Reviews: the eternal tangle – Best of Enemies


Jean-Pierre Filiu, David B,













This review was originally penned for the Forbidden Planet Blog

Mother of Exiles

Retronaut has a a great set of historic photographs of all sorts of immigrants from around the world – men, women, children, young, old, black, white, Asian – photographed by Augustus Francis Sherman, chief registry clerk at the old Ellis Island facility, which was the main port for something like twelve million emmigrants to the United States between 1892 and its closure in 1954 (here are just a few). What a change between then and now – to the xenophobic “no more immigrants” (I bet the Native Americans thought that when the White Man first turned up centuries ago) and a land where nazi scumbags openly walk the street knowing a bright-orange excuse for a president will let them.

I wonder how many of these immigrants helped shape and change the growing America of the 20th century – the America which stood up for democracy and which joined in the fight against fascism. The ones who embraced the ideals enscribed on Lady Liberty and the opportunities offered by their new home, probably far more than most of those who today demand border walls and would cheerfully deny the rights and liberties of fellow citizens, ignore the rule of law and even the venerable constitution and bill of rights.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!‘”

New Colossus, Emma Lazarus, enscribed on the tablet in the Statue of Liberty

Mrs May should have just stayed away…

Theresa May made her regal way,

To the ravaged Tower Grenfell,

But the PM spoke to not a single survivor,

Because ordinary people make her feel quite ill



“Come together, right now….”

“This year, after a period of intense debate over the right future for our country, there is a sense that people are coming together and uniting behind the opportunities that lie ahead”. So speaks unelected prime monster Saint Theresa, the devout Christian Vicar’s daughter in her Easter message to her parishioners. She also likes to witter on about her “christian values” and those of the “nation”, despite the fact the majority of the nation doesn’t identify as Christians.

It’s also terribly nice that while she attacked a chocolate company for “undermining Christianity” by not having Easter in the headline of their annual egg hunt (although they had it multiple times in the accompanying copy, maybe Theresa didn’t read that far, or more likely care), she was in Saudi Arabia. A despotic regime of corrupt oil-rich sheiks who pay lip-service to their own supposed religion while oppressing their own people, torturing and executing them, and she was there to pimp British weapons sales to these vile people. Stuff your Christian values, Theresa, you do not get to do that then pretend you are some good “Christian”, Jesus would be sick over your hideously expensive designer leather trousers that you claim to stand up for Christian values while peddling weapons to murderous dictators. If you are Christian then bloody act like it.

Then few days later the so-called “rape clause” in your new social welfare bill, a vile, evil, hideous piece of legislation that I cannot concieve of anyone with a conscience creating. I am glad to see Scottish politicians almost universally decrying it, save, predictably, for the two-faced wee Scottish Tory Ruth Davison who has tried her best to ignore this issue – quick to shout at Nicola Sturgeon, when it suits her, not so good to respond to things like this from her own party.

And now St Theresa the “good Christian” tells us we are all “coming together”. Is this just mad delusional or just a willful fuck-you to the huge slice of the population who voted and demonstrated against Brexit? Is this willfull fuck-you to Scottish voters who demanded to stay in the EU? Is it a fuck-you to the Scots parliament that asked her, please, at least soften the Brexit stance, which she totally ignored and went for the hardest possible option? No we are not coming together, you delusional mad woman, and the fact you claim this shows how utterly removed from reality you are. Either you are trying to impose your version of twisted reality on us all, no matter how we feel, or else you are simply laughing at the millions who disagree strongly with you and your bigoted, right-wing, hate-lead minions. Either way you are pathetic, lying, delusional, and by doing this you actually contribute to the continuing division of the UK.

Know your enemies…

The vile Farage, within a short few hours from the vote in the Houses of Parliament on allowing the government to trigger Article 50, has pointed his followers to a list of the minority of MPs who voted against it, branding them all “enemies of the people” and demanding they pay for their temerity in not agreeing with him and his friends at the next election.

So basically this little creep, who already branded high court judges as enemies because they dared follow the law and say yes, parliament has to be consulted on constitutional changes like Brexit (how dare they do their job!) now tries to publicly bully the small number of MPs who don’t agree with him and his chums. Even though they didn’t affect the outcome, they must pay. No, not divisive or vindictive at all… Oh, no, wait, it is, it’s also threatening and bullying, an attempt to intimidate anyone who might speak out with a contrary view because when he and others screamed rabidly about “taking back control” of UK affairs they meant as long as we all did what they wanted – anyone wishing an actual democratic right to debate opposing ideas is an “enemy of the people”. This is how dictatorships are born.

