Category: Politics
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Impossible demands
Starmer is cynically setting up the NHS to fail in order to present private healthcare as the fix.
Starmer: a man way of his depth when dealing with the NHS https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/starmer-a-man-way-of-of-his-depth-when-dealing-with-the-nhs/ Starmer's speech on the NHS yesterday offered view of a man unprepared for office who sends out incompetent messages to those who now work in the organisation he leads and who has no comprehension of the economic environment in which he must manage healthcare.
It's not surprising that now the UK public is seeing Starmer in action that his popularity is falling.
Death cult
OBR: We have to kill old people and starve the children of the poor in order to keep funding our expensive wars and ensure the rich get richer.
Labour: Let’s get to it!
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast for the national debt is a worthless exercise by economically illiterate fantasists https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/09/13/the-office-for-budget-responsibilitys-forecast-for-the-national-debt-is-a-worthless-exercise-by-economically-illiterate-fantasists/ The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that UK debt will rise to 300% of GDP in 50 years because they think it impossible that taxes can rise above current levels, even though state spending will reach 60% of GDP in their opinion. All they prove is their own lack of imagination and competence by doing so.
Labour’s self-imposed, arbitrary and “binding” “fiscal rules” are the same as the Tories’ Austerity policies.
Political choices.
The same choices.
So much for change.
Original link to the article from 11 years ago:
My polling station was empty when I went to vote around 1:30 pm.
My nearly ten year old looked at the TWELVE names on the ballot.
“Don’t vote Labour, Dad”.
He looked some more.
“There’s Joe!” he said.
“VOTE FOR JOE!”
Election Fever
My inbox is full of people asking for my opinion and personal experience of this UK general election campaign and who to vote for.
(Un)fortunately, as I sat down to type the words from my fingertips, my four year old decided he needed to express his thoughts instead.
It’s obviously not to scale (he’s only four!), but you can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue. That they are a ‘uniparty’/two cheeks of the same backside is encapsulated in the red triangle atop the blue square in the centre.
The Green surge in vote share (in green, on the left) isn’t reflected in seats won, of course. In pink, you can see the rise of the independents, black is the Workers Party, and to the far right (in grey) is Reform.
The Lib Dems are an irrelevance (except in the South West) in yellow (this is where we had to stop, as he got very upset at the lack of orange).
The Cuckoo's Nest
Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide supporters!”
Cllr Dr Murtaza of their number aggressively reprimanded me. “What evidence do you have that we support genocide?” he demanded to know. Well, I told him, my main piece of evidence would be that you have done nothing to oppose it.
Ooh! There’s Cllr Martin! Our locally elected anti-Traveller racist! “What evidence do you have to support that?” Well, here it is.
Oh, and while you’re at it, Cllr Dr Murtaza. Next time you are chauffeuring our glorious leader around in your Porsche, try not to park in a cycle lane, please.
Then there was illegal samosa factory proprietor Cllr “I own half of Southall” Anand.
I hadn’t realised until yesterday quite how visceral my revulsion for these people is. The grand cuckoo in the nest arrived about half way through the event. I would have confronted him myself, and previously I have done. Maybe I was just worn down from a week with the ‘flu, but I felt like I really had to keep my distance for my own sanity. In any case, a few council officers made beelines for me and made sure I was busy answering their questions.
Interestingly, one officer suggested to me that resident-led ward forums would be the likely outcome of this event. Fantastic news, if that’s the case. Another officer I spoke to later, knew nothing about this idea, though, but took copious notes. A neighbour and friend told me that she spoke to the cuckoo himself who told her that this meeting was in fact the replacement for he old (councillor-led) ward forums. That’s that then.
The event itself was a repeat of several resident[pdf] surveys and failed plans over the past twenty years or so (for which I’ve seen records, or taken part in). The problems are always the same. The responses from the council are always the same. Nothing.
“…when you look at it on a personal level, if Nelson was your friend or your neighbour, you would absolutely agree that he should be given the immediate right to settle.”
You. Absolute. Bastards.
If anyone knows of a crowdfunder to support this man’s legal challenge, I would like to contribute to it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-69016539