Confused? Think how bad it must be for Suella Braverman, who can’t even do the simple arithmetic necessary to prove that there are proportionately fewer police now than in 2010 so they still have to prioritise their caseloads.
The woman known as Suella Braverman (not her real name – is it, Sue Ellen?) has been caught out in a monumental lie about police numbers.
Challenging police across the UK to treat all crimes as important and worthy of investigation, no matter how trivial, the Home Secretary falsely claimed that the government had recruited 20,000 police officers in England and Wales.
This is not true. Watch as Jayne Secker of Sky News skewers her, live on air:
Suella Braverman shares her "huge programme" on police reform that will help forces get "back to basics".
Sky's Jayne Secker challenges the Home Secretary on her statement that the government has gained 20,000 more officers.https://t.co/AVk5NZBEtw
As far as This Writer can work out, with help from The London Economic, there were 148,725 police officers in England and Wales in 2010, when the Conservatives came back to government for the first time since 1997. That’s one uniform for ever 422 people.
This number dwindled steadily over the next few years, with 20,000 officers lost. Then in 2019 came a manifesto commitment to recruit more.
Now, the best information I can find shows 149,566 police officers – an increase, but of not even 1,000, let alone the 3,000 suggested on Sky.
Worse, the UK’s population has risen by nearly five million, meaning there are now 453 people for every police officer.
So in fact there are still fewer police on the UK’s streets – per head of population – than in 2010.
And this makes a nonsense of Braverman’s challenge to the police forces. With lower numbers in comparison with the rest of the population, isn’t it unrealistic to expect them to give up prioritising the kinds of cases they decide to investigate?
In conclusion, Braverman’s statement about the police is a tissue of lies.
They can’t investigate every crime to its fullest extent because there are fewer of them now than when the Tories came to office – and they were overstretched then. Braverman is setting them up to fail – and criminals to get away with their crimes.
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Departing MPs will get bigger payouts for winding up their offices, with the sum doubling to £17,300, the UK parliament expenses watchdog has announced.
MPs who lose their seats or choose not to stand will be paid for four months after leaving office to enable them to wind up their casework and other duties – doubling from the current period of eight weeks.
MPs who lose their seats also qualify for “loss of office payments” – at twice the rate of statutory redundancy pay – and the winding-up payments come on top of this.
They have to demonstrate that they are using their time to work on winding up their offices. MPs’ staff can also qualify for such payments. Ministers get different severance payments for loss of office, with a cabinet minister receiving £16,876.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) made the change after reviewing arrangements for payments following the next election… prompted by the boundary changes and end of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in 2022.
Some doubt the sincerity of IPSA’s behaviour:
Call me cynical, but it seems awfully convenient that 300 Tory MPs are about to lose their seats and only now the rules change so that MPs losing their seats get 4 months severance pay.
A backhander to Sunak’s MPs to keep them in line before the next GE?
The hundreds of Tory MPs who will lose their seats at the next election will continue to get paid for four months afterwards. Rather better treatment than the 800 P&O Ferries seafarers illegally sacked by the company at no notice last year.
So as more than 40 currently serving Tory MPs prepare to step down at the next election, all of a sudden MPs stepping down are entitled to compensation, no longer just those that lose their seat, but also that they need this to be doubled! Could this all be more Tory if they… pic.twitter.com/KfqIlokdgX
I’d say IPSA has just delivered proof that it is not fit for purpose.
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Akshata Murty and her husband, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak: it seems that, days after being forced to apologise for failing to declare that she (and therefore he) will benefit from one policy of the government he leads, he is trying to ensure that they will – corruptly? – benefit from another.
The UK prime minister who came into office promising “integrity, professionalism and accountability” is embroiled in yet another corruption/conflict-of-interest row involving his wife’s father’s multinational corporation, Infosys.
Rishi Sunak is trying to negotiate a free trade deal with India, where Infosys is based, and the allegation is that this will be hugely profitable for Infosys – and therefore, by proxy, for Sunak himself.
People are asking the obvious question:
Jemma Forte – "This is corruption in plain sight… as Rishi Sunak now faces a new conflict of interest row… so it begs the question, who is Sunak working for… is he working for us or himself?" pic.twitter.com/NBuyZXn5e6
Note that it is unlikely that the people of the UK will benefit from this free trade deal, according to Jemma Forte; Sunak is negotiating a deal to benefit his family – again.
