Category Archives: Politics

You’re £11,000 worse-off than in 2008 due to wage stagnation – but the billionaires aren’t!

Cash money: if you haven’t seen even this much in a while, it’s because – thanks to Tory policies – billionaires have vacuumed it all up.

Here’s a painful piece of information I found on the social media:

I did a bit of digging (not very much!) and it turns out that Mr Burgon isn’t wrong:

Workers are £11,000 worse off per year due to 15 years of wage stagnation, according to the Resolution Foundation.

In new figures shared with BBC Panorama, the think tank calculated that, had wages continued to grow at the pace seen before the 2008 financial crash, the average worker would make £11,000 more per year than they do now, taking rising prices into account.

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, told the BBC the wage stagnation of the past 15 years is “almost completely unprecedented”.

Unprecedented it may be, but you can bet it was entirely planned by the Tories who slithered into government in 2010.

“This is definitely not what normal looks like. This is what failure looks like.”

Not as far as those Tories were concerned. For them, it was success. They funnelled the cash away from the majority of UK citizens, away from the Treasury, and into the hands and offshore bank accounts of the tiniest minority of the super-rich.

As for the billionaires… here‘s Statista:

The UK’s top ten richest people are wealthier than the group has ever been, according to The Sunday Times, who recently released their annual Rich List. Their data finds that the cumulative wealth of the top ten billionaires in the UK has grown from £47.77 billion in 2009 to £182 billion in 2022 – an increase of 281 percent.

As this chart shows, following the 2008 crash, the UK’s billionaires have seen a steady, and fairly steep, incline in their wealth. The upward trend continued despite the pandemic, which saw the UK’s economy shrink by 20.4 percent in the second quarter of 2020, as most industries suffered, and 30.5 million people in Europe were expected to be pushed into poverty. This is a stark contrast to the UK’s 250 ultra wealthy, who saw their collective wealth surge to a record high of £653 billion in 2022.

And Jeremy Hunt’s Budget predicted slower growth than we expected after the disastrous Liz Truss was ousted from Downing Street last year.

And the Tories are starting to bounce back in the opinion polls.

Who are the people going back to them? Are they masochists?

Source: Workers £11,000 worse off a year due to stagnant wages – Resolution Foundation


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Democratic Unionists will vote against Rishi Sunak’s new Northern Ireland deal. Why?

No entry: are the Democratic Unionists opoposing Rishi Sunak’s new Northern Ireland deal because they don’t want to return to the Stormont Assembly as only the second-largest party?

Do we believe the Democratic Unionists when they say they won’t support Rishi Sunak’s ‘Windsor Framework’ trade deal for Northern Ireland and the European Union because they have “ongoing concerns”?

Party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the party would continue to assess the deal, but that “we don’t believe that this represents the significant progress that we need to see in order to have the institutions restored at this point”:

“There remain for us concerns, for example, and the Stormont Brake deals with the application of EU law in Northern Ireland, but it doesn’t address how are we dealing with change to UK law, which could impact on NI’s ability to trade within the United Kingdom itself.”

He said he wanted to ensure “what the prime minister is claiming is translated into law”.

“Our seven tests have not yet been met. Sufficient progress has not yet been made. I am determined to continue engaging with the government and to get this right,” he added.

Some have doubts…

… and I am among them. The comment triggered an interesting (if short) discussion:

What do you think?


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Is this the new wheeze for friends of the Tories: subsidies for asylum-seeker hotels?

Channel migrants: it seems the Tories have found a way to help their friends make a profit from the presence of these vulnerable people.

It’s not so long since we discovered the Tory government was giving contracts to provide Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to their friends via an illegal ‘VIP lane’ – now it turns out they are paying their buddies to run hotels housing asylum-seekers.

Apparently the BBC has been told the government is using 395 hotels to accommodate more than 51,000 people, at a cost of £6 million per day.

Hotel owners are being approached to hand over their properties to outsourced companies, which run the businesses on behalf of the Home Office.

The BBC’s report names the outsourced companies as Serco, Mears Group and Calder Conferences, all of which are enjoying increased profits as a result.

Here’s a bit of info on Serco:

But what about this snippet from the social media?

Here’s more evidence:

Sadly, that’s only a little to go on.

But it should be enough to support a demand for the facts from the Tories.

Who is running the hotels that are benefiting from this public money? Are they Conservatives or supporters of Conservatives? Who is responsible for selecting them?

Has someone set up another ‘VIP lane’ for applications?


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A reminder of the reason the right-wing and mass media hate Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn: he was speaking at Anti-Racism Day on the weekend, while the Tory Home Secretary was examining how to deport Johnny Foreigner to a foreign country with a bad human rights record. Little has changed between him and them since 2018.

I found this on Twitter: Luis needed medication to provide relief from cystic fibrosis, and wrote to Jeremy Corbyn after then-prime minister Theresa May failed to reply.

Here’s what happened:

The question is a good one.

Imagine how many people like Luis a Corbyn-led government could have helped.


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How can this candidate win where Labour blocked Greg Marshall from standing?

Juliet Campbell: she was another local choice to be Broxtowe’s candidate in the next general election and her selection appears to be a deliberate snub against the Labour leadership’s attempt to influence the vote.

Broxtowe Constituency Labour Party appears to be considerably smaller than it used to be after people ripped up their membership cards in disgust at being barred from choosing Greg Marshall as their candidate in the next general election.

