Tag Archives: child

55 homeless children die in the UK as a result of government policy

Not coming back: in deference to good taste, it seemed reasonable to run an image of a child running away down a back alley, as symbolic of those who have left us and are not coming back because of government policies on poverty and homelessness.

Today (March 5, 2024), This Site published an article about the starvation of children in Gaza, quoting the famous line that if you want to know what politicians would do to you if they could get away with it, look what they support abroad.

Here’s what they are getting away with, here in the UK:

In that other article, I made reference to the late Tony Benn’s words: “The way governments treat refugees is the way they would treat the rest of us if they could get away with it.”

It seems that, here in the UK, they are getting away with it.

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Why are the children of Gaza deemed to deserve trauma, mental illness and death?

Traumatised: here’s a child whose legs had to be cut off after an Israeli attack in Gaza. Wouldn’t you agree that such an event at such an early age is likely to have repercussions for the rest of this poor mite’s life?

The Chair of the United Nations’ child rights committee has spoken out against the persecution of children in Gaza, caused by Israel’s genocide there.

Here’s part of what she had to say:

No doubt the Israeli “authorities”, such as they are, will dismiss Ann Skelton’s comments as they come from the United Nations and Israel does not recognise the UN’s authority.

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It’s a strange attitude to the organisation that brought the current state of Israel into being. Perhaps if Israel doesn’t recognise UN authority on this, it should make a statement that the UN had no authority to create Israel and dissolve itself immediately?

Nobody seriously believes that is a possibility. But its current attitude reveals the Israeli government and military to be hypocrites.

And the bombings continue. And the children continue to die. Or be traumatised into suffering mental illness for (possibly) the rest of their lives.

How would you feel if these were your children?


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Why does the LABOUR Party want to put families – children – into poverty?

Child poverty: both the Tories and Labour want to put families with three or more children into poverty, so what could possibly make you think voting for them is a good idea?

It seems some of you are still clinging to the belief that the Labour Party is the answer to the Tory insanity that has been running the United Kingdom into the ground since 2010.

Let’s put everybody straight about that – starting with Labour’s clearly-expressed intention to put families with at least three children into poverty and keep them there.

Here’s the Resolution Foundation:

As Gavin Kelly posted on ‘X’: “A decade ago 1 in 3 children in large families (3+ children) were in poverty. Now it’s more than 4 in 10, heading to more than 1 in 2 (51%) by 2028-29.

“Completely policy-driven. Fixable.”

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Tom Pollard posted – also on ‘X’, “The two-child limit will condemn an increasing number of children to grow up in poverty – permanently scarring them, reducing their life chances & costing us all in the long term.”

Here’s Jonathan Bradshaw, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of York:

He’s saying that the economic benefits of lifting the two-child limit far outweigh the annual cost to the public purse – words echoed by Dr Katy Jones, Associate Professor in Employment at Manchester Metropolitan University:

The benefits of lifting children out of poverty would be huge, but obviously the Conservatives won’t do it because it’s their policy and they want to make you poor.

And Labour won’t do it either because Keir Starmer clearly wants you to be poor too.

He and his party would rather give huge bungs to fat bankers, as we can see from Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds’s squirming response when challenged on both subjects by Kay Burley on Sky News:

Labour is now the party of the bankers, not the workers. And if Starmer is happy to screw over families with more than two children, he’ll merrily do worse to you.

So you simply cannot vote tribally – for the party you think represents you (none of them do; they’re all about enriching their MPs and nothing else) – at the next general election.

Instead – and I cannot stress this strongly enough – if you want your vote to mean anything, you have to actually find out what the candidates in your constituency are planning to do, if they are lucky enough to be elected.

That is what party manifestos are for. Independent candidates also have policy documents and they will all be online for you to find and read.

You need to find and read these policy documents, and then you need to make a dispassionate choice, based on what you have read.

Which of the candidates offers the most policies that fit what you need? And, by that, I mean: who will improve your own life the most?

Do not consider how other people will vote, either in your constituency or the other 649 around the UK. That is not your concern.

It is not for you to worry about which party will get enough votes to actually enact its policies. This will lead you down the usual garden path to voting in a government that won’t do anything at all for the good of the country, like the one we’ve had since 2010.

BE SELFISH. Bizarrely, it might be the only way to get the kind of government that all of us need.


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Once again, ’tis the season to be homeless – if you’re a CHILD in the UK at Christmas

I used to write this story every bloody year.