Remember: Parliament’s Commissioner for Standards has only just stated that Sunak broke the Ministerial Code – “inadvertently” – by failing to declare that a childcare firm in which his wife has shares will benefit from a change in Tory government policy. In the current instance, there can be no such excuse as we have the evidence in advance of the deal.
Infosys is also a multiple offender in terms of preferential treatment from Sunak’s government. After war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, that firm was told to stop operating in Russia or face sanctions like all the other businesses then doing business with that state, but eight months later it was found still to be doing business there, with impunity against the UK’s sanctions regime.
Sunak is expected to attend a G20 summit in India in two weeks – and to discuss the trade deal at a separate, bilateral, meeting with that nation’s prime minister Narendra Modi.
But Keir Starmer’s opposition party (still currently known as Labour, for reasons unknown) has called for Sunak to make an open declaration about his wife’s financial interests in a company that could profit immensely from his involvement in these negotiations.
One expert – Professor Alan Manning of the London School of Economics, according to The Guardian, wants the prime minister to recuse himself from any negotiations.
In response, it seems the Foreign Office has warned the Labour-chaired business and trade select committee not to visit India to examine the issues around a potential deal. The government department is refusing to help committee members set up meetings with Indian officials and businesspeople.
It seems clear, then, that Sunak has something to hide once again – otherwise, why try to cover up what will happen at the negotiations?
The deal, it seems, will allow Infosys to send teams of its Indian employees to the UK to work on outsourced IT contracts for firms in this country.
Why not employ home-grown expertise and keep the contracts – and all the profits arising from them – in the UK? Or has previous Tory government policy ensured that nobody here has the required expertise any more?
Of course, the controversy will only intensify the debate over MPs having business interests outside the House of Commons, or receiving donations and/or gifts-in-kind from businesses or corporate bosses.
The question here is: who does Rishi Sunak work for – the people of the UK or his wife’s family firm?
The answer seems obvious – with the best interests of the nation he is supposed to lead coming a distant second.
Reform is urgently required – but with so many Parliamentarian snouts firmly in the trough, there seems to be no will to put a stop to the corporate influence that is staining all of us with the filth of corruption. How do we force an end to it?
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The truth: if you oppose the Conservatives, you MUST now oppose Keir Starmer’s Labour as well – because they are on the same side as the Conservatives.
Obviously, she didn’t say it in as many words.
But the Labour Party was brought into being in order to re-balance the UK’s system of government so that people who had to work – or seek work – for a living would have improved rights and a fair share of the profits accruing from the work they did.
Part of the latter would come from pay deals, and part from a re-distribution of wealth using progressive taxation.
Keir Starmer’s version of that party has already kicked any plan for improved workers’ rights into the long grass, and his attitude to the current wave of strikes and the cost of living crisis shows that his party won’t be imposing better pay for workers on profit-gouging bosses.
And now Rachel Reeves is telling us there won’t be any change to progressive taxation under a Starmer Party government.
His Labour will support the current, corrupt system from the first day of any government it forms to the last.
💷 Rachel Reeves has just admitted that Labour will not implement a wealth tax of any kind if they get into power.
🥀 We've said it before and we'll say it again, nothing will change if this so-called opposition gets into government.
Labour is finished – as a party representing working and working-class people. A change of name is in order but Starmer won’t go that far because he wants tribal party supporters to keep voting for him and his cronies, following the Peter Mandelson maxim that they don’t have anywhere else to go.
This Writer isn’t convinced about that, though.
The Green Party offer of a £70 billion wealth tax is looking mighty attractive just now.
You might also take a look at what the Breakthrough Party is doing.
And there are myriad Independents springing up to offer alternatives.
But those are thoughts for the future.
The message today is that if you don’t want to see Tory policies and corruption continue, then you must not vote for either the Conservatives or Labour at the next election.
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Nadine Dorries with the social media message that will always be associated with her [Image: The Prole Star].
Finally, she’s taken the hint.
After a calamitous Parliamentary and Ministerial career, promising to resign and then failing to do so, prompting campaigns and a petition for her to be ejected, Nadine Dorries has thrown in the towel.
