Monthly Archives: May 2023

Poll shows most of us want to get rid of the Tories. Duh!

This should come as no surprise:

A majority of British people say the Conservative Party has made their lives worse, according to an exclusive new poll revealing huge public dissatisfaction with how the UK has been governed over the past 13 years.

The wake-up call comes a little further down this article, but let’s go through the figures first:

Asked by pollsters Omnisis whether the Conservative-led Government has made their lives better or worse since 2010, 55% said they have made it worse, with just 14% saying they have made it better.

This negative view of the Conservative Party’s handling of the last 13 years was shared across all age groups and regions of the UK, with little difference found between Brexit and Remain voters.

Our poll found little enthusiasm for the prospect of another Conservative-led Government.

Just 13% said they believed another victory for Sunak’s party would make their lives better, compared to 42% who said it would make it worse.

This compared to 35% who said a Labour government would improve their lives and 23% who said it would make it worse.

So most of us want a change from neoliberal Conservatism to a left-wing government. That would be the democratic choice. Right?

Isn’t it sad that Conservatives want to frustrate democracy, however they can – as the first few seconds of this speech by Tory Lord Cruddas demonstrate:

He was saying that younger voters would oppose Conservatives and should be denied the vote; voter ID denies the vote to people who should have it; and proportional representation would allow voters to have a government that reflects the will of the people as a whole, rather than a small minority.

So, he was saying, Tories should prevent these things from happening at all costs.

I’d say that’s another reason to vote them out. Wouldn’t you?

Source: The Conservatives Have Made Our Lives Worse, Say Voters


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The Tyranny of Tickboxes – How the U.K. government is escalating its war on disability rights in 2023 | Black Triangle Campaign

Here’s an article that’s well worth reading – but This Site won’t re-publish much of it here because the information has already been covered by Vox Political elsewhere.

For now, let’s limit ourselves to this:

After years of the war on the poor,worsening mental health, increasing mass hunger and suicides, the UK government has announced a further round of attacks. Two measures stand out.

There will be more benefit sanctions, where benefits are stopped if people are deemed to have failed to look for work. This will add to the over 2 million food parcels a year currently needed. It will also push more vulnerable people into taking their own lives.

And the main test for Employment and Support Allowance will be abolished. If this had been done out of a belated recognition of the harm these tests have caused in the lives of millions of people, it would be a good step. It is not. Instead, the feared Work Capability Test will be replaced by something even worse: the kind of test currently used for another benefit – Personal Independence Payment or PIP.

It is notoriously difficult to pass the PIP test, and be awarded benefits, especially if your main disability is a mental health issue.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that 1 million people will be deprived of benefits because of the extension of the PIP test into assessments for ESA.

The scene is being set for all the harm already done by ‘Welfare Reform’ to be added to massively.  

We have beaten such changes before and it is entirely possible to do so again.

Expect a new wave of information detailing how that can happen – starting soon.

Source: The Tyranny of Tickboxes – How the U.K. government is escalating its war on disability rights in 2023 – Black Triangle Campaign


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Jenny Jones ‘fatal motion’ against Tory bid to kill democracy and overrule Parliament

Baroness Jenny Jones: she knows her rights – and she knows you’ll have less of them if her ‘fatal motion’ fails.

The Tories aren’t happy with all the power they’ve given the police to stamp on your right to protest.

They reckon the interpretation of ‘serious disruption’ of other people’s day-to-day activities, as described in the Public Order Act, should be changed to mean ‘anything more than minor’.

But instead of seeking a democratic vote on this potentially wide-ranging and serious change, Rishi Sunak’s gang of bandits want to impose it by ‘Ministerial decree’ – basically, by the Home Secretary saying she’s changing it unilaterally – like a dictator.

It’s the first time ever that a government has used what’s known as secondary legislation to overturn the democratic will of Parliament.

Green Party Baroness Jenny Jones isn’t having it. She has tabled a ‘fatal motion’ against it.

Here’s Peter Stefanovic to explain the gravity of the situation in more detail:

See also Damo’s YouTube clip on the same subject:

Let’s highlight a couple of points:

The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has drawn ‘special attention’ to the change. The committee’s report stated: “As well as not justifying the substance of the provisions, the Home Office has not provided any reasons for bringing the measures back in the form of secondary legislation, which is subject to less scrutiny, so soon after they were rejected in primary legislation... We believe this raises possible constitutional issues that the House may wish to consider.”

