The Hypocrisy of Whining Labour over Akmal Shaikh

With regards to the story of the execution in China of British (?) man Akmal Shaikh - where do I start.

There are so many angles to this.

1) If you go to a foreign country then you obey their laws - but of course we bend our laws and customs to suit foreigners who come here so maybe we expect them to do the same for us. But China are not 'soft touch China'.

2) Are the Labour party in attacking the Chinese for doing what they did just being imperialistic? 'That's not our way' they shrill. No it's the Chinese way.

3) We do not have the death penalty in Britain. Do we not? How often nowadays do we hear of the police in Britain shooting dead someone or other on the street? No judge, no jury, no trial, no appeal - and no mental health assessment. It happens a lot and is of course sanctioned by the government. We also export the death sentence - most notably at the moment to Afghanistan - where our troops fight and kill people who produce drugs which brings me nicely to Mr Shaikh!

He was a drug smuggler and roughly 5,000 people a year die in Britain from drug 'misuse' although I bet a little more trawling of the Internet could find a higher figure. So guilty of the crime of potential mass murder he was probably deserving of the death sentence to be honest.

5) He was bipolar? Really? This is open to debate - and a bit of a slight against all the (99% I should imagine) of law abiding bipolar people out there.

So, the Labour government are in my opinion on this issue patronisingly imperialistic, are PRO death penalty (as long as no courts are involved - just the summarily execution of people by the military or the police) and therefore hypocrites AND should recognise that while China are one end of the extreme regarding drug sentencing we are the other having just given a similar drug mule in Britain a pathetic two and a half years.

To Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis etc I say: stop whining and take a good look at yourselves!

Made in China, Sweatshop Britain and Royal Mail!

I went shopping yesterday. I bought some pants, two different brands, both made in China.I bought some socks, again two different brands again both made in China.I bought a belt - made in China of course.
I couldn't seem to buy anything that wasn't made in China.
Everything nowadays seems to be made in China - or Vietnam is apparently another popular place for manufacturing at the moment.
I can of course see the attraction for big business to the likes of China what with it's sweatshops paying pennies to people working long unregulated hours in poor conditions to manufacture goods that they then sell on to us for ££££££££££'s.
Strange as this may seem I've drawn a parallel between sweatshop China and the current Royal Mail dispute (see a previous post for a postman's - mine - view of events). In Britain, Trades Unions have fought for years to end sweatshop practices (it's not that long ago after all that we were sending children down the mines, into the mills and up chimneys etc), but as I say we've stopped all of that now. We've moved on and secured decent pay and conditions for the average working man and stopped child labour of course.
What we have going on in this country at the moment is I believe an all out attack (by big business) on the working man (I'm starting to sound like a Socialist here - a right wing Socialist? Hasn't that been tried by someone before?). Anyhow, Royal Mail are a perfect example of this attack. They are slowly but surely getting rid of all the full time postmen and replacing them with part timers on twenty five hour contracts.
All postmen are now bullied into working forced and unpaid overtime. The pension fund has been decimated - and put out of bounds to new starters as has sick pay etc. There are people who work forty hours every week doing a forty hour job (and are paid forty hours) but only have a twenty hour contract so in effect when they are on holiday they only have half pay!
When you point this out to a lot of people they say 'welcome to the real world - we all have to put up with that so stop moaning and get on with it'!
To these people who are knocking the so called lazy greedy postmen I say 'Wake Up! Don't put up with it yourselves - fight back. The big corporations would like us all to be working for peanuts so that they get richer'.
When Royal Mail and the government defeat the postmen and the CWU (I'm no great fan of some of the activities of the CWU but on this issue they're right) which I fear they will then we will be one step closer to sweatshop Britain.
In years to come maybe instead of Made in China everything will have Made in Britain on it - and in prosperous China people will look at the goods and sympathise with the poor British workers working long unregulated hours in poor conditions manufacturing goods for pennies to sell to the affluent East for (Chinese) ££££££££££££££££££££££'s!!!

Done and Dusted in Iraq

It has been announced today by a 'senior defence source' that British troops will begin pulling out of Iraq probably by next March.

Well that's okay then.

Glad to hear that it's all fine and sorted over there now.

So what now? Next stop Zimbabwe, or North Korea, or China maybe, or even Iran?

Or perhaps give a hand to finish off in Afghanistan?

Lions led by donkeys.