She has finally resigned, relinquishing the House of Commons seat that, we’re told, she hasn’t occupied for more than a year.
But she had one last shot to fire – at her own government’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
This Writer would go as far as to say it is one of the few poison pen letters to actually have a signature at the bottom of it.
Would you like to read it?
Here’s the lot, in all its grim glory:
It has been the greatest honour and privilege of my life to have served the good people of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for eighteen years and I count myself blessed to have worked in Westminster for almost a quarter of a century. Despite what some in the media and you yourself have implied, my team of caseworkers and I have continued to work for my constituents faithfully and diligently to this day.
When I arrived in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, I inherited a Conservative majority of 8,000. Over five elections this has increased to almost 25,000, making it one of the safest seats in the country. A legacy I am proud of.
During my time as a Member of Parliament, I have served as a back bencher, a bill Committee Chair, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State before becoming Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care during the Covid crisis, after which I was appointed as Secretary of State at the department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport.
The offer to continue in my Cabinet role was extended to me by your predecessor, Liz Truss, and I am grateful for your personal phone call on the morning you appointed your cabinet in October, even if I declined to take the call.
As politicians, one of the greatest things we can do is to empower people to have opportunities to achieve their aspirations and to help them to change their lives for the better. In DHSC I championed meaningful improvements to maternity and neonatal safety. I launched the women’s health strategy and pushed forward a national evidence-based trial for Group B Strep testing in pregnant women with the aim to reduce infant deaths.
When I resigned as Secretary of State for DCMS I was able to thank the professional, dedicated, and hard-working civil servants for making our department the highest performing in Whitehall. We worked tirelessly to strengthen the Online Safety Bill to protect young people, froze the BBC licence fee, included the sale of Channel 4 into the Media Bill to protect its long-term future and led the world in imposing cultural sanctions when Putin invaded Ukraine.
I worked with and encouraged the tech sector, to search out untaught talents such as creative and critical thinking in deprived communities offering those who faced a life on low unskilled pay or benefits, access to higher paid employment and social mobility. What many of the CEOs I spoke to in the tech sector and business leaders really wanted was meaningful regulatory reform from you as chancellor to enable companies not only to establish in the UK, but to list on the London Stock Exchange rather than New York.
You flashed your gleaming smile in your Prada shoes and Savile Row suit from behind a camera, but you just weren’t listening. All they received in return were platitudes and a speech illustrating how wonderful life was in California. London is now losing its appeal as more UK-based companies seek better listing opportunities in the U.S. That, Prime Minister, is entirely down to you.
Long before my resignation announcement, in July 2022, I had advised the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, of my intention to step down. Senior figures in the party, close allies of yours, have continued to this day to implore me to wait until the next general election rather than inflict yet another damaging by-election on the party at a time when we are consistently twenty points behind in the polls.
Having witnessed first-hand, as Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss were taken down, I decided that the British people had a right to know what was happening in their name. Why is it that we have had five Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010, with not one of the previous four having left office as the result of losing a general election? That is a democratic deficit which the mother of parliaments should be deeply ashamed of and which, as you and I know, is the result of the machinations of a small group of individuals embedded deep at the centre of the party and Downing St.
To start with, my investigations focused on the political assassination of Boris Johnson, but as I spoke to more and more people – and I have spoken to a lot of people, from ex-Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers both ex and current through all levels of government and Westminster and even journalists – a dark story emerged which grew ever more disturbing with each person I spoke to.
It became clear to me as I worked that remaining as a back bencher was incompatible with publishing a book which exposes how the democratic process at the heart of our party has been corrupted. As I uncovered this alarming situation I knew, such were the forces ranged against me, that I was grateful to retain my parliamentary privilege until today. And, as you also know Prime Minister, those forces are today the most powerful figures in the land. The onslaught against me even included the bizarre spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary claiming (without evidence) to a select committee that he had reported me to the Whips and Speakers office (not only have neither office been able to confirm this was true, but they have no power to act, as he well knows). It is surely as clear a breach of Civil Service impartiality as you could wish to see.
But worst of all has been the spectacle of a Prime Minister demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs. You failed to mention in your public comments that there could be no writ moved for a by-election over summer. And that the earliest any by-election could take place is at the end of September. The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrates the pitifully low level your Government has descended to.