Lost track a bit after2020. Back then, 131,000 children were set to be homeless at Christmas. That was a helluva lot more than in 2013, when I wrote my first article based on figures from homelessness charity Shelter. The total then was around 80,000.

Now it’s closer to 139,000.

So the number of children who are homeless in the UK has nearly doubled in 10 years.

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I’d call that a Tory policy failure but here’s Shelter’s version:

Nearly 139,000 children in England will wake up on Christmas morning without a place to call home. This is the highest number on record.

Yes, we are outraged too.

Forced to stay in cold shipping containers, badly converted offices, cramped B&Bs (sometimes with six people to a room), or in places where the locks don’t work properly.

This is not a home.

But how did it come to this?

A lack of affordable homes in the UK means the housing emergency is spiralling. More people are struggling in temporary accommodation or being forced onto the streets.

“My first six weeks living in temporary accommodation left me traumatised for life.”
– Fashmina

This is unacceptable.

We must act now.

Your donation today could:

  • answer an emergency call from a family who are facing the fear and uncertainty of being made homeless

  • help to pay for legal advice to help a family in crisis keep their home

  • advocate for access to secure and permanent homes for everyone

Your donation won’t be restricted to a single project but will be used wherever it’s needed most to help those fighting for their right to a safe home.

Yes – this is an appeal for financial help, to make life endurable for people like Fashmina – whose words above should chill you as much as they did me.

Get yourself over to Shelter’s appeal page now – and do what you can to help.

And remember it was Tory policies that have traumatised children like Fashmina.


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Israel has now killed at least 3,195 children in Gaza – and taken 1,200 hostages

Words should not be necessary: this image of a grieving Palestinian mother is not following the massacre of October 7 but used for illustrative purposes. Any images following the actual events are likely to be too disturbing for publication.

The figures come from Save the Children:

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Here are the names of the murdered – yes, murdered – children, as gathered by a Jewish organisation. The list was of those known to have been killed by last Thursday (October 26). I await claims that the Gaza Ministry of Health is lying – probably from people who say every word that comes out of Tel Aviv is God’s truth:

Here’s a response to the deaths, by a doctor who was himself a child refugee:

And here’s the Israeli government line on murdering children:

Oh… and you know that line about Hamas taking more than 230 people hostage?

What about the 1,200 that Israel has taken from the West Bank since October 7?

More than 90 people have been killed, mostly in altercations with the IDF, and 1,200 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the conflict broke out, according to Palestinian data.

In numbers alone, Israel has caused far more suffering to Palestine than the Palestinians have to Israel. When you hear the propaganda that is pushed on the mainstream media, just ask yourself: who are the victims here?


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Children have a right to a clean environment, says UN report. What’s happening here?

Young people protesting over the environment: it’s a good image but sadly it was probably taken in Canada.

This is from the BBC:

Children have the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and governments must urgently act to ensure this, the United Nations says.

In a new report, the UN Child Rights Committee says that climate change is affecting children’s rights to life, survival and development.

It says young children are among the most vulnerable, yet their voices are rarely heard in climate change debates.

Tuesday’s report outlines new guidance for governments to follow.

Drawn up with the help of young people, it includes phasing out fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy.

UN countries will also be required to take measures to protect children from the harmful effects of climate change, such as monitoring air quality, regulating food safety and tackling emissions and toxic lead exposure.

Countries should also address the “clear emerging link” between climate change and children’s mental health, identifying eco-anxiety and depression as conditions that are on the rise.

And the UN says that young people must be included when drawing up new guidance.

None of this will happen in the UK, of course. Remember what happened when a UN rapporteur found that the government of this nation institutionally discriminates against disabled people? (Hint: nothing came of it apart from a stream of abuse directed at the rapporteur concerned, from the UK government.)

Meanwhile, what’s going on here in the UK?

And let’s be fair: attempts to improve the environment have been aimed in the wrong direction – at people who have little choice about whether to use polluting systems, rather than the 100 or so corporations that cause 70 per cent of the pollution in the world:

We can see which way the smog is blowing, can’t we?

The UN can tell every country in the world what needs to be done, and governments will tell private citizens that they need to clean up all the pollution, while allowing the culprit corporations to continue stinking up the land, waterways and skies – and possibly taking donations from those big businesses while doing so.

Tough luck, kids. Reach into your pockets or your wallets and take out some paper money, if you have it. Take a good look at it because it is more important to the people who shape the future than you are.


