Monthly Archives: September 2017

Tory concession to young voters is too little and too reluctant

Theresa May has pledged to listen to young people. This is what she looks like when she tries [Image: Getty].

It’s also too obviously focused on the privileged young.

The announcement that tuition fees will be frozen is pointless, coming as it does after a rise of £250 a year was introduced earlier this month. When tuition fees were brought in, by Tony Blair’s New Labour, they were pegged at £1,000 per year and means-tested. Considering the astronomical increases since then – mostly under the Tories – it seems clear that Mrs May’s party has already done its worst here.

An increase in the repayment threshold will mean little to people who do not earn much after finishing their university courses as they are never likely to earn enough to do any more than pay interest on their loans. The offer to consider cutting interest rates on student loans is neither here nor there. Theresa May will probably u-turn on it as soon as it becomes expedient to do so.

Obviously, considering the cost of tuition fees and the debt burden of loans, being a student is now an occupation intended for the very rich; these are offers to the privileged, not to the population at large.

As for Help to Buy, which is intended to allow first-time buyers to get a mortgage – the scheme has been hit by several scandals: Some buyers were forced to pay ground rent at prices that increased hugely; others on Help-to-Buy ISAs found they could not use the money to actually buy a house. And in the meantime the scheme created an artificial increase in house prices, making them even less affordable for people on average or below-average wages.

So, again, this is a concession to the rich. It would be a trap for the poor.

It seems incredible that the media are touting this as Theresa May’s answer to Labour’s overwhelming popularity among young voters.

All anybody younger than 24 has to do is think about it, and they’ll never want to vote Tory again in their lives. I predict a u-turn on the whole idea.

Theresa May is set to announce that tuition fees will be frozen at £9,250, as part of an effort by the Tories to appeal to younger voters.

Speaking ahead of the Conservative Party Conference, the Prime Minister told the Sun on Sunday there will be an increase in the repayment threshold, meaning graduates only start paying their loans back once they are earning £25,000.

The changes to the loan system will be accompanied with another pledge to extend the Help to Buy scheme, with Ms May acknowledging that the generation gap in terms of wealth and opportunity has opened up in the country.

With the number of first-time buyers falling steadily, the Prime Minister will pledge another £10 billion to expand the Help to Buy scheme, which attracted criticism for artificially inflating prices in the already overheated London housing market.

The extra funding will go to a further 135,000 first-time buyers, allowing them to get a mortgage on a new-built home with a deposit of just five per cent.

The Conservatives are also considering cutting interest rates on student loan repayments – which have rocketed for recent graduates.

Source: Theresa May pledges to freeze tuition fees and extend Help to Buy scheme ahead of Tory conference


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Disgraced private companies could be handed powers of arrest by disgraceful Tory administration

Let’s not get hysterical just yet – the proposal is to give private companies like G4S and Serco the power to arrest people who fail to pay fines imposed by the courts.

And we don’t know whether it will be approved yet. The consultation period, launched in August, has only just ended. It lasted less than two months, which seems a very short time period for such a plan.

No powers would be taken from police. The idea is to privatise more civil service jobs – nearly 200 of them, in a deal that would be worth £290 million.

Here’s the catch: The Conservatives seem to think it would be a good idea to award the contracts to G4S and Serco. Both companies have proved themselves a dead loss to the state on many previous occasions – most notoriously with the electronic “tagging” scandal, which made criminals of both companies.

We may hope that the Conservatives have the good sense to avoid putting powers of arrest into the hands of such unscrupulous creatures.

But the recent developments concerning former HSBC director and BBC Trust chief Rona Fairhead suggest otherwise.

If we’re lucky, the Tories will shoot themselves in the foot once too often and any privatisation will never go through.

If we’re unlucky, it’ll be another privatisation for Labour to undo, when they return to office and start to bring the UK back into some kind of order.

Let us hope it doesn’t go that far.


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Boris Johnson is out of control again. Here’s why (as if you needed to see the reasons)

We all thought reciting a colonial poem by Kipling in Myanmar was tactless. Then Boris Johnson decided to do the Hokey-Cokey (“In, out, in, out, shake it all about”) during Brexit negotiations.

The longer Boris Johnson is allowed to remain in post as Foreign Secretary while stirring up division in the Conservative government, the more ridiculous that government becomes.

