Monthly Archives: August 2021

New low for Starmer: Workers at the Party of the Workers are to go on strike

For the many? It seems “the many” are deserting the Labour Party in their thousands, in disgust at Keir Starmer.

Staff at Labour Party HQ who are members of trade unions have voted overwhelmingly to strike, in protest at the plan to sack 90 of their number and replace them with short-term contractors in exactly the kind of ‘fire-and-rehire’ deal that leader Keir Starmer claims to oppose.

It is suggested that they voted to strike by a majority of three to one:

It’s doubtful that this has anything to do with Starmer’s attack on the unions (he has spoken out against Unite’s new boss Sharon Graham, while Bakers’ union BFAWU boss Ian Hodson is in danger of auto-exclusion, apparently on a trumped-up charge) – but it is also doubtful that it will do their relationship any good.

Labour was originally formed to give working-class people representation in Parliament.

The fact that the party’s current leadership sees nothing wrong with betraying its own employees – and therefore its very reason for existing – is more damning than anything This Writer can say about it.

I just hope it goes the distance and they all walk out between September 25 and 29 (at least) – because those are the dates of the Labour Party Conference.

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Brexit-prompted tube shortage means UK doctors can’t do blood tests

Scheduled blood tests are being cancelled across the UK and doctors are being forced to make hard decisions about what to do if they lose the ability to provide life-saving diagnostic testing due to a Brexit-prompted shortage of blood collection tubes.

Becton Dickinson, the NHS’s main supplier of blood collection tubes, has been blamed for the shortage, with the manufacturer suggesting the post-Brexit HGV driver shortage could be to blame, according to iNews.

The Department of Health and Social Care is desperately trying to play down the crisis, saying everything is being done to eliminate the shortage.

But NHS England has released new guidance that aims to reduce the use of blood tubes to the bare minimum, suggesting that the issue is serious.

And bosses of the British Medical Association – the doctors’ trade union – are furious. Their press release on the situation makes this abundantly clear [boldings mine]:

“The BMA says the shortage of blood tubes across hospitals and GP surgeries is now severe and if the NHS does not reduce the amount being used in the coming days, even the most clinically important blood tests may be at risk.

“Doctors at the BMA have already made plain their concerns about the implications for patients and their anger that this shortage has been allowed to happen in the first place. However, in the absence of a plan to bring in alternative supplies before the middle of next month, the situation is now urgent. The BMA is urging all doctors to follow the NHS guidance and carry out only the most critical of tests for the time being.

“Dr David Wrigley, BMA council deputy chair, said: ‘This crisis has put doctors and their patients in a terrible, unenviable position. No doctor knowingly undertakes unnecessary blood tests and to now have to ration all those we are doing, as well as cancel hundreds more, goes against everything we stand for as clinicians.

“‘However, if we don’t try to follow the NHS guidance, it’s clear we will get to the point where even the most clinically urgent of blood tests may not be able to be done as we simply won’t have the tubes for the blood to go into.

“‘We are at a very perilous point and it’s surprising that NHS England hasn’t declared a critical incident given the very strong possibility that NHS organisations may temporarily lose the ability to provide lifesaving diagnostic testing. We also call on NHS England to commit to the changes that are needed for their guidance to be properly followed by doctors, and provide patients with detailed, easily accessible information about the situation.

“‘Many GP practices – like mine – will now have to spend hours assessing which already scheduled tests can or cannot be cancelled and this takes time away from frontline patient care when it is most needed. Cancelling tests makes patients anxious and can mean a missed diagnosis.’

“Dr Vishal Sharma, BMA consultants committee chair, said: ‘The very suggestion that an acute hospital trust needs to reduce testing by 25 per cent is highly alarming. However, to try and avoid a situation where there are simply no more blood tubes, we have no choice but to now make very careful decisions about which tests to carry out.

“‘It is shocking that this situation has been allowed to develop – in particular, the apparent over-reliance on one manufacturer and the woeful lack of any kind of reserve supply. The manufacturers should also have to explain how they allowed stocks to run so low that patients will now suffer as a result. If we don’t get on top of this shortage – and quickly – then we could very easily end up in a catastrophic position, particularly in hospitals where patients come to serious harm.’”

“Severe… anger… terrible, unenviable position… goes against everything we stand for as clinicians… Perilous… can mean a missed diagnosis… highly alarming… shocking that this situation has been allowed to develop… Woeful… catastrophic… patients come to serious harm.”

