England and Wales are suffering historically low fertility.
Is government responsible?
Here’s a video article:
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
A river in flood: the new houses that will be built after the Tories dropped ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules will probably be on flood plains of environmentally-sensitive rivers that the water firms have already filled with raw sewage. They will flood, meaning if you buy a house there, all your possessions will be ruined.
EXTRA: Is it true that Michael Gove took two £50,000 donations from a property developer last year – and should we be asking whether that has anything to do with this change in government policy?
Now read on…
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds briefly became a hero – and then a zero – when it said Tory ministers were liars … and then apologised.
The charity had spoken up against Michael Gove’s decision to strip “nutrient neutrality” demands from rules governing housing developments near UK waterways:
Well done! My congratulations. 👏👏👏
Appears there is now at least one of the eNOGs prepared finally to take a stand, long overdue but very, very welcome.
Question becomes who's next and as a sector do they have the leadership to see this through and win it? https://t.co/bFUbMmeB7U
The charity provided ample evidence to support its claim; the Tory government has insisted for years that it will improve environmental protections significantly. Having failed to do this in any way at all – and in fact having caused a disaster in our waterways – the Tories are now legislating to force authorities to ignore pollution altogether. Here are those claims, as provided by Feargal Sharkey, who fears the original posts may disappear:
Just incase there is any kind of systems failure or there is no backup copy here's the RSPB's original "LIERS" post. pic.twitter.com/shDbLJ88mL
This is the legislation requiring planning authorities to ignore the threat of pollution when granting permission for homes to be built, followed by the RSPB’s evidence of Tory lies:
Charity Commission guidance on campaigning gives the green light to posts of this nature:
For the record the @ChtyCommission's guidance on campaigning
"A charity can campaign using emotive or controversial material, where this is lawful and justifiable in the context of the campaign. Such material must be factually accurate and have a legitimate evidence base." #RSPBpic.twitter.com/cCj2qipyI3
Good for the RSPB – for saying that the government were liars https://t.co/K7rbOV0Ac5 The RSPB was forthright yesterday when making accusations that the government has persistently lied about environmental policy. We need such organisations to speak truth to power.
Craig Bennett(Wildlife Trust) on the Tories watering down water pollution levels to build new houses.
"This govt has done an appalling job tackling pollution & what it announced, yesterday, is almost Orwellian… it ignores science… & just pretends sewage does not exist.. " pic.twitter.com/Ea7FOAKEZN
A mere 3 months ago govt were applauding the nutrient neutrality rules, bragging they had just delivered 242,700 homes, a 32 year high, were going to provide £30 million to fund the programme, a glorious success.
The evidence seems to be lost on Tory supporters who claim that a promise of funding (£140m extra – not more than £200m as described by the drone below) will entirely negate the damage that will be done:
Actually Sam most people who actually know about the subject acknowledge that, in the limited places where it applies, additional unmitigated housebuilding will have a significant impact on already damaged rivers. https://t.co/103JH3I0Or
For clarity: the nutrients (“human wee and poo” as the Wildlife Trust’s Craig Bennett described them on Radio 4) will be going into rivers that are already clogged with raw sewage that has been illegally discharged by England’s privatised water companies (with government blessing).
It will be easy to argue that it is impossible to show what extra harm is being done by new developments – and refuse to spend the money.
There’s also the question of whether the government should be spending public money on such cleaning in any event.
It seems that developers are responsible for one-fifth of donations to the Conservative Party, and have been sitting on more than a million planning permissions, waiting for the Tories to get rid of the expensive environmental protections that would cut into their profits.
After the Tories made their announcement, share prices in just three housebuilding firms rocketed by nearly £500 million – more than three times the extra cash the government has promised to mitigate the environmental harm they will do.
That’s money they were going to get as soon as they decided to start building again; building is a major economic multiplier – it adds a lot to the economy and that means people with cash want to invest in it to make more cash.
So the developers could easily have afforded to implement the environmental protections as formerly required by the law. They just didn’t want to. And to force the issue, they sat on more than a million planning permissions while the government was made increasingly embarrassed by its failure to hit housing targets.
Here’s the evidence:
I've been told that house builders provided 20% of Tory party funding, not that any of these things are in anyway interlinked you'll understand. https://t.co/xQ9P6luyeS
The RSPB had no reason to apologise for correctly calling Tory government ministers liars who reversed their environmental policies under pressure from greedy housing developers who wanted to maximise their profits.
The best way to give these greed-consumed creeps their just desserts is simple: don’t buy their houses.
I know – most of us won’t have the option.
But for the rest: they’ll be built on the flood plains of environmentally-sensitive rivers, and most likely without any of the mitigation measures the government has promised.
