BLOODY well done the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for ruling against the Tories’ unspeakable deportation policy. It tramples all over the human rights of some of the most desperate people in the world, so the ECHR simply did what it is there for.

Unexpected kudos for the Church and Prince Charles too. The Tories’ increasingly desperate attempts to please their cruel, thick, bigoted, fossilised Mail/Express/Sun “reader” base are creating a “distinguished” opposition outside Parliament.
 
Inside it I want to hear more from the “activist lawyer” of the Wapping era and less from someone who appears more concerned about offending the “opinions” of the aforementioned fossils. Worthing used to be crawling with them. We didn’t win the council by appeasing them, we did so by ignoring them and galvanising everyone else — and the simple passage of time is doing the rest.
 
Soon I will be writing a piece about how Worthing, and we next door in Adur applying the same principles, are developing a new approach to local government in opposition in the widest sense of the term.

Right now I am simply ashamed of the government which Old England voted for and in whose name it rules: a ghastly, pinched faced dinosaur in its own image, more concerned about tax cuts than refugees, more concerned about appeasing a similar minority in a small part of Ireland than playing a grown-up role in a modern Europe.
 
No bloody wonder that Johnson’s ethics adviser has just resigned. In other news, Sisyphus has put his boulder down, said “sod this for a lark” and gone to the pub.
 
As for me, I’ve waited three years for my first tour of Europe since Covid. It was due to start last Wednesday, but I caught Covid at our otherwise stupendously successful Glastonwick Festival here in Sussex the week before last. (For the first time we literally drank all the beer and the cider — we had to send out for more, and all of that got drunk too.)

I have only just started testing negative so my first gig should be at one of my favourite venues anywhere, Schokoladen in Berlin, tonight.
 
Not one to waste time feeling sad, I’ve already rearranged two of the three cancelled gigs, in Essen and Hamburg, for August 24-26, because on the 27th I’m proud to be back at the UZ Pressefest in Berlin.

UZ – Unsere Zeit – is the sister paper of the Morning Star, and they run an absolutely fantastic festival bringing together socialists and communists from all over the word. It’s usually held in a big park in Dortmund, but this year they were turned down for some reason and so it’s being held around the historic Volksbuhne Theatre in the heart of East Berlin, in Rosa Luxemburg Platz no less, and you can’t get more of a result than that.
 
Now I’m playing all over Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands for the next two weeks: Berlin, Bremen, Orebro, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Kiel, Halle, Mainz, Hagen, Utrecht and Amsterdam. All details are at facebook.com/attilathestockbroker.
 
For the first time for decades, I’m going by train, on a senior rover pass unimaginably cheaper than anything we get here. In Germany they have just issued a nine-euro monthly ticket (£7.69) which means you can travel anywhere you like – as long as it is on the local services.

That’s nine euros for a whole month’s train travel, very slowly and stopping at every station but great value nevertheless. Shows how differently they do things.
 
All the best everyone!