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Politics: the latest lies from Westminister (the news in tweets, Wednesday, July 26, 2023)

Rishi Sunak: another UK prime minister has been caught lying to the public.

Outrage as Sunak’s claims about the Labour Party and lawyers ‘undermine the rule of law’

Rishi Sunak has disgraced himself and his government again, with a false claim that the Labour Party and “a subset of lawyers” are supporting alleged criminal gangs who are said to be bringing people into the UK from abroad for illegal purposes.

Here’s his claim:

It isn’t true and it has provoked a storm of outrage – particularly as previous falsehoods by Sunak have led to an attempt on one solicitor’s life.

Pamela Fitzpatrick, who is director of Harrow Law Centre, tweeted: “This is completely irresponsible of Sunak. Solicitors are officers of the Court subject to a professional code of conduct. This type of misinformation by Sunak has already led to a far right extremist trying to kill a Harrow immigration Solicitor. It must stop.”

This appears to be a reference to alleged far-right extremist Cavan Medlock, who was accused of trying to murder Harrow immigration solicitor Toufique Hossain because “he objected to the solicitor Hossain’s involvement in preventing the Government from deporting immigrants”.

The alleged attack took place on September 7, 2020. It seems likely to have been provoked by claims such as this, from Sunak’s Tory colleague, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel:

The trial was last reported to be taking place on June 26 this year – but This Writer can find no report of it. News blackout?

Going back to Sunak’s allegation, there is no evidence that the Labour Party – even in its current incarnation as a Substitute Tory Party (STP) – has ever supported people-trafficking by criminal gangs.

And shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock has called for the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority to launch an inquiry into any attempt to help people get into the UK under false pretences, according to the Mirror.

Fellow Labour MP Chris Bryant also condemned Sunak’s claim: “In his desperation he has plumbed a new depth… He debases his office and forgets act as PM of the United Kingdom not seek to sow division.”

And shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry tweeted: “Usually, I try and maintain some sense of respect for the office of the Prime Minister, but it’s just impossible when the man doing the job is willing to demean it like this. What a desperate attempt to deflect from his own dismal failures. Utterly pathetic.”

The Bar Council – the organisation representing all barristers in England and Wales – stated: “The comments by the Prime Minister… are clearly an attempt to play politics with the legal profession. This damaging rhetoric undermines the rule of law, trust in lawyers and confidence in the UK legal system and is to be deplored.”

For the sake of accuracy, the organisation had to also state: “Lawyers are not beyond reproach, and all professions have individuals who commit misconduct and are dishonest. Regulators are there to discipline them.” Sunak is likely to point to this as evidence to support his wafer-thin claim.

It’s not likely to sway thinking members of the public. For example:

“Sunak did not get into politics to make a better world for the people of Britain – only to make more money for himself and his rich friends – and now his grubby inhumanity is exposed for all to see. Better he had never been PM and that his inadequacy had remained his secret,” tweeted science journalist Marcus Chown.

Finally, there is a question over whether Sunak’s government colluded with the Daily Mail on the article, in order to have some kind of “fig leaf” with which to cover its draconian and internationally-illegal new measures against people fleeing persecution in foreign countries.

Here’s another member of the law-practising community that Sunak has attacked:

Zionist origins of BBC reporter who challenged politician on anti-Semitism raise serious question about BBC impartiality

Strange. When This Writer was trained as a journalist, I was taught to be fair and impartial – that is, not to colour my reporting of events with falsehoods.

Now it seems the BBC – the biggest news organisation in the world, if I recall correctly – is employing people with an ideological bias towards the exact opposite.

Samantha Simmonds, the interviewer who reeled off false claims of anti-Semitism against the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, was a member of a Zionist group and may have had an interest in discrediting the former leader and his supporters.

If she allowed her own personal politics to slant her on-air reporting, the BBC should be considering this to be a very serious matter indeed.

Watch her interview again and see how she presented falsehoods as facts and, when countered by former Uxbridge and South Ruislip Labour chair David Williams with the truth, cut him off:

The BBC relies heavily on its reputation as a factual news reporter – and its dominance of the news media means a majority of the public relies on it too.

When one of its representatives is found to be regurgitating untrue propaganda for political ends (Jeremy Corbyn sought a peaceful solution for the Israel/Palestine question, including freedom for Palestine and Zionism demands that all Palestinian territory must become part of Israel, with its inhabitants thrown out), it brings the integrity of the BBC as a whole into question.