His latest stunt, timed to be broken in the press right before the start of the Conservative Party Conference, was to announce – unilaterally, after no consultation at all with anybody other than his fevered imagination – four “red lines”, conditions without which he says Brexit should not take place.

They are:

  • Transition period must be a maximum of two years
  • UK must refuse to accept new EU rules during that period
  • No payments for access to the single market after the end of the transition period
  • UK must not agree to shadow EU rules to gain access to the single market

Thank you, Ian Dunt – that sorts out the practicalities.

Now, here’s Jonathan Portes to point out the very obvious:

In other words: This stunt is entirely about causing division at the Conservative Party Conference.

On the BBC News channel today (September 30), reporters were speculating on whether Theresa May would be able to prevent the event from degenerating into a Brexit-related brawl.

But that isn’t all the Blond Boor has been doing – oh no!

He has been accused of “incredible insensitivity” after it emerged he recited part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem in front of local dignitaries while on an official visit to Myanmar in January.

Here’s The Guardian:

Boris Johnson was inside the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist site in the capital Yangon, when he started uttering the opening verse to The Road to Mandalay, including the line: “The temple bells they say/ Come you back you English soldier.”

Kipling’s poem captures the nostalgia of a retired serviceman looking back on his colonial service and a Burmese girl he kissed. Britain colonised Myanmar from 1824 to 1948 and fought three wars in the 19th century, suppressing widespread resistance.

Johnson’s impromptu recital was so embarrassing that the UK ambassador to Myanmar, Andrew Patrick, was forced to stop him. The incident was captured by a film crew for Channel 4 and will form part of a documentary to be broadcast on Sunday about the fitness of the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip to become prime minister.

He is definitely not prime ministerial material.

The comments have been coming thick and fast, but the following is probably the best:

As ever, for those who can’t read from image files, here it is again:

“IF

“If you can keep on lying when all about you
“Are proving what you’ve said is blatantly untrue;
“If you can ignore all that’s in your nation’s interest
“While making sure you only to what’s best for you;

“If you can hate and help to incite hating
“While pretending you’re just a bumbling twat,
“And simply can’t bear any more waiting
“Till at the head of government you’re sat;

“If you can spout racist jargon and still people like you
“And torch everyone’s future but remain unburnt;
“If you can deceive on TV, onlline and on buses,
“Then wreck an economy and remain unconcerned;

“If you can turn every triumph into disaster
“For your nation, its people but never for you,
“And hide behind waffle and Jacob Rees-Moggery
“An ambition which means that nothing’s taboo;

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
“With 350 million lies about the future ahead,
“You’ll be Prime Minister of the UK and all that’s in it,
“Even though it’ll look like The Walking Dead.”

The Walking Dead will be all you can see at the Conservative conference – but his antics mean Mr Johnson should be a dead man walking.


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#Brexit buffoon Hannan bombarded with ridicule over ‘nicer home’ claim

Daniel Hannan, shortly after screwing his head on the right (wing) way.

There’s no need to have sympathy for Brexiteer Daniel Hannan, who publicised an Express article on Brexit (featuring comments from him) with the following tweet:

He got what he deserved:

He got what he deserved.


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Now work has begun, the cost of repairing Big Ben’s tower has soared. Other worthy projects go without

Repair costs for the Elizabeth Tower have been doubled [Image: PA].

If I’m reading this right, initial repair cost estimates were kept low to stop companies from artificially inflating their prices.

But now we’re being told that the cost has more than doubled, based on “better” information.

So what, exactly, was the point of the lower amount, which was only quoted to us all less than 18 months ago?

And why was the announcement sneaked out quietly on a Friday evening – in the hope that nobody would notice?

It seems like just another grubby attempt to hoodwink the general public.

Despite all Theresa May’s – and the other Tories’ – recent rhetoric, they are still pushing ahead with austerity for the poor, so projects that deserve public money are being neglected in order to push public money at vanity projects like this. There is nothing seriously wrong with the tower; the decision has been made to push money at it in order to save cash later.

But in the light of other pressures on public funds, is it really money wisely spent?

Some would say it isn’t:

The Tories are really shaking that Magic Money tree, aren’t they? Let’s remember to remind them of this, next time they tell us there’s no cash for anything useful.

Repair costs for the clock tower which houses the famous bell known as Big Ben have now doubled to an estimated £61 million, parliamentary authorities have said.

The conservation project for the Elizabeth Tower in the Palace of Westminster, London, was originally priced at £29m in the spring of 2016.