Damo also mentioned the response from Keir Starmer’s Labour, which was whipped to abstain on the original legislation. It has tabled a ‘motion of regret’ – that won’t actually have any effect at all on what Suella Braverman wants to do.

Trade union – and indeed any other – backers should reconsider funding that party from this moment forward.

Baroness Jones has this to say:

The last time the Lords passed a ‘fatal motion’ was 2015 – and it provoked a small constitutional crisis.

But – while you’re contacting your MP and the peer of your choice to demand support for this one, remember there is no point in having Parliament if a Minister can just ignore the outcome of debates and votes by imposing draconian laws on the public.

If this motion fails, we might as well give up and accept that the UK has finally become a right-wing dictatorship.

Boris Johnson says he has handed unredacted WhatsApps to Covid inquiry. Really?

Boris Johnson: Let’s hope he hasn’t confused the ‘send’ and ‘delete’ buttons! (Again?)

Boris Johnson has handed his full and unredacted WhatsApps and documents to the Cabinet Office, his spokesperson has said.

Do we believe him?

Johnson has released a statement in which he “urges” the government to “urgently disclose [the documents] to the inquiry”.

His spokesperson claimed the Cabinet Office “had access to this material for several months”, and he “would immediately disclose it directly to the inquiry if asked”.

The spokesperson said: “While Mr Johnson understands the government’s position, and does not seek to contradict it, he is perfectly happy for the inquiry to have access to this material in whatever form it requires.

“Mr Johnson cooperated with the inquiry in full from the beginning of this process and continues to do so. Indeed, he established the inquiry.

“He looks forward to continuing to assist the Inquiry with its important work.”

You see, the reason for my doubt is his previous reticence about such material.

When his former legal team provided diaries to the Cabinet Office which suggested he had breached non-contact rules during lockdown in ways that had not previously been disclosed, wasn’t he absolutely furious?

Didn’t he sack that government-appointed legal team?

And didn’t he hire a new crew at four times the cost?

So when he says he has provided full, unredacted messages, I have a doubt.

If Baroness Hallett complains that she hasn’t got everything, don’t be surprised!


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Comedians raise awareness of sewage dumping at Lake Windermere protest

Paul Whitehouse, Lee Mack and Steve Coogan at Lake Windermere: the water won’t be magically cleaned just because they joined a protest – that is up to the rest of us.

This Site would like to add its praise to that already heaped on household-name comedians Steve Coogan, Lee Mack and Paul Whitehouse (plus any others who haven’t been named by national media) for raising awareness of sewage pollution.

They joined a protest against United Utilities’ pollution of Lake Windermere, giving it a mass-media boost that put the message onto TV screens across the UK.

And they said – well, hear it for yourself. Here are Messrs Coogan and Mack on ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

And here’s Lee Mack on Channel 4 News. I include the tweet by Feargal Sharkey because the former pop musician turned environmental campaigner has himself done invaluable work in publicising this scandal:

One well-publicised protest won’t clean up our waterways overnight.

As you can tell from the clips, United Utilities doesn’t really care. It’s happy giving £300 million to shareholders this year, while devoting just one-fifteenth as much to cleaning up its act. That’s the wrong way around, but it is the way chosen by the UK’s right-wing governments since 1989 – both Tory and Labour, who privatised our water and sewage services and kept them that way.

If you care about the country you live in, you need to kick up a fuss about this. Complain to your water company – demand a refund! And get on to your MP about it too.

Sewage dumping brings disease. The creek near Environment Secretary Therese Coffey’s own constituency home is full of e.Coli – but she couldn’t care less. You have to make her care.

Are you going to follow the example of Coogan, Mack, Whitehouse and the others? They can’t do it by themselves.


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Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps ‘could bring down the government’

Delete… delete: if that IS what he’s doing with the material the Cabinet Office has apparently handed back to him, Boris Johnson probably has quite a lot to get through and still has quite a long way to go.

From Prime Minister to Prime Suspect – that’s Boris Johnson’s life!