Knowing what has happened here, will you be ready to believe BBC reporting on the next big controversy?

If you want to complain, the BBC has a web page telling you how to do so. Feel free to use it.

Keir Starmer claims he’ll give every child ‘the best opportunities’ – after condemning hundreds of thousands to poverty

The propaganda piece accompanying Starmer’s tweet seems to have been created to head off criticism of his decision to keep a quarter of a million children in poverty – and a further 850,000 in deep poverty – by extending the Tory child benefit cap into any Parliament run by a party led by him.


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The news in tweets: Sunday, July 23, 2023

‘No more Green New Deal’ is what we can see on the banner – and that is exactly what Keir Starmer is offering as he panders to the fossil fuel firms in his relentlessly grubby bid for power.

Tories AND Labour throw green policies into the fire – but who is most responsible?

Let’s make a few connections.

Energy minister Grant Shapps has unilaterally decided that the environment can burn, and to this end has announced that he’ll extract all the remaining fossil fuels from the North Sea in the name of “energy security”:

If we’ve learned anything from the state of the environment lately, it is that there is no security in energy generated from fossil fuels. As Richard Murphy states, the planet is burning and the Tory response is to stoke the fire.

Now let’s go over to the party formerly known as Labour, where leader Keir Stürmer is trying to dictate to London Mayor Sadiq Khan that he should “reflect on” (ditch) the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone that keeps more heavily-polluting traffic out of the centre of the capital because it was the issue that lost their party the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election.

This is idiotic for several reasons. Firstly, Stürmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Party) should not have lost because of ULEZ, which is a Conservative policy. It was imposed by Boris Johnson – the former MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, whose resignation triggered the election – so all Stürmer’s candidate had to do to counter criticisms of his party and mayor was point this out.

Secondly, we know this didn’t happen because people with non-polluting cars, who would not have paid the charge, were complaining about it on the doorstep. Perhaps they didn’t like being told it was nothing to do with them, but it’s more likely that they simply weren’t told that at all.

Thirdly, the ULEZ is not something Khan can unilaterally change; it was imposed on London by the Department for Transport when it was being run by… oh yes! Grant Shapps.

So Shapps is magically facing in two different directions at once.

And Stürmer is apparently being dishonest about the reason his party lost the election.

It’s all very well saying, “We lost because of the ULEZ”, but if his people didn’t actually defend themselves on it, that’s their fault.

Doesn’t it seem more likely that it is an excuse that is being inflated to hide a different reason for the loss.

What could that reason be?

That’s not his only blunder…

Also:

Call me a scaremonger if you like, but it seems to This Writer that the most logical reason his party lost in Uxbridge and South Ruislip is Keir Starmer himself.

Keir Mather: fact and fiction about the new, Starmerite MP for Selby and Ainsty

And on that subject…

Apparently he was a researcher for former Tory MP Matthew Parris.

Forgive me, but I question whether that’s the right sort of grounding for a person who now represents the party that is supposed to support working people.

The Tory government has decided that saving the lives of disabled people who have to live in high-rise tower blocks is too expensive

How many hundreds of billions of pounds have they given to their friends and donors in return for absolutely nothing at all?

Sunak’s doublespeak: he wants you to think his theft of your rights is something you have demanded

Standing ovation for Mick Lynch after speech about the ‘stench of corruption’ in Tory government


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The news in tweets: Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Falling energy prices are not being passed on to customers and the government is doing nothing. Why?

Tory energy security minister Grant Shapps was grilled over the government’s failure to support cash-strapped households, by Martin Lewis on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. His answers were revealing:

So: we will receive no more money to help with energy bills, even though the energy companies are charging us far more than the cost of the energy itself. The government is supporting these firms as they rip us off.

Shapps’s comments about standing charges are also useful. He said these charges are for “all of the network costs, the maintenance costs and the things which happen before you get the live supply of energy to the household”. He said these costs were “not for nothing”.

This Writer certainly hopes that is true.

But let’s have a look at another privatised utility that forces you to pay standing charges: water. If standing charges on water are said to be for the same purpose as for energy – network costs, maintenance etc – then the water companies are guilty of fraud because we have learned that none of our money is being spent on infrastructure (maintenance). The pipe system still dates back to the Victorian era and some of it is made of lead, which is poison.

The water firms also borrow heavily to cover day-to-day costs. That leaves me asking what the standing charge supports. Is it just feeding into the profits of shareholders? If so, then these firms are lying to us about its purpose and should be prosecuted, forced to return that money to us and the charge abolished.

