Honorary Proletarian

This morning I slept through my alarm.  By nearly four hours.  Which was annoying.  What was mysterious, though, was the dream I finally woke up from.  I dreamt that the world was about to be destroyed by a meteorite, but was saved by John Angliss.  Make of that what you will.

In real international news, I learn that Suharto, former genocidal dictator of Indonesia, has finally kicked the bucket.  Suharto originally came to power with the backing of the US government, who trusted him to “deal with” the Communist Party of Indonesia, at that time the largest outside the Stalinist bloc.  He did this by indiscriminately slaughtering more than 600,000 people, many of them in no way connected to the Communist Party (as if that made a difference).  Hundreds of thousands more murders followed in West Papua, East Timor and Aceh.  Although he was overthrown in 1998, neither he nor his grotesquely corrupt (and consequently extremely rich) family have been brought to justice.  This impunity, again, involves the collusion of the Western powers.

Amazingly, today David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, sent a message of condolence to the Indonesian government - that is, the relatively democratic government that owes its existence to the revolutionary overthrow of Suharto’s dictatorship!  Is Miliband joining the Boris Johnson/Oxford Union Society school of diplomacy?!  “Oh dear, the chap who murdered a million of your people has died.  Jolly bad luck, what?”  Meanwhile, West Papua is still suffering from the remaining elements of military dictatorship in the Indonesian system and needs our practical solidarity: I can’t see it getting much from Mr. Miliband.

Lastly, I draw readers’ attention to this letter (third one down) in the Grauniad.  It truly is a Lib Dem classic.  A councillor of that persuasion from the Lib Dem-run Liverpool City Council objects to the report that his council is the least efficient in the country.  On the contrary, he says, Liverpool has moved a long way down the council tax league table since his party took charge.  Middle-class people pay less tax than they did.  That’s what councils are for, isn’t it?  He gives every impression of having no idea that a council’s efficiency could relate to the services it provides.  Hmm, well ten years ago, according to the Lib Dems, Liverpool council had the highest council tax in the country.  Then they took over, cut council tax by 3% in absolute terms in one year, and now it’s the least efficient council in the country.  There’s a lesson there somewhere, isn’t there?  Reminds me of Oxford where the Lib Dem administration is desperately seeking cuts to make the frayed ends of their rich-pleasing tax policy meet.  Playgrounds, leisure centres, all things working-class people need and Lib Dem voters with their huge gardens and private gyms don’t.  Thankfully Labour in Oxford has no intention of sticking to the previous administration’s spending plans, like, er, Gordon Brown…