Category Archives: Democracy

When Ghosts Gather

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In this infinite space, silence is deafening, darkness thick as black strap molasses, and stinks of burning sulphur. 

Who are you? 
Where are we? 
I don’t know. 
You, dead like me? 
Yes, I’m Ibrahim, I’m Palestinian, and you? 
Ukrainian. I’m Victor and dead, along with my family, since 1933. I’ve not seen or spoken with another … I was going to say person, for years. Why meet you now? 
No idea. Are we ghosts? 
Must be. 
Ghosts. Bit of a shock. Where is here? 
No idea. 
You, died in1933? Impossible. This is 2025; you look thirty, like me. 
Maybe, time doesn’t exist here. 
How did you die? 
Genocide. Starvation, on the orders of Stalin, along with four million other Ukrainians in the Holodomor. 
Why? 
We disobeyed him. And your death? 
Genocide, just like you, along with my family and many thousands of other Palestinians were starved to death by Netanyahu’s Israeli government. 
Why? 
It’s a long story. In 1947, Britain and its allies, who’d defeated Fascism gave away Palestine, our country, our land, out of guilt for not stopping Hitler from murdering millions of Jewish people. Our land was stolen and now they call us the thieves.
We still fight Russia for our freedom. Stalin then, Putin now. He’s a murderous dictator and wants to re-establish the USSR’s empire. He claims Ukraine belongs to the Russian Federation and he’s waging war to steal it from us. We have a lot in common like killing our children.
Cynical bastards it kills tomorrow’s freedom fighters. 
Where are they, our dead children?  
Lost like us? 
Ghosts, yes. Lost? No. 
I wish.
Listen! Ibrahim shouts 
Look! Victor gasps. 

Fresh air swirls. Darkness vanishes. The void fills with twilight. The ghosts of children beyond number materialise; they are all intact as they were before their murder; babies are carried. The massed children chant, Peace! Justice! War no more!

Victor and Ibrahim gape as two girls walk forward.
Father, the first child speaks.
Is that you, My love? Victor sinks to his knees and embraces his daughter.
Ibrahim opens his arms, Come to me, Aisha. They kiss.
What are we to do? the two men ask. 
Stop war, the girls reply. 
How, we’re only ghosts?
We ghosts can haunt as we choose. Aisha says. 
Ibrahim says, Make peace not war. 
Victor adds. Do no physical harm. 
No need, Aisha says.

Simultaneously, the ruins of Palestine and the wreckage of the towns and cities of Ukraine are overwhelmed by swarm after swarm of the children’s ghosts as dense as a million locusts but totally silent. Soldiers, settlers, collaborators, government apparatchiks, and murderers panic; trapped, struggling for air, defenceless, realising their sudden impotence, and certain their victims, the massacred children, will hold them to account; ‘Just obeying orders’ not being an excuse. 

The Knesset and the Kremlin are totally inundated by ghosts. Netanyahu and Putin, seen as the embodiment of self-serving evil, are escorted by throngs of children to imprisonment and eventual trial for their crimes against humanity.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Please feel free to pass it on to others who may be interested. You can read my previous 500 word stories on my website www.philcoskerwriter.com under ‘Writing’.>>>More
© Phil Cosker 2025
Phil Cosker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved; no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.

No longer shielded from Covid 19

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I was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer on January 25th this year and have been self-isolating since the start of the pandemic. 

I had one session of chemotherapy before we halted that treatment because of the risk of having a wrecked immune system in the face of Covid19.

Since then I’ve been having oral treatment organised through the excellent Nottingham University City Hospital’s Oncology Department.

Last Friday May 29th I received two letters: one from my GP’s surgery and one from the hospital. They both said the same thing. I was now being defined as in need of shielding and accompanied with a full list of instructions and a link to the web site.

It is now Monday June 1st and I’m no longer ‘shielded’. 

I’m very happy not to be so classified. 

BUT. 

This trivial bureaucratic idiocy is emblematic of the total incompetence and mendaciousness of this terrible government led by Dominic Cummings and his deputy, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

I am desperate to be ‘shielded’ from the both of them and their government.

© Phil Cosker 01.06.2020

Brexit nightmares

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Oscar Wile said, “the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.”

May is the unspeakable is in pursuit of the unacceptable.

Corbyn is the ‘acceptable’ in pursuit of what ????

Come on Labour get your act together or are you going to create an alliance with the extreme right believing that catastrophe will bring about a socialist revolution. If you are  – shame on you.