So when they flood – and they will – those houses will be filled with human “wee and poo”.
Do you really want that stuff to get into everything you own? Have a think about it.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Google: facing an increase in the UK’s digitial services tax from 2% to 10%, this firm and others gave Labour shadow ministers gifts worth £16,000 and it was subsequently cancelled. The increased would have brought £3 billion into the UK Treasury.
Is Keir Starmer’s Labour as bent as a figure-eight? Judge for yourself with this tale of shadow ministers scrapping plans for a 10 per cent digital services tax after receiving £16,000 in gifts from Google and other companies in the sector.
The tax hike would have brought £3bn to the Treasury, providing an opportunity to cut taxes on struggling small businesses – but it seems £16,000 for people including shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds was enough to put a stop to this valuable change:
• 15 August 2022: Labour promise a 10% digital services tax.
• 26 June 2023: Labour scrap their promise of a 10% digital services tax.
In between, Labour Shadow Ministers accepted £16,000 in freebies from digital services companies.
Information from Open Democracy says Reynolds was talking about the tax increase right up until he took a £3,377 package for two to attend Glastonbury as a guest of YouTube, which is owned by Google. The day after, reports emerged that he had ditched the plan.
It was not the only time senior figures in Starmer’s team accepted luxury gifts from Google in the months before the party’s U-turn. Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell’s political adviser, Labour’s executive director of policy, and the party’s head of domestic policy all accepted tickets and transport to, and ‘hospitality’ at, the Brit Awards in February from the digital giant. Powell’s register of interests estimates that the adviser’s ticket was worth £1,170.
Starmer’s political director also accepted transport to and ‘hospitality’ ahead of the event from Google, though his ticket, along with that of Starmer’s private secretary, was covered by Universal Music.
Starmer had accepted a £380 dinner from Google for him and one staff member during the World Economic Forum in January.
In total, openDemocracy estimates that Labour shadow cabinet members and their staff accepted luxury gifts from Google worth nearly £10,000 over the months before they announced their policy U-turn.
And that’s just Google. The estimate of £16,000 in total may, in fact, be low.
Take a look at the full Open Democracy article (link below). The attached comment from ‘Tory Fibs’ is also useful because it crystallises the problem with Labour – or any political organisation – taking money or gifts-in-kind from businesses facing tax increases or legislative regulation:
It doesn’t really matter if these donations influenced Labour policy. That is not the point. Politicians need to put distance between themselves and the monied classes to remove even the very appearance of wrongdoing. Perception alone is enough to corrode political trust.
My perception is certainly that Labour cannot be trusted to implement the right policies for the UK because its representatives are corruptible with cheap bribes.
And no – it doesn’t matter whether Jonathan Reynolds was otherwise influenced to cancel the policy.
It seems as though he shut down a £3 billion plan to help small businesses because a digital giant gave him tickets for Glasto.
And it seems as though the total cost to the digital services industry of shutting down this £3 billion plan was a mere £16,000. That’s pocket money to these people.
Until Labour – and all the other political parties – stop accepting these gifts from people and organisations their decisions may affect, they can never be trusted.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Hard hat, soft head: but Michael Gove must think we’ve gone soft in the head if he thinks we don’t understand that he is privatising profit and nationalising loss in the housebuilding industry.
The decision to lift the cost of mitigating the harmful effects on rivers of housebuilding near them and force it on the public is more proof of a secret Conservative government policy: privatising profit and nationalising loss.
It’s a very simple tactic: if a private business or a privatised utility is in danger of losing profit (not of going out of business, notice) because of statutory rules it must observe, then the government passes the cost of those rules on to the public purse in order to allow shareholders to enjoy profit without responsibility.
It makes a nonsense of the primary reason the Tories gave for electing them into office in the first place, back in 2010. They had claimed that they would reduce the UK’s national debt by cutting spending – but partly because they kept piling the costs incurred by failing privatised utilities onto the Treasury, they have more than doubled that debt.
Taxpayers will pick up the bill for pollution by housebuilders, government officials have admitted, as rules on chemical releases into waterways are scrapped.
The government has said it will double Natural England’s wetland funding to £280m in order to show it is trying to meet the requirements of its legally binding Environment Act.
This extra £140m will come from the public purse, the government confirmed. When asked by the Guardian whether this meant the taxpayer was now picking up the bill for pollution caused by developers, a government official responded “yes”
It is Tory policy. They make the rich richer by making the poor poorer. And they are doing it by forcing the hardworking many to shoulder the responsibilities that should be borne by the idle few.