And it is – apparently – a result of Brexit. And the “politicians” responsible for it couldn’t care less.

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Will Labour have any backers left after Starmer started attack on unions?

Sharon Graham: The Tories are demanding that Labour leader Keir Starmer take no donations from Unite after she threatened to work “outside the law”, if necessary, to win industrial disputes. It will leave Labour with an even bigger hole in its finances than it has now.

Keir Starmer seems determined to cut off all funding opportunities for his version of the Labour Party.

After spending more than a year attacking and reducing the membership on false pretences, so that the party is now a shadow of the largest political organisation in Europe that it was under previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, it seems he is now distancing himself from the trade unions.

It seems right-wing mischief-makers, either within the party or from outside, reminded Starmer of a 2019 threat by new Unite boss Sharon Graham, to work “outside the law” to win industrial disputes.

It was a humiliating for the Labour leader, who had only days previously congratulated her on her election win and claimed he was looking forward to “working together to improve the lives of working people”. That was probably an empty promise in any case, considering Starmer’s record of betraying his vows.

Tory Party co-chair Amanda Milling challenged Starmer to pledge to take no donations from the union if Ms Graham adopted the tactics she had threatened – but he probably won’t even have the choice.

Unite – Labour’s biggest financial backer – already restricted its supply of cash to the party under previous general secretary Len McCluskey, because of Starmer’s perceived failures as a leader, and Ms Graham is already being urged to go further and cut funding altogether.

Bakers’ union the BFAWU has already threatened to disaffiliate from Labour altogether after Starmer’s party threatened its president with auto-exclusion. The union says he has done nothing wrong and on Labour’s recent record, this is entirely believable.

A vote is to be taken and the result announced during Starmer’s speech at this year’s Labour Party conference.

Ms Graham’s threat was clearly announced as a last resort – as “Operation Cupcake” makes clear in this thread…

… but Ms Graham made it clear that she would not apologise for defending workers. She has already started a review of all the union’s activities, to ensure that members who are involved in disputes get “all the support they need”.

So a confrontation seems likely – and Starmer, having driven away more than 100,000 members and failed to secure corporate funding, will come off worst if it happens.

Meanwhile, commenters on the social media have drawn public attention to the realities of the situation:

Indeed.

Starmer is irrelevant – both to working people and to the UK as a whole. He had a chance to be a uniting force in the Labour movement and he blew it on vindictive attacks against left-wingers (so much for his claims to lead a “broad church”).

The focus now is on what the unions will do if they separate from Starmer’s Fake Labour altogether and let it sink.

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Tories had 18 MONTHS to evacuate Afghanistan, left it to the last minute, and messed it up

Boris Johnson: it’s all just a lark to him.

How did that work out for them, then?

For those who haven’t been following the news too closely, the UK government run by Boris Johnson knew it was on a deadline to move troops out of Afghanistan after then-US President Donald Trump signed the Doha Agreement with the Taliban in February 2020.

That was 18 months ago, but Johnson did nothing at all until July this year. We have only his word that any preparation was carried out at all – and we all know what Johnson’s word is worth: nothing.

According to the Doha Agreement, US troops had until May 1, 2021 to pull out of Afghanistan entirely. Incoming US President Joe Biden unilaterally pushed back the deadline to August 31 – presumably in the arrogant belief that the Taliban would let the World’s strongest country do whatever it wanted.

Well, that didn’t happen!

The Taliban started a widescale offensive on the day of the deadline and was faced with very little resistance indeed from a poorly-trained and corrupt Afghan National Army. They practically walked into Kabul on August 15.

That was more than two weeks ago. News reports have shown that the UK’s own withdrawal of troops has been unplanned, unprofessional and chaotic, despite the fact that Boris Johnson had been given a year and a half’s notice to leave.

Now, with the evacuation over, more than a thousand people (possibly many thousands of people) have been left behind, at the mercy of the Taliban; confidential documents including information identifying Afghan citizens who were employed by the UK government were left in the former UK Embassy for the Taliban to find and use; and Johnson’s government has been found to have issued a tissue of lies about what it has been doing.

Why did he make such a mess of it?