It is a modus operandi established by your allies which has targeted Boris Johnson, transferred to Liz Truss and now moved on to me. But I have not been a Prime Minister. I do not have security or protection. Attacks from people, led by you, declared open season on myself and the past weeks have resulted in the police having to visit my home and contact me on a number of occasions due to threats to my person.
Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved? You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs. You have no mandate from the people and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?
And what a difference it is now since 2019, when Boris Johnson won an eighty-seat majority and a greater percentage of the vote share than Tony Blair in the Labour landslide victory of ’97. We were a mere five points behind on the day he was removed from office. Since you became Prime Minister, his manifesto has been completely abandoned. We cannot simply disregard the democratic choice of the electorate, remove both the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for and then expect to return to the people in the hope that they will continue to unquestioningly support us. They have agency, they will use it.
Levelling up has been discarded and with it, those deprived communities it sought to serve. Social care, ready to be launched, abandoned along with the hope of all of those who care for the elderly and the vulnerable. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, reduced. Our commitment to net zero, animal welfare and the green issues so relevant to the planet and voters under 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his own resignation letter, because you simply do not care about the environment or the natural world. What exactly is it you do stand for?
You have increased Corporation tax to 25 per cent, taking us to the level of the highest tax take since World War two at 75 per cent of GDP, and you have completely failed in reducing illegal immigration or delivering on the benefits of Brexit. The bonfire of EU legislation, swerved. The Windsor framework agreement, a dead duck, brought into existence by shady promises of future preferment with grubby rewards and potential gongs to MPs. Stormont is still not sitting.
Disregarding your own chancellor, last week you took credit for reducing inflation, citing your ‘plan’. There has been no budget, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, the eased pressure on the supply of wheat and the increase in interest rates by the Bank of England are what has taken the heat out of the economy and reduced inflation. For you to personally claim credit for this was disingenuous at the very least.
It is a fact that there is no affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you. Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become Prime Minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy. Bewildered, we look in vain for the grand political vision for the people of this great country to hold on to, that would make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we find absolutely nothing.
I shall take some comfort from explaining to people exactly how you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my book. I am a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so important to me. I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.
I shall today inform the Chancellor of my intention to take the Chiltern Hundreds, enabling the writ to be moved on September the 4th for the by-election you are so desperately seeking to take place.
It’s dynamite, isn’t it? Okay, it was written by someone whose nickname is “Mad Nad”, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt, but as far as all its claims are concerned – let’s hope for the best!
The general consensus is that resigning is the best thing Dorries has ever done (be warned – the first message below contains extreme language):
Well, Nadine Dorries has finally fucked off. Now she’s stepped down she’s going to focus on the things she really cares about like gin, weeping, writing weird jizz novels and ignoring Boris Johnson’s restraining order.
I don't want to claim *all* the credit here but I'm pretty sure it was my tweet comparing Nadine Dorries to Where's Wally being put out by the BBC that pushed her into finally resigning pic.twitter.com/g52Ojgkiwe
Whinge moan, point finger, spit, rage, narcissism, ineptitude, whinge, moan, grr, Sunak yuk, whinge, narcissism, working class don't make me laugh, whinge moan, now where's my money?
What, “Whinge moan, point finger, spit, rage, narcissism, ineptitude, whinge, moan, grr, Sunak yuk, whinge, narcissism, working class don’t make me laugh, whinge moan, now where’s my money”?
Do you really think that will help, Chris?
Best of all, Mad Nad isn’t wrong about Fishy Rishi.
His latest wheeze is to avoid attending the United Nations’ general assembly, leading to this commentary (and probably many others):
No leadership at home; no leadership abroad; not elected before; won't be elected now. Rishi Sunak: the man who wasn't there. https://t.co/TxSt5JSXCk
The hard fact for the poorest people: while headline energy costs are falling, the price for those who can least afford to pay is rising unaffordably.
Average energy bills will fall slightly in the three months from October – to £1,923 a year for the typical household, the regulator Ofgem has said
This is a drop of £151 on the current annual energy bill for a typical household, which is currently £2,074.
But there are complications!