In fairness, I have read that the charge is for the cost of reading meters and sending out bills – but with smart meters installed that tell firms what you’ve used without anyone having to come to your home, and with the facility for people to receive bills by a new-fangled device called email, those costs now must be very low compared with times in even the recent past. Why are the standing charges not being reduced, then?

Taking the subject back to energy, if standing charges on water are a rip-off, how do we know that the energy firms aren’t also charging us far more than is reasonable?

Answer: we don’t.

One rule for them: MPs get up to £16,305 per year for up to three children, but restrict your child benefit to two kids and £2,080

Yes indeed.

Current salary for a backbench MP is around £84-5,000. They get expenses to pay for food, rent and bills (on the second homes they need in London, if I recall correctly), and they also receive £5,435 per year to pay bills related to their children, for a maximum of three children. That’s around £104.23 per week, per child, up to £312.69 – let’s round it up to £312.70.

If you have three children, you won’t receive any child benefit for one of them. You then get £24 per week for the eldest and £15.90 for the second child: £39.90 per week or around £2,080 per year.

Your MP thinks this is fair – even those in the Labour Party who should be demanding equality for everybody (possibly with a few exceptions).

This is why we need to think very carefully about who we allow into Parliament and what they should be elected to do.

Meanwhile, Substitute Tory (formerly Labour) Rachel Reeves can’t see how a UK government can fund free school meals for children who need them, so members of the public have been offering helpful suggestions:

Howard Beckett pointed out: “In Norway the sovereign fund stands at over $1.3trillion. Norway tax[es] fossil fuel Corporate giants at 78 per cent.”

She could also reverse some of the massive tax cuts that the Tories have handed to the richest members of UK society since 2010. There are plenty of ways to fund a better future.

One can only conclude that Pamela Fitzpatrick is right: “Reeves really cannot see where the moneys going to come from because she simply does not have the skills, talent or vision for the role she is in.”

There is a lighter side to this – if you have a certain sense of humour:

Keir Starmer was ‘consciously dishonest’ when he campaigned for the Labour leadership. Shouldn’t he be given the boot?

We may conclude from the information available to us that when Keir Starmer was telling Labour Party members that he would respect and continue the policies of his immediate forerunner Jeremy Corbyn, he was actually planning to throw away all the popular policies that Mr Corbyn had formed, as soon as possible.

He lied in order to be elected.

That is not acceptable.

He should be removed.

He won’t be – because Labour disciplinary procedures are a bad joke at the expense of rank-and-file party members. But voters should – and will – remember his betrayal, and the cynical, calculated way in which he planned it.

Defence spending rises by nearly one-third of what it was in 2019 – while all other spending falls. Why?

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has announced that the UK government will spend £50 billion on “defence”, for the first time in its history – more than £12 billion more than in 2019.

Jeremy Corbyn asked him about his priorities:

In response, Wallace said: “I am not out looking for war. We are all out here trying to defend our nation by avoiding war, but we do not avoid war by not investing in deterrence. Sometimes we have to invest in hard power, to complement soft power. We do not want to use it and we do not go looking for it. I know the right hon. Gentleman mixes with some people who always think this is about warmongering; it is not. But if countries are not taken seriously by their adversaries, that is one of the quickest ways to provoke a war.”

So he wants to avoid wars by rattling the sabre. This Writer isn’t sure that works – and I am encouraged to doubt him by his own prediction that the UK will be at war within seven years.

Mr Corbyn’s question was an opportunity for him to explain how his spending plan would prevent the UK from being at war within seven years. He did not answer that question.

What are these Tories planning to drag the rest of us into?

£500 million public money bribe to get Jaguar Land Rover owner to build electric car battery factory in Somerset

The Tory government is paying £500 million towards the creation of a £4 billion factory by Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata, building batteries for electric cars.

Is it really great news?

As migrant-housing barge arrives in Portland: how was the contract awarded and was it carried out corruptly?

Two tweets on this:

Is the illegal Tory “VIP lane” still operating, then?

Why is the government repeating consultation on wet wipe ban? Is it looking for a different response?


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The news in tweets: Monday, July 17, 2023

Ruling-class privilege: there’s no ‘class ceiling’ for grotesqueries like Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer – they are laughing at you when they say they can’t do anything to help you. Remember: it is political choice that has dumped the UK in its current crisis.