Here’s the apparently-prevailing view:

The government has tried to put a veneer of respectability on its potentially fatal incompetence, but we’re having none of it – as this exchange shows:

Johnson himself seems to have used Afghanistan as a prop with which to avoid facing his domestic failures:

Oh, and did you spot the reference to Pen Farthing, the former Marine who founded an animal rescue charity?

It turns out that the dispute between him and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace wasn’t resolved by Wallace putting him and nearly 200 dogs on a plane out of Afghanistan; it was not a military plane at all. So it seems the government took credit for something it didn’t do…

… or, if you prefer, falsely blamed Farthing for its own failure to get everyone out:

The facts of the Afghanistan evacuation grow worse, the more we know.

And I’m willing to bet we’ve only learned about a fraction of the cock-ups that Johnson has caused – because Johnson can’t be bothered with details and couldn’t care less about Afghanistan anyway.

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Northern Ireland and Scotland want a referendum on leaving the UK. And Wales?

The ballot box: come on, Wales – let’s have a chance to tell Boris Johnson to get stuffed!

Welsh people are showing surprising loyalty to the United Kingdom after being progressively abused by Tory governments since 2010.

They are lagging behind Northern Ireland and Scotland, where polls show a majority of people in both countries want referenda on whether to quit the union.

In Northern Ireland, 68 per cent of people are demanding the right to choose whether to stay in the UK or join the Republic of Ireland.

Scotland will get its referendum if Nicola Sturgeon has her way.

Only Wales is dragging its feet over the chance to show national displeasure with Boris Johnson’s travesty of leadership – widely believed to be the worst government in UK history.

The latest poll in Wales shows just 28 per cent of people wanting independence.

It makes you wonder where people here get their news.

Source: 68% in Northern Ireland want referendum on leaving the UK

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Government authorities are STILL pretending they think amputees can grow their limbs back!

Blue badge: this one wouldn’t be valid any more because it has the EU’s logo on it.

It’s amazing that benefit-providing authorities are still pretending to be this stupid.

Read the following tweet, and I’ll provide a text version of the attachment (for those who can’t read images) afterwards:

Are you with me so far? Ben’s local council contacted him to say that his disability did not qualify him for a Blue Badge – used to gain privileged parking for disabled drivers.

Council officers wanted to see evidence of his disability. So he contacted his doctor and asked for a letter providing details.

This is what the doctor wrote:

“I was most surprised to be asked for a statement of fact regarding Ben’s disability. I can assure you that he has indeed had a traumatic amputation of his right lower leg in a road traffic accident. This has left him severely debilitated with chronic phantom limb syndrome and perpetual pain in his stump which on some days allows him to be independently mobile and other days leaves him unable to walk independently.

“I would be grateful if you could take this into account when dealing with his requests for blue badges in the future.

“It is of course unlikely that this situation will change unless medical science allows us to re-grow a new leg for him.”

It reminds me of an image I used to use, years ago, to illustrate that way Department for Work and Pensions officers would try to diddle people with severe disabilities out of their benefits by putting them through pointless repeated benefit assessments, because they knew the experience would cause severe distress.

The image was of a quadruple-amputee and the caption was something like “Every six months the DWP demands that she attend a re-assessment interview… IN CASE THEY’VE GROWN BACK.”

As the doctor’s letter states: unless there’s a sudden advance in medical science that makes limb regrowth feasible – and this is likely to be announced on all major new outlets, all over the world, so we’ll all know about it – then there is no point in pretending there is a reason to put people with disabilities through all this extra trouble.

All those years ago, I was charitable enough to believe it might be possible for people to genuinely believe it was possible for human beings to regrow amputated legs.

Now I am less tolerant – and I think it’s time for zero tolerance from the rest of us.

So, if a local authority – or the DWP – tries to demand that people with disabilities need to provide proof that they still have a disability that simply won’t go away…

Let’s name the authority and – where possible – the official responsible for the demand, and ask whether the person is too stupid to have such responsibility, or whether the authority itself is too stupid to be put in charge of such an important duty.

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Johnson caught lying again: latest ‘Living’ Wage rise was NOT highest on record

Duper’s delight: Boris Johnson has been caught lying to the nation yet again.

He just can’t help himself, it seems.

When Boris Johnson said, “We continually increase the Living Wage – last time by a record amount,” his words were not true.

And it is reasonable to expect that he would have known the facts of the matter. Therefore This Site may suggest with a degree of certainty that he was lying.