That is, privatising profit and nationalising loss.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Many years ago, a right-wing cuckoo in the Labour Party called Peter Mandelson assured the party’s then-leaders that they could shift their policies as far to the political right as they fancied because Labour voters didn’t have anywhere else to go.
He was wrong; at every general election after the 1997 landslide, the party lost voters as socialists abandoned what they saw increasingly as a party of Tories in red ties. It took the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn as leader to reverse the trend, with the re-injection of genuinely transformative policies.
And we all know what happened to him: right-wingers he had allowed to remain in the party (in the belief that it should be a genuinely “broad church”, whatever that means?) stabbed him in the back and sabotaged the 2017 (and probably the 2019) general election, eventually forcing him out.
Now, under Mandelson acolyte Keir Starmer, Labour is once-again a hard-right party. He has abandoned any “continuity Corbyn” left-wing pledges in order to follow policies that are indistinguishable from those of Rishi Sunak’s current Conservative government.
Despite this, Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party (formerly Labour) is being tipped to win the next general election by a landslide. Why?
It could be because the Sunak government is now blatantly corrupt, with new evidence of ministers (including the prime minister) lining their own pockets and those of their cronies in big business emerging every day.
It could also be because Starmer has drip-fed his right-wing policies into Labour’s programme for government slowly – giving party members and tribal followers an opportunity to forget (or simply fail to notice) the cumulative lurch to the far right that they represent:
I feel like we are witnessing a social experiment. The Labour party is trying to see how much extremism its members will support, by doing it "Boil a frog," style. Little by little. If the last nudge to the right didn't cause you to leave then we'll try another. Still keep you?
Look at the recent announcement that a Labour government will continue to inflict poverty on 1.1 million UK children in defiance of the party’s own reason for existing (lifting working and working-class people out of poverty).
After this announcement, polls showed no lessening of enthusiasm for a Labour government – and only 20 Labour MPs seem keen to remind their leaders of the party’s duty to its members and supporters:
20 .. Pathetic … Corbyn dealt with 172 … They're all middle class managers looking out for their bank accounts https://t.co/bfTKVqvjKd
Obviously this is where Starmer’s political loyalties lie. He was never interested in re-balancing the economy to stop rich employers from impoverishing their workers, or to stop the destruction of our environment for the sake of a quick profit, or to stop the privatisation of our national treasures like the NHS for another quick profit.
But there’s a financial necessity too. One clear detrimental result of his rightward lurch has been an exodus of members away from a Labour Party they now consider toxic. This, along with a series of poor financial decisions, mean Starmer’s party very quickly frittered away the more-than £12 million Jeremy Corbyn had put in its bank account.
It needed funds – and went looking in the same place as the Tories:
Starmer isn't dragging the Labour Party right because that's where the voters are.
Starmer's dragging the Labour Party right because that's where the "donors" are.
This isn't pragmatism over idealism. It's corruption over democracy. https://t.co/p26tHOm3I0
— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush🥀🇵🇸🇾🇪 (@OwenPaintbrush) August 29, 2023
The result is clear: two parties – Labour and the Tories – with the same policies, because they have the same people bankrolling them.
And with Starmer’s Labour working for big business, another element of the UK’s broken political system is coming into clearer focus:
Don’t be surprised Labour has exact same policies as the Tories. This is the system running as it should.
Problem is not Sunak or Starmer. It’s that Britain’s not a democracy. It’s an oligarchy.
That’s right. It seems the UK has been controlled by the same tiny group of super-rich influencers for many decades, with the wishes of voters coming a distant second to their selfish desires.
Continuing to vote for Labour means continuing to let this tiny minority run the rest of us into the ground for their own profit and perverse enjoyment.
It makes no sense at all.
And yet the polls show that is exactly what the majority of people want.
If you know anybody who has been misled or is deluded in this way, then for the sake of the United Kingdom and everyone in it, please explain their mistake to them. It might take a while but it will be worth it in the long run.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Housebuilding: the Tories have been looking for something on which they can blame their failure to build enough new homes – and have found it in the form of legal protections for river life. So they are scrapping those protections and forcing you to pay for pollution prevention measures.
Exactly as This Site predicted only hours ago, evidence is showing that a Tory government decision to scrap “nutrient neutrality” rules that protect river life from harm caused by housing developments is creating huge profits for builders.
Meanwhile, the cost of cleaning up their mess is set to fall on the public purse.
Here’s the evidence about building firms:
And there you have it, what today's announcement was actually all about.
Barratt Developments' share price up 3.43% this morning company now valued at £4.34bn and Taylor Wimpey up 2.88% company valued at £3.97bn.