The House of Commons and House of Lords Commissions have been told that the increase in costs is due to a better understanding of the complexity of the work needed to restore the tower.

In a joint statement the clerk of the House of Commons, the clerk of the Parliaments and the director general of the House of Commons, said: “We acknowledge that there have been estimating failures and we understand the concern of the commissions.

“In advance of tendering contracts, the initial high level estimates were set at a lower level to avoid cost escalation from the market.

“Subsequent estimates, using better data and more extensive surveys, better reflect the true likelihood of the costs.”

Read more: Repair costs for Elizabeth Tower which houses Big Ben double to estimated £61 million


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Theresa May touts phony, crony capitalism. She wouldn’t know a free market if she was put up for sale on it

Reforming the unacceptable face of capitalism: Theresa May and Philip Green by Dave Brown. She said she would reform capitalism after the BHS scandal [Image: @Cartoon4sale on Twitter].


Theresa May’s attempt to lecture us all on the joys of capitalism is another howler in a series of blunders that should only end in her ejection from politics and the (self-)destruction of the political party she has been running into the ground for the last 14 months.

This Writer hastens to add that this is not because she advocates free-market capitalism as the “greatest agent of collective human progress ever created”. I don’t agree with that sentiment but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with capitalism in itself; pack that system full of good worker-owned co-operatives and I’ll be delighted.

The problem is that Tories preach free-market capitalism while actually practising something very different – neoliberalism: a sort of protectionist socialism-for-the-very-rich.

Neoliberalism demands that the benefits of scientific and cultural progress should only be enjoyed by those who can afford to pay for them using their own money.

That is why, internationally, eight people own as much wealth as half the population of the world. It is why, here in the UK, the richest 1,000 families have nearly tripled their wealth since the financial crisis (“all in it together”? I should bleedin’ cocoa) while half the country has to make do with just 8.7 per cent of the wealth.

It is why, under the neoliberal governments of Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and now May, national industries and utilities have been privatised – to take their profits away from the UK’s government and into private hands (and never mind the fact that some of those “private” hands happen to belong to foreign governments). The intention was to deprive the state of valuable funds, preventing it from investing in projects that would benefit the populace at large.

It is why social housing has been sold off and cruel penalties – like the Bedroom Tax – have been imposed on those living in the housing stock that remains. The aim is to drive the poorest into the gutter, opening up the properties for resale and redevelopment as “gentrified” – read “expensive” – estates.

It is why wages have been pushed down – to increase profits for rich company owners and shareholders who squirrel them away in offshore bank accounts where they do not have to pay tax to the UK government – and trade unions’ ability to oppose this cruelty has been rendered illegal by draconian legislation.

It is why regulations that protect citizens’ rights have been removed, to make it easier for privateers to provide substandard products or skip safety procedures altogether, thereby maximising their profits.

It is why people with long-term illness and/or disabilities, considered to be “useless eaters” in exactly the same way as in Nazi Germany, are persecuted to their deaths by a perverted “benefit” system that in fact strives to remove any help available.

Ultimately, it is the reason the UK has been pushed deeply into debt (sources of funding for the government having been either sold off, scrapped or squirrelled into tax havens) – to turn the country into a so-called “zombie economy” in which the vast majority of the people labour for a pittance, their tax money used not to provide public services but to partially pay off the interest on the national debt. Only partially, mind – the intention is for the debt never to be repaid.

That is what Theresa May calls the “greatest agent of collective human progress ever created”. That is the central aim of all Tory economic policy – not an improvement in living standards, not protected jobs, but the exact opposite.

Of course she has been ridiculed:

In fact, the greatest agent of human progress every created was socialism, as enacted by Clement Attlee in his 1945-51 government and maintained in the post-war consensus years from 1945-79. Those were years of unprecedented prosperity that happened in spite of Conservatism and neoliberalism.

Tories and neoliberals hated those years. You can prove Mrs May a liar simply by pointing out that her neoliberalism was not responsible for the most sustained increase in living standards of everyone in the UK – living standards here were at their highest in 1977, under a Labour government in the post-war consensus years.