According to fact-checkers at Channel 4,

Mr Johnson’s claim that the most recent rise in the Living Wage was the highest ever doesn’t add up.

In April 2021, the Living Wage rose by 2.2 per cent compared to the previous year. But in April 2020, the rise was nearly three times larger at 6.2 per cent. And in 2019, the boost was 5 per cent.

In fact, the most recent rise was the lowest increase in the National Living Wage since the policy was first introduced.

And Johnson must have known this when he came out with his lie.

Those of you who are waiting for him to “move Heaven and Earth” to get our remaining people out of Afghanistan should take note – and make alternative plans.

Source: FactCheck: Johnson claims latest Living Wage rise was highest on record – Channel 4 News

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Kabul was Boris Johnson’s Dunkirk. If Churchill had failed as badly, he’d probably have shot himself

The lucky ones: a packed plane leaves Kabul – no thanks to Boris Johnson and his gang of UK government ditherers.

What a mess. This was not a retreat; it was a rout.

It seems clear that Boris Johnson’s withdrawal of the UK presence from Afghanistan was unplanned, unco-ordinated, and left behind much information of interest to the Taliban who have taken over.

The decision to move the military and leave civilians behind means more than 1,000 of our people are still in Kabul – and Johnson’s promise to do something about it rings as hollow as all his other promises.

Isn’t that what he said about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who remains imprisoned in Iran, years after he involved himself in her case as the UK’s Foreign Secretary?

That’ll be a “yes”, then. As for his vow…

The UK evacuation is over and many have been left behind

As I said above, Kabul is Boris Johnson’s Dunkirk.

But whereas Dunkirk was carried out in comparative efficiency, with everybody working to help everybody else get out of France before the Germans arrive, it seems Kabul represented Boris Johnson’s “everyone for themselves” philosophy.

So:

Indeed. Also:

There is no “Phase Two”.

This refers to former marine and animal charity founder Pen Farthing, who has escaped Kabul with around 200 rescued dogs – but whose staff were not allowed to leave.

The fact that dogs were allowed to leave may seem like a huge victory for animal-loving Brits – but the fact that the UK allowed human beings to be left behind will almost certainly make a mockery of us in Taliban propaganda.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had claimed he would prioritise people over pets but it seems the huge amount of publicity Farthing had received via media and social media had forced him to change his mind. We’ll find out in the future if that was a wise decision.

Meanwhile, it seems communications sent to the government email address that was supposed to be used to work out which Afghan nationals needed to be taken out of Kabul have gone unread – including cases flagged up by ministers:

According to the article,

An official email address used to collate potential Afghan cases from MPs and others regularly contained 5,000 unread emails throughout the week.

In many cases, emails detailing the cases of Afghans who fear for their families’ lives appear to have been unopened for days. An email from the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, sent on Monday was still unread on Thursday. There also appeared to be unread messages from the offices of Victoria Atkins, the newly appointed minister for Afghan resettlement, the home secretary, Priti Patel, and the Tory chair of the defence select committee, Tobias Ellwood.

The revelation calls into question the suggestion from ministers that the number of Afghans left behind would be up to 1,100 in total.

So it seems the 1,100 figure for personnel left behind may be a huge underestimate.

Documents were left behind that could be hugely harmful for unevacuated personnel

British Embassy workers who did a runner from their compound to the relative safety of Kabul’s airport around two weeks ago failed to destroy documents identifying local workers and job applicants, according to reports.

Who knows what other sensitive documents were left lying around? And why did it happen? Normally, one of the key protocols in a sensitive diplomatic withdrawal is the shredding of sensitive and classified information, but this seems not to have happened.

Have I already put my finger on the problem – that Boris Johnson and his dimwit Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab dithered so long about taking a decision that Embassy staff ended up having to scramble to save their own skins and weren’t able to do the necessary?

If so, then the Taliban may now have access to any amount of information that they could find extremely useful in the future. Depending on how they use it, we could be in for a lot of trouble – and ultimate blame will rest with our terminal b*ttf**k of a prime minister.

Look at this:

And how about this, in response to a tweet I sent about Johnson’s domestic disasters:

It reached the point where some people have satirised the situation, finding humour in the fact that the Johnson government employs people who are very good at losing documents – but didn’t put them in the right place:

Samuel Miller ought to know – he has been campaigning to raise awareness of the unfair, persecutory mistreatment of benefit claimants, particularly those who are sick and/or disabled – for longer than I have.