Backlash against Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party grows as he insists he’ll do nothing for ordinary people

It’s a good question. Jeremy Corbyn promised to provide dentistry on the National Health Service but Keir Stürmer is promising to deny it to more people (although he hasn’t said it in as many words).

He’s also planning to inject much more privatisation into the NHS, probably to complete the transformation of the service into nothing more than a banner under which public money may be passed to private companies that perpetuate illness and refuse to provide cover where it is not profitable, making healthcare a postcode lottery:

More privatisation?

Read this:

There’s the problem with more privatisation in a nutshell. Once these private health bloodsuckers get a monopoly on the provision of care, they’ll push prices through the roof – knowing that you and I will have to pay for it, no matter what.

By supporting increased private involvement in healthcare, Starmer supports this plan to drain the public purse of its funds and effectively put you into debt to grotesquely rich corporate fatcats – forever.

He’s being nicknamed #SirKidStarver because he won’t end the two-child limit on child benefit and is therefore continuing to impose poverty on millions of children, nor will he provide free school meals for everybody who needs them.

Stürmer’s ‘Right-hand Liar’, Yvette Cooper, was pressed to justify the policy that will deliberately keep a quarter of a million children in poverty and 850,000 more in increased poverty, on the morning media round. Judge her failure by this clip:

Labour’s answer to criticism is apparently to say we should vote for the Substitute Tory Party because its members have ancestors who were working class:

It seems Stürmer and all his little stürmtroopers need a lesson on how a Labour Party governs a nation. Here’s one:

The consensus opinion is increasingly that Stürmer is lying:

Thankfully not everyone, even in the Parliamentary Labour Party, supports the wholesale betrayal of Labour Party values that Stürmer is preparing:

And outside the party, some of us are already agitating for direct action:

The article states that Stürmer is actively planning to fail the nation on many levels:

– Climate change
– Renewables
– Transport reform
– The economy
– Public sector pay
– The NHS
– Social care
– Education
– Law and order
– Housing
– Trade unions
– Reversing Tory policy
– Support for local government
– Electoral reform
– Europe
– Interest rates
– Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
– Defence
– Inequality
– Taxing the rich

It calls for us to make Stürmer as uncomfortable as possible, for as long as possible, on all those issues until the pressure on him to reform becomes unsurmountable and he is forced to change.

How to do this?

– Inform yourself
– Join groups
– Talk to people
– Write to MPs, councillors and anyone else
– Phone in to the radio (you are likely to get on)
– Consider peaceful protest
– Join a union if it is appropriate for you
– Write a blog
– Comment here
– Tweet, Thread, use Mastodon, create a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram post.

But just don’t suffer in silence. Starmer has to know he is failing, already. Only then might he change, or be forced to. Things are far too serious to accept the dire policy options as those Starmer is now proposing. We all have to demand better.

And in the short term there is only one option: anyone who understands how bad the situation is at the moment must vote for anybody but Labour or the Conservatives. Who the other party to support may be will only be apparent locally.

The best places to start are at Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Thursday (July 20, 2023).

Where is the evidence that the Tories are ‘transforming’ the economy?

It seems that the only evidence of any such action by the Conservatives is a plan to close down what Rishi Sunak calls “rip-off” degrees that don’t guarantee a job to graduates.

It seems a strange demand – that degree courses guarantee a job to the people taking them. By that standard, shouldn’t they all be shut down and a multi-billion pound education industry destroyed overnight?

You see, the point of most degrees isn’t to fit people into a job; it is to teach people how to think. That way, they can work out how to get, for themselves, the job that best suits them. This policy reveals Tory ideology: they don’t want people who can think – they just want livestock who can be slotted into jobs that will make money for their friends and funders:

But it’s hard to tell, because it seems the Tories are doing their utmost to hide what they are doing – probably because the only people they are helping are themselves.

Example:

How about the way government departments under the Tories have been blacklisting media organisations that publish information that is critical of them? Here’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace apologising for such treatment of Declassified UK:

What else do they not want us to know?

Perhaps the fact that yet another Tory MP has been arrested – for sexual impropriety and misconduct in public office?

Perhaps the fact that 2022 was the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century since the early 1970s, meaning their fairy story that increases in your wages are fuelling inflation is a lie?

Perhaps the fact that they spent more than one-and-a-half times as much money on duff Covid-related contracts through their illegal “VIP lane” as they have allocated to the building of new NHS hospitals?

People are being stopped from renting homes because they have children. Sign the petition to stop this


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