The drop is in the price per unit of electricity and gas, and standing charges – that are charged daily regardless of energy use, are set to rise to recoup the costs associated with the wave of supplier failures, consumer defaults, and additional support to shore up energy companies’ finances.
This means people who use less energy – logically, poorer people – will end up paying more for it.
The Resolution Foundation has explained the situation in a press release here. I’ll pull out the important bits:
Any family with an energy consumption less than four-fifths of the average will see higher bills this winter than last, a situation that applies to around one-in-three (35 per cent) of households in England and close to half (47 per cent) of those in the lowest income decile.
For some, these extra costs will be substantial: 13 per cent of households (2.7 million families) face energy bills rising by more than £100 this winter, a figure that rises to one in four (24 per cent) for the poorest households.
The removal of the flat £400 Energy Bill Support scheme, which was paid out in monthly instalments over winter 2022 to all households, regardless of income or energy consumption, is in effect putting upward pressure on every household’s bill this winter.
Whether a household faces a lower bill this winter depends on whether the lower per-unit prices provide savings that outweigh the higher standing charges and removal of the £400 support.
The Resolution Foundation expects 7.2 million households will end up paying more, with 2.7 million spending more than £100 more on gas and electricity bills – including 24 per cent (almost a quarter) of those in the poorest 1/10 of families.
The Conservative government doesn’t care about this increased pressure on the poorest.
Here’s Tory mouthpiece Andrew Bowie (he’s an under-secretary for “Nuclear and Networks”, whatever that means), refusing to discuss the issue with the BBC’s Naga Munchetty and determinedly trying to force the subject back to the reduction in bills for the very richest people:
Tory govt minister Andrew Bowie doesn't like Naga Munchettys questions and tells her what she should be focussing on. #BBCBreakfastpic.twitter.com/rVlI26oZtG
Conservative government energy policy is to make the poorest pay the most (as a proportion of their available funds). They are using energy bills to create poverty.
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Childcare shareholder Akshata Murty and her husband, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak: her firm should forgo any benefit from the new Tory policy, just to rid itself of the stain of corruption with which he has tarred it. And his serial “inadvertency” means he is not fit to govern.
Rishi Sunak and his government gets away with it – yet again.
I think this comment on the latest Tory corruption saga is highly relevant:
Rishi Sunak broke parliament’s code of conduct, didn't declare his wife’s shareholding in a childcare company benefitting from govt policy.
Yes, this is the story of how a new government policy, announced in the spring Budget, was geared to give huge amounts of money to a childcare company in which Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty has shares; he and his family would have benefited – but he did not declare it.
This is a breach of the Ministerial Code and an investigation was duly requested.
Now, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has reported back – and said the failure to declare the conflict of interest was “inadvertent”. No further action will be taken.
🚨 | NEW: Rishi Sunak has BREACHED Rule 6 of the MPs' Code of Conduct after failing to declare his wife's financial interest in a childminding agency that benefited from the March Budget
The Commissioner has NOT punished him – believing the failure was "out of confusion"
And the Prime Minister’s press secretary has said: “The commissioner’s investigation into the Prime Minister’s declaration of interest has been resolved by way of rectification. The Prime Minister takes seriously his responsibilities to register and declare all relevant interests.”
That’s all very well, but Sunak and his family are set to benefit from his omission to mention this interest, and that isn’t right. Nobody should use a position of power to feather their own nest.
So Ms Murty’s firm should be excluded from the list of those that are to benefit from this government policy – if only to rid itself (and the Tory government) of the stain of corruption with which Sunak has tarred it. Right?
Isn’t it odd that we don’t see that happening?
And it seems Sunak leads a government that is guilty of serial inadvertency:
Jeremy Hunt forgot he owned seven flats, Jacob Rees-Mogg forgot he took a £6m loan, Theresa Villiers forgot she owned £70k-worth of Shell shares and Rishi Sunak forgot his wife owned shares in a childcare company. Bad run of memory lapses right there, guys.
It encourages me to believe that none of these Tories are likely to remember important facts when they are needed – and this could cause serious harm to the UK and its people, given the seriousness of the crises we are currently being forced to endure.
By their own admission, Sunak and his party are not fit to govern.