By then, the neoliberals were well on their way to power. The oil shock, engineered by the very rich, had prepared the way by creating social unrest due to inflation-stoked price rises – for which the Labour government was blamed. Margaret Thatcher had told the Parliamentary Conservative party that they now believed in Hayek-style neoliberalism and was plotting the destruction of the UK’s industrial base, in order to deprive working people of the security they had built up over the previous 30 years. Tory think tanks were filling the pages of newspapers and the time on TV political shows with pro-neoliberal dogma in order to sway public opinion.

Thatcher, and the other prime ministers since her, were all elected on a promise that living standards would improve. Instead, they have worsened.

Theresa May’s lying speech is an opportunity for us all to put an end to this insanity. Let’s denounce her version of capitalism for what it is – socialism for the very rich – and put both it and her on the scrap heap of historic failures.

Theresa May defended the free markets after Jeremy Corbyn’s criticism of capitalism by saying … that it is the “greatest agent of collective human progress ever created.”

Speaking on Thursday, May told the Bank of England’s 20th anniversary of independence conference that capitalism “is unquestionably the best, and indeed the only sustainable, means of increasing the living standards of everyone in a country. And we should never forget that raising the living standards, and protecting the jobs of ordinary working people is the central aim of all economic policy.”

The prime minister said it was free-market economics that “led societies out of darkness and stagnation and into the light of the modern age.”

Source: Theresa May defends free market capitalism after Jeremy Corbyn’s criticism


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Which Reporter’s Name Should Be Used as the Scientific Unit of Media Bias? | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

The caption on this picture reads: “Nick Robinson, former Young Conservatives chairman and current BBC political editor, taking a selfie with some young Tories. Unbiased? (Photo courtesy of theblueguerilla.co.uk).

If it’s a choice between Nick Robinson or Laura Kuenssberg when devising a name for the scientific unit of media bias…

It has to be The Rob, doesn’t it?

Thinking about the Beeb, Nick Robinson and Laura Kuenssberg and their spurious protestations of objectivity and impartiality the other night, I remember one of the jokes going round Nazi Germany about Goebbels, Hitler’s notorious ‘Minister for Public Enlightenment’. There were a number of comments and nicknames about him. He was very promiscuous, so much so that he got the nickname ‘the Tadpole’. Like Hitler, he was also short, so that the Germans produced a saying ‘Luegen haben kurzen Beinen’ – ‘Lies have short legs’.

And one of the jokes played on the various scientific terms then being coined as research advanced. For example, in electronics there are the terms volt, amp and ohm, which all take their names from the physicists Volta, Ampere and Ohm, who did pioneering research into electricity.

Thus, German wags defined the Goeb – from Goebbel’s monicker – to be the minimum unit of power required to turn off 100,000 radio sets. The joke here being that every time the Nazi propagandist appeared on the radio to rant about how wonderful the Reich was, and how evil Jews, Communists, democracy, Socialism, trade unionism, ‘capitalism’ and the allies were, the Germany public reacted en masse by finding something much better to do. This might explain why family board games are still very popular in Germany. After all, if there’s a choice between listening to another foam-flecked rant from Adolf, or playing Cluedo, I think most people would probably opt for the latter.

Source: Which Reporter’s Name Should Be Used as the Scientific Unit of Media Bias? | Beastrabban\’s Weblog


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Labour will rethink social security policy after conference vote

This is another example of shadow Work and Pensions secretary Debbie Abrahams showing what a star she is.

Here is an MP who will stand up for jobseekers, the sick, the disabled, and anybody else in need of state financial support.

And who do we get from the Tories? David Gauke. Read This Site’s article about him and the contrast is stark.

A shadow cabinet member has supported calls by party members for Labour to come up with a stronger policy on reversing government cuts to social security spending.

Debbie Abrahams spoke out after Labour’s annual conference in Brighton voted overwhelmingly to ask the party’s policy-making machinery to reconsider its approach to reversing the government’s latest cuts to benefits.

In this year’s general election manifesto, Labour pledged to reverse some of the government’s latest cuts to social security, but there was frustration among many activists that it failed to go further.

The manifesto committed £2 billion a year towards “fixing” universal credit and other elements of social security policy, scrapping the bedroom tax and reversing the cuts of £30 a week for new claimants placed in the employment and support allowance work-related activity group.

The Labour manifesto also pledged to repeal new regulations that will make it harder for people with mental health problems to claim the mobility component of personal independence payment, and promised other measures such as scrapping the work capability and PIP assessments.