And The Guardianis saying the following about how the bill for their pollution will now be paid:
Taxpayers will pick up the bill for pollution by housebuilders, government officials have admitted, as rules on chemical releases into waterways are scrapped.
The government has said it will double Natural England’s wetland funding to £280m in order to show it is trying to meet the requirements of its legally binding Environment Act.
This extra £140m will come from the public purse, the government confirmed. When asked by the Guardian whether this meant the taxpayer was now picking up the bill for pollution caused by developers, a government official responded “yes”, adding that while “the polluter pays principle is very important”, it was having too many adverse impacts on small- and medium-sized housebuilders.
So there you have it.
You paid for the privatised energy companies’ enormous profits. You paid for the privatised water firms to pollute our rivers. And now you are to pay for mitigation of the already-private builders’ attempts to kill off any remaining life in our waterways – if such mitigation ever happens.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Michael Gove: he wants the UK’s rivers to be as dead as the area behind his blank-eyed stare.
The Tories have revealed the latest stage of their plan to reduce the United Kingdom to rubble by the time of the next general election – and it’s about harming our rivers again.
Having already filled England’s waterways – among others – with disease-carrying sewage, Housing Secretary Michael Gove is scrapping “nutrient neutrality” rules that mean local authorities should not approve any new development that may add to river nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates, through wastewater from new homes or run-off from building sites.
This could lead to a build-up of algae and other plants that could choke off aquatic life in our rivers.
Just have a think about that. The Tories announce a bonanza for house-building, then all the river life dies, with a knock-on effect that hits the whole UK eco-system. What good will a few extra homes do then?
It makes a hypocrite of Gove, who was talking up higher environmental standards in 2018:
2018: Michael Gove, "There's no point in having high environmental standards if you allow them to be undercut"
2023: "England’s rivers at risk as Michael Gove rips up rules on new housing" pic.twitter.com/gXcff7PwaH
Oh: Gove and the Tories are lying about the reason for doing it.
Builders say the current rules mean they have been forced to put 120,000 homes on hold – but it seems this is only because they don’t want to mitigate new nutrient loads caused by new populations in housing, onsite or elsewhere within the same catchment, by investing in new wetlands or by creating buffer zones along rivers and other watercourses.
Builders complained that doing so was costly and time-consuming; they delayed new housebuilding because the environmental protection they were being asked to implement would bite into their profits a bit, and take a bit of time to do. They never mention that not doing anything at all means an even longer delay.
Ministers launched a mitigation scheme in 2022 under which complaining builders were allowed to buy “credits” to gain approval for their schemes. They then complained that the process of purchasing such credits has occasionally led to unintended consequences like buying up farmland to take it out of use in an attempt to reduce water run-off.
So this is a plan to kill off the UK’s river life, for the sake of builders’ profits.
How absolutely, utterly despicable. It’s a new low for a government that may now best be compared to the most virulent, toxic disease you know.
As Katie-Jo Luxton, director of conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said:
If nutrient neutrality rules are scrapped, pollution will accumulate unchecked and our rivers face total ecological collapse.
Total ecological collapse. That’s what Michael Gove (and Therese Coffey, the Environment Secretary who supports this lunacy) and, it seems, the UK house-building industry wants.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer: they are laughing at all the tribal Labour supporters they think don’t have any choice but to vote for them – even though their current policy platform will deliberately harm millions of those voters.
Here’s the issue: Keir Starmer’s neoliberal, right-wing Labour Party is in pole position (or should that be “poll” position) to win the next general election by a landslide – but has the same policies as Rishi Sunak’s Tory government.
Starmer, and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, have both said they will not impose any policies that change the current status quo that is making the super-rich much richer, driving working people and the poor further into poverty, and ushering privatisation into public services to make them cash cows for fat cats (as we’ve seen with energy and water).
So, what is the point of voting for their party?
When a politician is offering zero policies to make the world a better place but is in line to be the next PM you have to ask yourself why he wants the job.
The answer is very simple. Power for power’s sake.
It’s actually worse than ‘Tory Fibs’ is suggesting. Starmer, Reeves and the rest don’t just want power for its own sake – they want it in order to ensure that power cannot be taken by anybody with plans that would actually improve the quality of life here, with public services that actually serve the public well, fair pay for everyone and a social security system that doesn’t persecute people who need help.
Influential people are now starting to accept that this is the situation. It is the reason academics have contacted Starmer, urging him to change his mind.
Academics say they are concerned Labour’s programme will not break with Tory economic policy, but will instead prolong poverty for millions.
There is no difference between the Tories and Labour any more.