After the Cabinet Office refused to provide every WhatsApp message and notebook Johnson made during the Covid-19 pandemic to the inquiry into the government’s handling of that crisis, it is being suggested that it is because they contain incriminating material that could bring down the UK’s Conservative government.

The government added fuel to this fire when the Cabinet Office said it doesn’t even have the material demanded by inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett – which suggests that it has been given back to Johnson himself so he can get busy deleting anything suspicious.

This latest scandal is another blow for current prime minister Rishi Sunak, whose protestations of “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” when he took office last October now stand in tatters.

Sunak is the one who claimed that the government has handed over “tens of thousands of documents”, as if that makes a difference:

He can say that, but we all know – dont we? – that it isn’t the number of documents being handed over that matters – it’s the information they contain.

Lord Falconer made this clear:

If all the material isn’t handed over by 4pm tomorrow (Thursday, June 1, 2023) then the government will have committed a criminal offence and may face court action. To prevent that, it may request a judicial review – but this would only be a delaying action:

Why would the government want to delay? Well, if it has given the material back to Boris Johnson, then…

If he has done it before, who’s to say he won’t do it again, given the opportunity?

The public demand for the information to be provided in full is growing. The words of former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, who nearly died of Covid-19, are particularly poignant:

And this long message from Dr Andrew Meyerson is a reminder of the wider context:

But let’s not forget Johnson’s side of it. Having seen diary material revealing further potential breaches of Covid-19 pandemic lockdown law, his government-appointed (and publicly-funded) legal team passed it on to the police – so Johnson fired the lawyers and hired a new crew costing four times as much, for whom he still wants us (and that includes you) to pay:

It seems the authorities are doing everything they can to make this inquiry as easy on Boris Johnson as it can possibly be.

Did you lose friends and/or family members to Covid-19? If so, how do you feel about all this? And who have you told?


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The main points: it’s Vox Political’s morning headlines

DWP accused of ‘denying people their rights’ after rejecting 90% of disability benefit appeals

Food inflation: actual shop prices hit new high

Exposed: payments to LABOUR Health spokesman from private health firms

Under Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, Labour Party policy has changed from returning the National Health Service to full public control into allowing it to be converted into even more of a front for private firms to profit from your illness.

Is the reason for this the fact that Streeting is being paid a small fortune every year by private health representatives? See for yourself:

Energy firms consulted on plan for extra profit

Energy prices are coming down at last, so what is the regulator Ofgem doing? It’s consulting the companies on a plan to increase their profit so they can be “financially resilient”.

They just made a killing (sadly, in some cases this may be said to be literal) on prices over the last year but this cash went straight to shareholders, it seems. Wouldn’t it have been better to fix dividends at a lower level and put more of that money into “financial resilience” rather than fleecing the public again?


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Evidence deadline extended for Tory government that wants to corrupt Covid-19 inquiry

Social media junkie: Boris Johnson is probably deleting WhatsApp messages in this shot. “Less than two days until the new deadline! Must hurry! Veni, vici, voodoo! Posterus erectus!”

The Cabinet Office has been given an extra two days to divvy up all of Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and notebooks written during the Covid-19 pandemic to the inquiry into how the government handled it – or face court action.

The original deadline was 4pm on Tuesday (May 30). It has now been extended until 4pm on Thursday (June 1).

Claims that some of the material is “unambiguously irrelevant” have been dismissed by the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett. She said it is her role – not that of the government – to decide what is relevant.

Her point is excellent. No inquiry into the activities of the government can be said to be fair if the government dictates the evidence that is submitted to it. In fact, any such affair could only be considered corrupt to the core.

Indeed, that is exactly what many are already saying about the way the Cabinet Office has been digging in its heels:

Let’s stick with Antony Seldon for a moment, because he made this great character analysis of Boris Johnson:

Clearly the consensus is that the Cabinet Office should swallow its pride and dish the dirt.

But in the interests of balance, let’s have a dissenting viewpoint:

(For information: Andrea Jenkyns is a Tory MP who is currently deputy chairwoman of the Brexiteer European Research Group (ERG). Her claim that other Tories got the leader they wanted in Rishi Sunak suggest a developing schism among Tory MPs that could split the party as it grows – and let’s hope it does.)

Now you can understand why BBC-style impartiality is for the birds. This MP wants us to leave Johnson alone because he’s got his missus up the duff yet again?