The trouble is, we are getting excrement in our waterways and it is harming our environment and making people ill:
Harlyn Bay, Cornwall back in the news again. Not in the least shocking considering there had been 13 sewage dumps between 18 June and 18 August with 8 in July alone.
Meanwhile, look at the benefits reaped by shareholders who aren’t paying for the materials to clean our water and are instead just flushing it into our rivers:
Between 2012 – 2022 @AnglianWater paid shareholders £4.6 billion and now they want to put up your water bill because they didn't spend enough on infrastructure.
It seems to This Writer that one way of ensuring the water firms didn’t abuse their government-backed ability to pump crap at us whenever they felt like it would have been simple: make it a legal requirement for them to pump sewage into shareholders’ and executives’ neighbourhoods before anywhere else.
It’s very easy to green-light flooding a place with disease-ridden goop when it isn’t the place where you live. I wonder whether water bosses would be quite so enthusiastic if they had to face irate neighbours to justify incidents like this…
Toxic blue-green algae on the River Bann, NI. The river is fed from the now heavily polluted Lough Neagh with all of that crap emptying into the Atlantic ocean at Castlerock.
The River Bann used to be one of the finest salmon rivers in western Europe.https://t.co/smbRjQESLp
It’s a measure that never seems to occur to our Tory legislators, who are quite happy for the outflows to release their loads into other people’s back yards.
And what can you do about it?
Well, maybe you don’t like the Green Party, whose campaign image appears above – but you don’t have to put up with the crap dished out at you by the other two parties mentioned in that image. Find somebody who won’t fill your life with unnecessary excrement and support them instead.
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Mohammed Bin Salman meets Boris Johnson: What did THEY discuss?
Take a look at the evidence and you’ll see that the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohamed bin Salman, has been invited to the UK because the UK supports corruption and human rights abuses, and not in spite of the nation’s opposition to those scourges.
That doesn’t make these people wrong:
Andrew Fisher sums up perfectly why I and many others will be opposing the state visit of the Saudi human rights abusers and maintaining the demand for sanctions against this brutal regime. @FisherAndrew79https://t.co/QU7wLOPeUe
It’s just that, next to them we have to put the following:
So the Met confirm that they will take no further action following their investigation into The Prince's Trust despite the fact that a Saudi businessman was offered honors in return for a case full of cash.
I honestly don't know who's more fucking bent the Met or the Monarchy.
The chief executive of a Prince of Wales charity co-ordinated with "fixers" over honours for a billionaire Saudi donor, an investigation ordered by the charity has found.https://t.co/UKt1IFsynz
From the (current) King to a former prime minister – Tony Blair. His organisation continued to receive funding from – and work for – Mohamed bin Salman after he was accused of having ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi:
Almost all of the international ‘centre left’ Third Way leaders are now multimillionaires (while they presided over stagnant wages and growing income inequality for everyone else), but of them all by far the most brazen, craven and greedy is Tony Blair. https://t.co/HUU9ndT3lr
With top-level endorsement like this, it seems clear that representatives of Saudi Arabia are welcome in the UK, no matter what they do.
Talk by UK politicians about opposing human rights abuses is exactly that: just talk.
The United Kingdom is a haven for totalitarian rulers and rights abusers – and will remain that way as long as we continue to allow the lowest kind of vermin to infest our corridors of power.
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This is fine: the image above was originally about climate change but it may be applied equally well to Rishi Sunak’s attitude to the economy. Political policy in the UK for the past 40 years and more has been to impoverish you, together with all the poor people who voted for him and his ilk, thereby allowing it to happen.
All the Tory talk about getting inflation down seems to have confused some people who have failed to consider that high inflation may actually be Conservative government policy.
Look at the usually-excellent Simon Wren-Lewis’s latest Mainly Macropiece, in which he takes issue with left-wing opinions about his current diagnosis of the inflation problem.
He reckons the answer is for private sector wage rises to come down, probably by way of reducing economic demand which will lead to a reduction in the workforce – and, thereby, a recession. This opinion appears to be shared with the Bank of England, whose continual interest rate hikes seem to be an attempt to force the UK’s economy to go backwards.
The problem with that is simple: ordinary working- and even some middle-class people are struggling to make ends meet. Many simply can’t and are going into debt. His solution to the inflation problem will bake that inability to afford the cost of living into the UK economy.
