The Canary is excited to share the latest edition of our letters page. This is where we publish people’s responses to the news and politics, or anything else they want to get off their chest. We’ve now opened the letters page up so anyone can submit a contribution. As always, if you’d like to subscribe to the Canary – starting from £5 a month – to support truly radical and independent media, then you can do that here:
This week’s letters
This week we have people’s thoughts on Wednesday’s chaos in the UK parliament, an upcoming arms fair, and narcissistic MPs claiming they’re scared of protests.
Hoyle must go
Parliament descended into melodramatic farce on Wednesday when Labour was confronted with the SNP motion. The behaviour of Sir Lyndsey Hoyle was appalling and a complete negation of British parliamentary precedent. He ignored the advice of his clerks.
Is Hoyle saying that all you have to do to get your way in debates is to threaten MPs? That no decisions should be taken with which constituents violently disagree?
Hoyle and Starmer are both publicly committed Zionists supporting the Netanyahu regime. Yesterday’s machinations in the HoC have got ‘Israel lobby’ written all over them. We need a public enquiry into Israeli interference in our democracy.
Hoyle must resign. He has always been an ineffectual speaker.
Alan, via email
An arms fair in Bristol
An arms fair takes place in Bristol in 2 weeks time- 5 – 6 March at Ashton Gate stadium. This must not be swept under the rug.
The sponsors include Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms manufacturer that markets it’s weapons as “battle tested”- which mean’s they’ve been used against the 29,000 Palestinians killed since October, and tens of thousands before that.
The website claims that: “Locating the event in Bristol ensures good attendance from DE&S personnel located at MOD Abbey Wood and the nearby Army HQ.”. If those same British personnel buy weapons from Elbit, which is exactly the aim, hence Elbit sponsoring the event- then the UK government will be financing the war on Gaza; aka the genocide in Palestine.
Events such as these fuel war and destruction. By hosting this event, Bristol is supporting killing, in return for cash lining the pockets of the arms dealers and the event organiser. Bristol itself gains nothing, but further loses credibility and respect.
In these dark times, it is your responsibility as a journalist to ensure the public are aware of this event, and to speak out against it.
Please do the right thing, publicise and investigate.
Dave, via email
ED: thanks for the tip off, Dave – we’ll be publishing an article on this in the next day or two.
MPs being ‘fearful’ of attacks is sociopathic and narcissistic
MPs being fearful of attacks shows a number of things.
Firstly, it shines a bright light on the profound and deliberate systemic disconnect between the kind of society most people want and the society MPs promote and support – MPs are demonstrably not representing their constituencies. This is not a matter of opinion, but fact.
Poll after poll, petition after petition are all ignored, along with even the law. The extent of MPs disregard of the human life they claim to represent extends globally to all life, which, with the complicity of governments worldwide, is slowly being knowingly brought to an end.
However, governments destroying the lives of its own and other people is nothing new, and to believe that it is would require quite a staggering level of delusion in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. Just the last decade or so of UK government policy has led to over 300,000 deaths, from austerity – a racist, sexist, ableist, class-based hate-fest – and the atrocious response to the global pandemic.
This excludes the background noise of deaths by poverty, deaths by misery, deaths by pollution, deaths by exclusion and marginalisation, the suicides caused by government hatemongering, as only “excess deaths” have been counted. This number also excluded deaths outside the UK.
Secondly, it shows that MPs are both sociopathic and narcissistic – they believe that they should be able to act with impunity and have no concern that their decisions have killed so many. Contrast this non-concern with the tumultuous furore that has erupted now that constituents are bringing their concerns to MPs personally, that the problem is being brought literally to their doorstep.
MPs are unconcerned with the deaths that they cause, that the UN has described as a policy of social murder, but they are incensed by a few people singing outside their empty homes.
Thirdly, the media response demonstrates the absolute poverty of journalism in the UK and elsewhere in the world (let’s not pretend that there are actually good places in the world to live). It ialso demonstrates who the media is speaking on behalf of, and that it is not speaking truth to power. This media response is problematic in three key ways.
One, it is simply reporting what MPs are saying without question and without placing their comments in their historical context or questioning why this is happening in the first place. For instance, they are not asking who is in danger here, who has the power, or who is actually hurting who. No questions asked about who is actually in danger.
In a Mitchell and Webb sketch, both dressed as Nazi soldiers, David Mitchell asks Robert Webb, with a look of pained concern on his face, “Are we the baddies?” The media are simply ignoring who the baddies are – parliament is soaked in blood and it’s barely noticed. There’s no search for the truth here.
Two, in pathetic he-said-she-said non-journalism there are no countervailing voices here (compare this to when MPs squabble amongst themselves), no one gets to counter with their own tale of fear and intimidation.
Let’s be clear, if the voices of those destroyed, and in the process of being destroyed by the government, were elevated to the same level as MPs the sound would be overwhelming and would shatter the inverted reality presented by the media. MPs are not the ones in danger here. In so many ways they are safe in ways that we are not. We are not safe from them.
Three, related to the above, we can see who legacy media speak on behalf of, directly and without question, whatever the apparent political slant of the outlet, they share one thing in common: solidarity with power.
To conclude, we face many existential threats, and life is made grindingly difficult in myriad ways, from the daily experience of labyrinthine bureaucratic mazes, to the presence of militarised police when someone asks government to do something good (contrast the police response to eco-protests with those of farmers), and every assault and insult in between.
None of this is connected to the concerns (likely faux for political purposes) of MPs about their safety.
Perhaps, to protect themselves, they might start treating the world and its inhabitants with a measure of care, compassion and respect.
David, via email
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