But there was no manifesto commitment to scrapping the benefit cap – although Labour has since suggested it would remove it, after a court ruled that imposing the cap on lone parents with children under two was unlawful and discriminatory – or the continuing freeze on many working-age benefits, which will take billions more out of the social security budget.

But an overwhelming vote at this week’s conference in Brighton called on the party to be more explicit in its opposition to all the cuts currently being implemented, and to promise to reverse them.

Debbie Abrahams told Disability News Service: “I welcome what conference had to say. It is up to the National Policy Forum now.

“It will be reviewed and I am sure and I hope the shadow Treasury team will be listening to what the members had to say.”

And she said she was sympathetic to what party members had called for in the vote.

She had earlier told a fringe meeting that the party would have to go through each of the government’s cuts “line by line”.

She said she would pressure Labour’s Treasury team to reverse government cuts to social security and “will keep fighting to make sure that disabled people are not in the dire circumstances that they have been]over the last seven years”.

Source: Labour conference: Vote means party must rethink approach to social security cuts


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Civil service head will investigate alleged breach of ministerial code by Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson. ‘The ministers involved have shown an astonishing lack of judgment,’ the head of the senior civil servants’ union said [Image: Pavel Neubauer/AP].

Yes, Jeremy Heywood is going to investigate the alleged misuse of public funds on an organisation whose aims are not those of the government.

Don’t get your hopes up, though. You know the worst Mr Johnson will get is a mild slap on the wrist.

He’ll probably think it’s foreplay.

Boris Johnson has been accused of breaching the ministerial code in an “astonishing lack of judgment” by allowing the launch of a right-leaning thinktank on Foreign Office premises. The Institute for Free Trade (IFT), set up and headed by the arch-Brexiter Daniel Hannan, held its first public meeting on Wednesday in the grand surroundings of the FCO’s Map Room, with guests including Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox.

Critics accused the foreign secretary of allowing public resources to be misused as Hannan called for the government to move towards a Singapore-style economy after Britain leaves the EU. Theresa May reassured EU leaders this week that Britain was not seeking to become an offshore tax haven like Singapore.

Lord Falconer claimed the event was in breach of the ministerial code because the aims of the institute are not supported by the government. The former Labour lord chancellor wrote on Twitter: “Foreign Sec in breach of min code (7.12) in allowing FCO to be venue for launch of Institute of Free Trade which conflicts with govt policy.”

The code says: “Ministers should take care to ensure that they do not become associated with non-public organisations whose objectives may in any degree conflict with government policy and thus give rise to a conflict of interest.”

A government spokesperson confirmed that Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, would examine a complaint about the launch. “The cabinet secretary has received a letter of complaint and he will reply in due course,” the spokesperson said.

Source: Boris Johnson accused of breaching ministerial code over thinktank launch | Politics | The Guardian


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Firefighters’ union will stand up for Grenfell victims, even if the inquiry won’t

Grief: Firefighters found it hard to keep themselves together as they dealt with the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. [Image: PA].

What a great announcement by the Fire Brigades Union – this has put the official inquiry on notice that it will not simply judge; it will also be judged.

Firefighters who were called to the Grenfell fire were deeply affected – emotionally – by what they found there. If anybody is likely to know whether corners were cut and regulations that should have been followed were ditched instead, they will. And they will make their point forcefully.

Perhaps one reason for this is the government’s treatment of firefighters themselves.

It isn’t very long since firefighters were staging strikes about Tory-imposed changes to their pension entitlements. The Conservatives unilaterally imposed a rise in the level of contributions firefighters must make to their pensions, meaning they would have less pay in their pockets, and they also raised the age of retirement from 55 to 60, meaning fewer firefighters are likely ever to receive a pension as many members may fail the fitness test required to remain on active duty, and would have to leave the service – without qualifying for a pension – as a result.

So firefighters have first-hand experience of being given a hosing by the Tories. It’s a joy to see they won’t stand by and let it happen to others.

The head of the Fire Brigades Union has described the Grenfell Tower disaster as a “crime” that should topple the government amid warnings over a boycott of the national inquiry.

FBU chief Matt Wrack said the tower block fire was a “national political scandal” and called for ministers to be hauled before the inquiry to answer questions about why regulations were cut.

The union will walk away from the official inquiry if it is seen by survivors and firefighters as a “pointless stitch up”, Mr Wrack warned.

Read more: Grenfell Tower fire is a ‘crime’ that should topple the government, says Fire Brigade Union chief


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