I am a member of the Labour Party

Mt. Trump meets Mt. Putin

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A tale of two mountains

The two mountains, Mt Trump and Mt Putin, met in Helsinki because they wanted to be friends but they were afraid that their ‘bigness’, ‘strongness’, their ‘mountainess’, would impede this. Even so, two such eminences in the same place was scary like two dormant volcanoes suddenly blowing off at once and molten lava spilling out all over the place incinerating bad people amidst the most dreadful stink of burning flesh.
Mt Trump has big hair. Mt Putin has a bare chest when he rides horses and likes hand-to-hand fighting with men wearing white uniforms. Mt Trump has friends who also wear white uniforms and big white pointed hats even when it’s not Halloween. Mt Putin used to run the KGB but now he owns the FSB (which is not a sports car). Mt Trump is a serial liar, narcissist, misogynist, and racist and adores being a mountain. Mt Trump and Mt Putin have a lot in common. They are rich and elevated above us and we are grateful to live in their shadow.
Both the mountains are patriots. This is important. You can’t be a proper massif unless you are big enough to like war, hate the weak (aka bad), and find convenient victims on which to celebrate your mountainess. These victims can be found in places like Syria, México, the Ukraine and America as well as in mosques.
There has been a lot of trouble in the media about the relationship between the two mountains – this is a result of a misunderstanding, or fake news, as Mt Trump calls it. Mountains are mountains and therefore live on the high ground of their mountainess above the need for the oxygen that mere mortals crave. Sometimes Mt Trump miss-speaks but that’s only because his brain lacks oxygen.
When Mt Trump mentioned the idea that Mt Putin had been tampering with the American electoral process Mt Putin looked as sad as only a big mountain can look when it’s pissing down with sleety rain. I’m sorry, Mt Putin said, how could you think I would have done such a thing? What would have been the purpose? I’m a democrat, just like you. I am a mountain not a dried up wadi like Teresa May. I’m so sad, Donald, that you could think this of me. Mt Trump now knew for certain that he’d been right all along and his own government, and his bad spooks, had been trying to reduce him to a molehill with their bad lies about how Mt Putin is an avalanche in waiting. Being a mountain Mt Trump is above this, above the calumny dumped on his friend’s mountaintop.
There is trust between the mountains. All is good: no more recriminations. Love is in the air. The two mountains will live side by side doing great things while looking down on the bad people and putting bad democracy where it belongs – in the can.

© Phil Cosker 2018

Mayday! Prime Midden May and baying Tory rats

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The Prime Midden May’s Tory rats scurry, saliva dripping, smelling blood, flesh ripping, lips licking, chewing, panting with excitement, gnawing, gorging on the destruction of the bleak and abused and deserted and deprived while chanting their failed neo-liberal crap, pissing on the underlings while laughing, feeding in their gilded halls, celebrating, turning humanity to commodity, untouched by conscience, racism peddling, indulging in the fantasy of a great and glorious England past, present and future, as the Midden May, at the wheel, out of control, flops the flaccid juggernaut of Brexit over the edge of the cliff to the tune of baying rats, secure in their sickening self-righteous security, clothed in the glistening armour of ersatz caring while fondling the ermine finery of privilege, daring the burgeoning poor to bite back or eat cake, as food banks offer no loaves and fishes miracles, fostering foreign toxic hate, as the Midden May and her squabbling Tory rats try to demolish the welfare state and privatise our NHS while weeping crocodile tears of austerity as the rich get richer and the poor even poorer.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! There is a vacuum. The Labour Party must develop policies, and not just rhetoric, to create a society for the many and not the few.

The Windrush Citizens

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Hi Folks

Yesterday Amber Rudd – the UK’s Home Secretary – apologised for the treatment and distress handed out to Windrush citizens turned into victims. Thank you for that – something that never needed to happen!

Many of these victims of racism have been made poverty stricken – Mr Thompson has been denied treatment for his prostrate cancer and therefore his life has been threatened. Even if I wasn’t a prostate cancer survivor I would support him.

I just signed the petition, “Home Office: Give Albert Thompson the lifesaving cancer treatment he needs.” I think this is important. Will you sign it too?
Here’s the link:

https://www.change.org/p/home-office-give-albert-thompson-the-lifesaving-cancer-treatment-he-needs?utm_medium=email&utm_source=petition_signer_receipt&utm_campaign=triggered&share_context=signature_receipt&recruiter=22107025

Thanks,
Go well,
Phil

Yet more discrimination against those with disabilities

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Hi everyone

I’ve just been sent this and wanted to share it with you.