With the Tory government lying to us that workers’ wages are the cause of high inflation and the Bank of England doing as described above, there seems to be only one logical conclusion to draw:
High inflation is a Conservative government policy. It is intended to drive the UK’s lower-paid citizens deep into poverty so you cannot afford the necessities of life.
Just roll that around your mind for a moment.
Think about the real causes of inflation: huge increases in the prices of energy and food, and huge increases in the salaries of FTSE100 executives.
The government could, in theory, neutralise these inflationary pressures through taxation – but the theory fails in practice: as Professor Wren-Lewis notes, the energy firms are multi-national corporations whose profits are received overseas, so there is nothing the government can do about them.
Looking back through history, we see that the reason overseas shareholders have been able to take control of our formerly-nationalised utility firms (energy isn’t the only subject area to have been treated this way, of course; water springs instantly to mind) is privatisation.
The answer should be re-nationalisation – but the Tory government (and also Keir Starmer’s STP – Substitute Tory Party) won’t countenance that; it is against their ideology. This indicates, again, that high inflation that drives you into poverty is a political choice. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer want you to starve.
In the private sector, we see that the salaries of FTSE100 executives have risen by an average of 16 per cent in the last year alone, despite the fact that there has been no real growth in production in the last 15 years since the Great Recession. The money for their pay rise has to come from somewhere and the logical source is the pay packets of employees; they are taking the rises that should go to you.
That’s if they haven’t increased the prices of their goods or services, of course. If they have then they are still taking the rises that should go to you, while also increasing prices so you can’t afford what your employer sells.
The answer – the way to stop this irresponsible upward drain of corporate funds into executive bank accounts – is to tax executive pay at a rate high enough to make this practice unviable. Again, both Rishi Sunak’s Tories and Keir Starmer’s Tories have refused to do this so – again – we must conclude that the executive wage inflation that puts us all into poverty is a political choice.
Professor Wren-Lewis rightly points out that, where employees have won wage increases intended to match inflation caused mainly by high energy prices, their employers have put prices up; this indicates that shifting the real-terms wage cut onto the profits of other firms won’t work and just generates more inflation.
Professor Wren-Lewis goes on to discuss the reason real wages in the UK have not grown in the last 15 years. As already mentioned above, besides the energy and food price hikes, it is the fact that productivity growth has been extremely weak. There have also been two large devaluations of the Pound.
The low productivity – and one of the depreciations – were caused by Brexit. This is another political policy of the Conservative government that is also supported by Keir Starmer’s STP and may therefore be seen as further proof that the party of government (and that of Opposition) intends to impoverish you as a matter of policy.
Brexit also makes causing a recession more attractive to the government and the party that wants to form a government. Neither of them want inflation to continue running rampant forever; it would eventually wipe out the gains they have made for their very rich friends, so they’ll want to bring it down.
The way to do that, according to Prof Wren-Lewis, is to reduce the demand for goods produced by most firms, as this will lead to a reduced demand for labour; firms then lay off workers, meaning more people are seeking employment, meaning in turn that jobseekers will be more likely to accept a job that pays lower wages.
Before Brexit, politicians could always rely on an influx of cheap labour from Europe. That isn’t available now, so they consider recession to be the only alternative. Remember: their future is safe.
Demand is already coming down because people simply can’t afford to buy as much as they used to, due to the real-terms wage cuts they have suffered. The Bank of England’s interest rate rises are hammering that change home.
We may therefore conclude that recession, job losses, further deprivation and misery are all policy points of the Conservative government, and of Keir Starmer’s STP.
Professor Wren-Lewis ends his piece by quoting Bertrand Russell: “Ask yourself only what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed.”
Sadly, he fails to follow his own (and Russell’s) advice.
The truth that the facts bear out is that privatisation, executive pay rises, Brexit, austerity (the other driver of the Pound’s depreciation) and interest rate rises are all intended to push the majority of UK citizens into poverty.
Other solutions besides reducing demand by causing a recession and mass unemployment are available – but the low-quality politicians with whom we have accepted that Parliament should be filled are not interested in them; their only concern is filling their own bank accounts.
Our concern must now be to put a stop to this.
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And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
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