to be all talk.

The fact of the matter is that Labour care far more about the support of the right wing press than they do about doing anything serious to try and stop the sexual exploitation of women.”

And Bill from Auchtermuchty says: “The philosophy supposedly spouted by the models in this article is nonsense.

First of all, the Bill of Rights and the American constitution are in the USA. Britain has neither, so the idea that John Locke’s philosophy has been enshrined in law here is totally wrong.

As a socialist, I do recognise that John Locke made an important contribution to the history of philosophy. His theory of the social contract argues that a government cannot be legitimate without the consent of the people.

The problem however, which was recognised by Marx and other socialists, is that the individualist conception of human rights pretends that everyone can be equal in a society that is still really unequal, because some own property and get rich from the labour of the vast majority.

In the case of page 3, the objectification of women reflects a society where women are forced to compete for the attention of the men who dominate sexist society. Our patriarchal society means that men have power and access to resources that women don’t. Women are only considered valuable to this sexist hierarchy if they’re deemed sexually attractive, and page 3 encourages men to keep thinking this way.

How, in this context, can we really claim that everyone has an equal say in society? How can we pretend that sexism is over women are liberated when this kind of misogynist propaganda is looked at daily by millions all over the UK?”