Restore the Access to Elected Office Fund

Emily, David and Simeon are from three different parties. They have joined forces with More United to ask the Government to restore the Access to Elected Office Fund which helps deaf and disabled candidates, of all parties, with the additional costs of standing for election.

Petition to Amber Rudd: Restore the Access to Elected Office Fund

We are writing in support of Emily Brothers, David Buxton and Simeon Hart who are calling on you to restore the Access to Elected Office Fund, which helps deaf and disabled candidates, of all parties, with the additional costs of standing for election.

There are only 5 MPs with a disability. There could be so many more if deaf and disabled candidates could compete on a level playing field.

People with disabilities face huge barriers when standing for election. On top of normal election costs, many face additional costs: for example hiring a British Sign Language interpreter or helping with transport costs.

The Fund was frozen and put “under review” in 2015 but we are still waiting to see the results. Now the ‘review’ has taken longer than the time the Fund was open for.

The Fund is effectively closed. For the sake of equality of opportunity, democratic participation and fairness, we implore you to restore it immediately.

Sign here: http://www.moreunited.uk/restore-the-fund?recruiter_id=117967

TRUMP

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Trump – derivations and deviations.
Twenty-one useful dictionary definitions.
1. Trumpish A language of North American (USA) and Germanic (Friesland) origin. c. 2012-2017 (possibly from much earlier). Racist origins. The earlier versions of the name were ‘trump’ (fart) and ‘ish’ (unknown but thought to be a ref to a leering lisp produced from pouting lips and synchronous with a puckered rectum).
2. ‘Trumpish’ an indelicate emanation from the anus, and sometimes, unfortunately, the aforesaid pouting mouth.
3. ‘Trumpclaninism’, the expression of extreme racist, sexist and homophobic prejudice whilst wearing a conical white hat.
4. ‘Trumpologism’. An inability to construct a consistently logical sentence.
5. ‘Trumpologisms’. (plural) A clinical multiple inability to construct two consequent logically related sentences on the future of the world or the shape of an index finger.
6. ‘Trumphobic’. A challenging and contradictory homophobic attraction to another of the same sex of a similar psychological disturbance i.e. V. Putin (the initial infatuation caused by a photograph of Putin half naked riding a horse).
7. ‘Trumporlia’, the artefacts associated with conspicuous consumption (i.e. women from foreign parts, and their ‘parts’, ‘delighted’ to enjoy their owner’s whims whilst getting new clothes, jewels and divorces).
8. ‘Trumporliaeae’, ancient origin, women acquired as playthings for use by their owner and subsequently displayed to the adoring public as trophies.
9. ‘Trumptoweringness’. A sad and forlorn fantasy that back-combing one’s hair into a comb-over produces a stupefying erection.
10. ‘Trumpobamaship’. A condition where erudition, and the occasional sticking to principles, is denigrated as antithetical to the welfare of humanity, and threatening, to the Trump state.
11.‘Trumperphants’. The collection of arse lickers and cock-suckers making an inner circle (!) of (synonym) ‘Puckerphants’.
12. ‘Trumphilia’. Promoting unqualified and self-serving children, and their partners, as leaders of the free (sic) and untrammelled (sic) world in pursuit dynastic longevity.
13. ‘Trumpdaciousness’. A spectacular proclivity for mendaciousness not in the public interest and for personal profit.
14. ‘Trumping’. The act of Trumping (tautological). The ability to simultaneously celebrate and denigrate one’s political opponents whilst letting off unwanted Trumps.
15.’Trumpdowning’. A little like Watership Down – rabbits in the headlights, a lot of road kill, but, hey, everything has a purpose – what better way to feed the poor?
16. ‘Trumponarcissism’. Mirror mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?
17. ‘Trumpdysneyfication’. The media’s oligarchs’ management of threats to its own hegemony and management of the underclass(es).
18. ‘Trumpdigitification’. Finger pointing.
19. ‘Trumpabasement’. The denigration of others not to be confused with ‘Trumpabusement’ or ‘Trumpamusement’, (synonyms with the same outcome – red neck laughter).
20. ‘Trumpmodrification’. Unification with god in the service of ‘Trumpdom’.
21. ‘Trumpdom’ the empire of Trump.