Oh and Nigel? Nearly half of those dissenting MPs were from the Scottish National Party, the party which took almost every single Westminster parliamentary seat at the last election, in the country that voted overwhelmingly to remain IN the EU. So how can they possibly be “enemies of the people” when they were standing up for exactly what the people of Scotland who elected them wanted them to do??? If you think they should have voted differently from what their electorate wanted then by your own twisted logic you become an enemy of the people, you vile little hate-monger.

“These are the times…”





Spare a thought for elderly people in decaying, substandard housing…

No, not the many pensioners who have to decide if they can afford to feed themselves or to turn on the heat this winter, but the Queen and the His Royal Bluntness the Duke of Edinburgh, as Buckingham Palace is to have some £369 million pounds spent on refurbishment. Given we have endured years of austerity cuts in public services across the board and are in a country where some are homeless, others, despite full time work, teeter on the edge of homelessness because so much of their pay goes to soaring rents from gouging landlords (including a number of our MPs who make a good income from renting properties out and, coincidentally, get to set the laws on how that area is regulated), the chances for many to now every dream of owning their own home is gone, how exactly is this to be sold to the nation? A Buck Palace spokesperson said they hoped it would “appeal to their sense of nationhood.”

Really? People are working god knows how many hours a week and they still can barely put a basic roof over their heads because most of their income goes on rent, and this idiot talks about “sense of nationhood”? Well a sense of nationhood goes both ways – why the feck doesn’t Buck Palace show some of that sense back to the rest of the community who are struggling to stay in a home, heat that home, feed their families? If the government can grant millions to this incredibly ugly building that needs so much work because it has been so badly mis-managed over the decades then they have no bloody grounds to then tell the rest of us that sorry, we only have so much money in the pot, we must cut out suit to our cloth, and all the other excuses put forward to excuse cuts which usually affect the worst off disproportionately (to say nothing of being happy to spend billions on new nuclear missile subs or a high speed rail link).

Here’s an idea to fund the repairs without raiding an already badly depleted public purse to pay for dwelling for super-rich royalty – put in lots of cameras, all through Buck Palace, live streamed to the web, a 24 hour a day reality show. Given the (to me anyway, inexplicable) popularity of that sort of viewing they could more than earn the money to fix up the crumbling eyesore that is the palace (a building so hideous Londoners voted it one of the ugliest in the city)

The cutter complains about cuts…

This would be hysterically funny if the punchline wasn’t taken out on the bulk of the British population (and the most vulnerable part of that population, at that): Prime Minister David Cameron, in his role as a constituency MP writes to his local county council to complain about the range and depths of their cuts to many services. Cuts caused because of Cameron’s government and their pig-headed (and allegedly Cameron knows a lot about pig heads!) adherence to austerity and every increasing budget cuts. Worse than complaining to the council about cuts caused by his own government policies he then quotes facts and figures to the head of the council to explain why they shouldn’t need such large cuts, for the (also Conservative-run) council to reply that his facts are wildly inaccurate – in other words the blithering, shiny meat-faced Cameron doesn’t even comprehend the scale of the cutbacks his policies have imposed on local authorities.

Somehow I am not surprised – for starters it’s often clear that mega-wealthy Tories like Cameron have very little empathy for or understanding of actual life for most people and the problems they have to face, much less bother that they are increasing those problems with their damaging polices. And secondly I’ve heard from a number of those in the political loop, including a prominent commentator at the book festival this year, that Cameron is simply a figurehead anyway, and that the real power and push behind the Tories for the last several years has been from George “smuggest face in politics” Osborn. Thank you again voters of Englandshire for imposing this government on the other countries of the UK even though we didn’t vote for them…

As Monbiot notes in the Guardian piece on this too, our gutless national press is largely ignoring this story – why the hell is the BBC and other major media news not bringing this up then asking the Prime Minister how he can be so disturbingly out of touch with the effects and depth of his own cuts?? Isn’t it their job to hold public servants to account?


Best Of Enemies Volume 1 1783 -1953 Hardcover,

Jean-Pierre Filiu, Davide B,

















The Saviour!!!


Edinburgh as Scotland decides her future…