Hypocrite Priti Patel has been greeting refugees on arrival in the UK and talking down other countries who she says should do more

Even here in the UK, government ministers are doing everything they can to humiliate us as a nation.

So Priti Patel, the home secretary who has locked refugees in squalid concentration camps to catch Covid-19, and who wants to make it illegal to save refugees from drowning if they are trying to cross the Channel into the UK, has been greeting Afghan refugees at Heathrow Airport.

Why?

Apparently the woman who has been trying to seal up all legal routes for refugees to come here has now claimed that refugees must only travel to the UK through legal routes.

Do you think she is wondering why she received responses like this?

Possibly the worst news available for these refugees is the fact that, by throwing their lot in with the UK, they have now ended up in a poverty trap:

And Patel has apparently told other countries that they must do more to help refugees – because she has absolutely no sense of shame:

In a sane country, every government body involved in this monumental fiasco would be out of a job and possibly facing charges in the International Criminal Court – but the United Kingdom is now so riddled with corruption that Johnson and his gang are most likely to shrug it off.

They’ll go looking for the next crisis they can turn into a calamity. After all, their lives aren’t on the line.

If Winston Churchill had presided over such a fatal mess, This Writer feels sure that he would have done the decent thing and swallowed a high-speed bullet.

But Churchill, for all the faults that he did have, was not an indecisive incompetent. He would not have made Johnson’s (and Raab’s, and Patel’s) mistakes.

And, sadly, Johnson does not have Churchill’s quality of character – so we can’t expect him to do what Britain Expects of him. He’s too much of a coward.

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Covid-19: Boris Johnson is happy if 50,000 of you die every year. He likes money more

Boris Johnson reckons the cost of saving up to 50,000 lives a year from Covid-19 is too high, according to leaked information from Downing Street.

It seems he would rather put you all back to work, slaving to keep the economy generating money for him and his Tory Party donors while the bodies pile high – remember what he (allegedly) said last autumn?

And if you die – so what? You’re not him so he doesn’t care.

Apparently the threshold at which he’ll start to consider re-imposing measures to restrict the spread of the virus is 50,000 lives a year. That’s more than 1,000 a week or around 137 every day.

The Prime Minister is minded to implement another lockdown or new restrictions only if the figure of annual deaths looks like it’s going to go above 50,000. That means deaths from Covid of 137 a day, or just under 1,000 a week.

It’s the equivalent of three or four major aeroplane crashes every week – but they would make news headlines and these deaths probably won’t.

And here’s a funny thing. 137 deaths per day? We’re already very close to that – and the schools in England haven’t reopened for the autumn term yet.

Ah, but it seems the level of deaths would have to be sustained for two or three weeks…

“A sustained rate of death of around a 1,000 a week for two or three weeks will, though, lead to discussion on restrictions being reimposed. Unfortunately, prime ministers have to weigh up the cost of saving lives to the impact on the economy. No one wants to talk about that’s how it works.”

… and at the moment the media are all far too busy pointing our attention towards disasters in other countries to bother reminding us of the disaster that Boris Johnson is planning to inflict on us right here in the UK.

This Writer reckons we’ll hit Johnson’s threshold for new restrictions by the third or fourth week in September.

But I’m willing to bet he’ll do nothing about it, even then.

I’ll be happy to be mistaken. But I don’t think I am.

Tory Kawczynski faces second probe into his behaviour as an MP

Well, he was last time. What will be Daniel Kawczynski’s excuse if he’s found guilty of the latest accusations against him?

Daniel Kawczynski is under investigation – again – by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over “actions causing significant damage to the reputation of the House as a whole, or of its Members generally”.

This comes after he was found to have drunkenly bullied civil servants over an IT issue.

He was ordered to apologise, which seemed a shockingly lenient punishment for a man who is a serial offender, as This Site described in a previous article.

I wonder how voters in Shrewsbury feel about their disgrace of a Parliamentary representative.

Details of the new accusations are not clear at the moment, but bringing the House of Commons into disrepute is a serious charge against members.

What will he get if found guilty this time – a slap on the wrist?

Source: Tory MP faces second probe into his behaviour after apology for “bullying” staff – Mirror Online

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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