The letter by 70 economists and social policy experts, states that they
are concerned that your current economic programme for government will not transform the economic orthodoxy that has made this country poorer, less cohesive and more unequal than fifteen years ago.
The maintenance or extension of cuts in the current economic climate will only serve to deepen the poverty and hardship many are already facing.
They urge Starmer to turn
from an out of date, economically and socially destructive approach towards a model which improves wellbeing, works in alignment with our environment, and achieves social justice.
Failure to table an alternative will mean not only wasting that opportunity but many lives and futures as well.
Unpack that a bit:
Starmer Labour’s current approach is out of date.
It is economically and socially destructive.
And the party’s current policies will destroy many lives.
Alternative – workable – policies are suggested all the time. Here’s one, from a former Labour leader:
With the money raised from a 1-2% wealth tax on assets over £10 million, we could afford to scrap the 2-child benefit cap 17 times over.
Politics is about choices — we should be on the side of those in need, not those with greed.
But it has fallen on deaf ears. Starmer isn’t interested.
His attitude represents a huge u-turn for party still known as “Labour” and its leader. Only a few years ago, he was claiming that his party would replace the current system with something completely different. But this week Justin Madders, Starmer’s shadow minister for employment rights, confirmed that this had been abandoned for a “continuity Tory” approach:
Starmer running to be leader: "We've got to have the courage to say the economic system, the free market system, is busted. It needs to be replaced"
Labour now: We can't say we'll make the rich pay a tiny bit more tax because it will create instability and uncertainty pic.twitter.com/sXeeEzJhln
Here’s Damo to explain Starmer’s – and Reeves’s – economic policy, and why it is so harmful, in a little more detail:
Apparently taxing the rich will hamper prosperity according to former BoE employee and economic graduate Rachel Reeves, so either somebody else has been doing her homework for her for years, or she's blatantly lying about how the economy works. Taxation is an essential function… pic.twitter.com/iHIbksRhrJ
It seems clear that Starmer has undergone a major change of heart, turning away from the people Labour is supposed to serve, and towards the city fat cats who are leeching our money away from us.
Madders tried desperately to deny any such change during his media turn:
Justin Madders: "I don't think Keirs principles have changed. Whats changed is the economic circumstances"
If your principles are dependent on economic circumstances, they're not principles, are they? pic.twitter.com/goNeCco4LA
Saul Staniforth (above) is right: if a leader’s principles depend on economic circumstances, then they are not principles. If they were principles, Starmer would have the economic circumstances under constant review, with a demand out to all his advisers for them to provide him at all times with plans that would achieve the needs of those principles in any situation.
The situation now has been summed up – again by ‘Tory Fibs’ – thus:
Neither Labour or the Tories are offering solutions to the problems our society faces.
Yes. Both are failing us – the citizens of the UK.
In times like this, the electorate has a duty to look elsewhere for a government-in-waiting – not to cling to forlorn hopes that Starmer is a secret socialist who will turn back to the left as soon as he has installed himself in Downing Street. We see no evidence for this at all.
The Green Party has good economic plans. So do the Independents who used to represent Labour but have left because of the likes of Starmer and Reeves.
Have you looked at what they are offering? Or are you determined to vote for policies that will harm you terribly, simply because of some outdated tribal loyalty?
Now is the time to work out what you stand for – and to demand it from your representatives.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
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?
"The Kent area also suffers from nutrient enrichment of coastal waters due to sewage discharge…
In 2023, between Herne Bay and Whistable alone, Southern Water has already released sewage into the ocean at least 374 times via storm overflows." https://t.co/ZT0EAqsSFh
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:
Exxon Mobil lobbyists threw their weight behind a carbon tax because they knew it would turn people against ‘the green agenda’ – and they were right.
Taxing people for moving without offering alternatives just helps big oil.
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.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
As seen on Twitter: but is the UK government already planning ways to discredit a new United Nations investigation into the (mis)treatment of disabled people here?
That’s right – the UK’s minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, couldn’t be bothered to attend the United Nations in Geneva to provide the Tory government’s side of the story:
UK groups representing disabled people are giving evidence today on plight of disabled people in our country. The government tried to use stalling tactic to prevent this & the government minister hasn’t even bothered to show up. Disgraceful but typical show of disrespect #CRDP23https://t.co/lfiwrPLkng
This Writer will dare to predict what will happen:
Firstly, the government – that will have had plenty of time to put together a report before this meeting took place – will complain that it was not allowed an opportunity to present its case.
Secondly, any findings by the UN will be vilified by government representatives, in line with what has happened to other UN reports criticising the UK’s Tory government in the past.
Nothing will be done to improve the lives of disabled people in the UK.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. This includes scrolling or continued navigation. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