If that’s the criterion for abandoning justice these days, the courts could clear their backlog by allowing all suspects a night of “compassionate leave” but denying them the use of birth control.

I don’t think the victims of crime would be prepared to accept that – so we should be glad that Baroness Hallett isn’t about to, either.


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Lies by anti-Semitism fakers lead to violence at Roger Waters concert

Show us the Star of David on this pig, then: it isn’t there. The inflatable pig flown over Roger Waters’s concerts is used to highlight current issues but does not bear the symbol of Judaism. Other claims about his concerts are also lies and anybody considering disrupting them on that basis should bear in mind that THEY would be spreading hate if they did so.

This is what happens when people allow themselves to be misled by liars:

The clip shows German people who had attended a concert by Roger Waters reacting to activists who had believed lies that the musician is anti-Semitic and tried to disrupt the music and spoil everybody else’s enjoyment of the show.

The people trying to wave the flag of Israel and shout accusations had been influenced by lies stating that the show includes an inflatable pig with the Star of David on it (it doesn’t), that Waters equates the state of Israel with Nazism by linking Anne Frank and Shireen Abu Akley (he doesn’t; the connection he describes is between two people who were both killed by invading foreign political regimes), and that at one point Roger Waters himself dresses as a Nazi soldier and fires a machine gun into the crowd (he doesn’t; at that point in the show he is playing the character Pink, from Pink Floyd’s album The Wall, who suffers with drug-fuelled delusions that he is a fascist leader).

These lies have been propogated across the mass and social media and, in one case, in the UK Parliament, by people who should know better. Indeed, it is most likely that they do know better – they simply chose to spread the lies for their own – political – purposes.

The people who caused the disturbances at the concert – and anybody who has even considered doing the same elsewhere – would use their time better if they challenged the liars to explain exactly why they have lied about this musician.

Is it because he has always – peacefully – opposed the kind of hatred that they, themselves, are trying to foment?


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This MP wanted special treatment on private health donations map – but won’t get it

Stella Creasy in Parliament: if she’s working for a private health insurance firm outside its walls, what is she saying within them?

Campaigning group Every Doctor has rejected a demand by Labour’s Stella Creasy to remove her from an interactive map listing every MP who has received a donation from companies involved in the private takeover of the UK’s National Health Service.

Creasy thought that she should not be included because she donated a payment from insurance firm Aviva to charity.

But after consulting its lawyer, Every Doctor pointed out that the concern is not where the money goes, but how it was obtained.

Here’s the full explanation:

Indeed.

We (the public) didn’t know from the Register of Members’ Interests which charity benefited, and we don’t know what Creasy said during the panel appearance for which Aviva paid her; we must presume she was putting forward a view held by that firm, otherwise it would not have employed her.

The inclusion of Aviva on the map has been questioned because it insures other things besides health – but Every Doctor has answered that concern:

(This should worry anybody who supports the NHS because it indicates that the Tory policy of turning people away from the NHS to seek private healthcare – supported by insurance – is working.)

Critics have also claimed that receiving payment from a health (among other things) insurance firm is okay because it was donated to a charity shelter for homeless people – that Aviva already supports.

From This Writer’s point of view, it is unacceptable that Creasy provided a service for Aviva and took money for it, no matter where it went.

By handing the cash to a homeless shelter, she get kudos for being a humanitarian. But the shelter is funded by the company that paid her in any event, so it seems possible that she was advised (directed?) to send it there – and that would be a questionable act.

But the fundamental issue is that she provided work for a private healthcare firm when her only concern should be working in the interests of the people of the UK.

We don’t know what she said on this panel for which she was hired by Aviva. We may assume that, as Aviva paid her, she was there to represent that company’s interests – but because she is an MP, attendees may have been misled into thinking she was putting forward Labour Party policy.

And we don’t know how working for Aviva will affect the way she’ll vote on health issues in Parliament. Did the payment depend on her support for private health involvement in the NHS in the future? We don’t know.

I think it would be advisable to watch her future behaviour in Parliamentary votes very carefully – and for that to happen, we need to know why it is important to do so.

Therefore I support Every Doctor’s decision. Creasy should remain on the map and the fact that she received this money in this way should be visible to everybody.


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