Mr Marshall has stood as the constituency’s Labour candidate twice before – in 2017 and 2019 – and while he did not win on either occasion, he did manage to increase Labour’s vote share by 10 per cent between the former and the latter.

But it seems a panel of the party’s National Executive Committee blocked him from the party’s long-list for selection this time.

In a statement last month, he said: “It is with huge disappointment that yesterday I was blocked by the Labour Party from standing to represent Broxtowe at the next general election. To add insult to this decision, I wasn’t even informed directly by the party but instead had to wait to be told by the [constituency Labour party] members on the selection committee.”

Despite the Labour leadership’s decision to remove him by remote control – or possibly because of it – this was the reception he received when he arrived at the party’s selection meeting:

Broxtowe Labour subsequently tweeted its regret that many torn-up membership cards were left around the venue, although that tweet has now been deleted.

The winning candidate was Juliet Campbell – another local choice whose victory is considered a backlash against the imposition of puppet candidates by Keir Starmer:

Of course, the fact that there was any interference at all is in contradiction of a promise by Keir Starmer:

On February 4, 2020, he had tweeted: “The selections for Labour candidates needs [sic] to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.”

And what of Mr Marshall?

Well, here’s an idea:

How about it? Or is he, like Jeremy Corbyn, still living in hope that the hollowed-out husk of Labour can still be turned back into the party that Keir Hardie first led into Parliament?


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Michael Gove implicated in Michelle Mone PPE scandal

Michael Gove: this minister (who once got caught making a joke about rape on the radio, by the way) was in charge of handing out procurement contracts for PPE. At the time, This Site pointed out that they seemed to be going to his friends.

What does Michael Gove know about the contract under which Michelle Mone’s company won a PPE contract via the illegal VIP lane?

A leaked email has shown that he was involved…

… but look what happened when he was challenged about it!

Apparently this will be examined by the independent inquiry into Covid-19 this spring, and it has been suggested that Gove was trying hard not to say anything that may be used in evidence.

This could be highly informative!


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Forde Report: Pressure on Keir Starmer mounts

Keir Starmer: why hasn’t he met Martin Forde KC? What Forde Report measures is Labour implementing, and how? And why is he being so tight-lipped about all this?

Labour leader Keir Starmer is facing more pressure to act on the recommendations of the Forde Report after its author, Martin Forde KC, revealed he had not been contacted since it was published in July last year.

People are drawing awkward conclusions, like this:

Labour seems to be saying that it is acting on the report. Here’s the vice-chair of the NEC equalities committee:

This is the same person’s response to calls for a meeting between Mr Forde and Labour:

It’s not a convincing response because the NEC’s decisions seem liable to be overruled by the party leader whenever he feels like it:

Of course the answer is that Mr Forde requested a meeting, in order to ensure that his recommendations were understood and any further action would be appropriate.

Compounding this, though, is the fact that Labour’s Forde working group asked to meet with him and were rebuffed:

Alongside this, there’s the fact that mainstream media journalists who practically camped on Jeremy Corbyn’s doorstep to ask him about anti-Semitism suddenly found that they didn’t have time to knock on Keir Starmer’s front door over this:

Then there’s the question of the BBC’s attempt to gag Mr Forde by demanding that he “amend” a critical section of his report:

And now other organisations are being brought into the debate, like the Muslim Council of Britain:

Who else will get involved?

Personally, This Writer would like to see representations from Black Lives Matter, if only to see what that group has to say about him describing that organisations as a “moment” and cynically taking the knee as a photo opportunity.


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Braverman in Rwanda for propaganda junket; praises decor of homes for UK refugees

Suella Braverman arrives in Rwanda: what a pity she isn’t being forced to stay there.

Yes, here we are – and there she was: Suella Braverman has indeed been on a propaganda-fuelled junket to Rwanda, where homes are being built for the couple of hundred “migrants” (also known as asylum-seekers or refugees) into the UK that the African country has agreed to accommodate.

Here’s a video clip of her arrival:

The clip makes the very good point that the Tory government’s attempts to send people over to Rwanda – which has a very poor human rights record – are mired in legal challenges.

Here’s Peter Stefanovic to expand on that:

And he’s right about the headline, which is the source of This Site’s assertion that her trip was for propaganda purposes:

Does anybody really think Braverman wanted the name of the Rwanda homes interior designer?

Neither do I. If she was given it, I expect her to have binned it – which is exactly what she is planning to do to any asylum-seekers and refugees who are unlucky enough to be sent there.


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Reported funding cut could set back social care ‘for years to come’

Care: the head of NHS England once said he wanted change but now it seems clear it will be for the worse.

The Tory government promised to revitalise social care in the UK – but seems set to renege on that vow.

Is this the next big Tory scandal?

Ministers are poised to cut £250m from investment in the social care workforce in England, it has been reported, in a move that providers say could set back care “for years to come”.

With more than 165,000 care worker jobs vacant, and low pay driving staff to quit for better wages in retail and hospitality, care providers and councils have been clamouring for investment in recruitment and retention. Inadequate staffing levels are frequently noted as a cause of neglect and poor care by the Care Quality Commission.

However, according to the Health Service Journal (subscription), the government is poised to water down a promise it made in the December 2021 social care white paper to dedicate £500m to “investment in knowledge, skills, health and wellbeing, and recruitment policies [that] will improve social care as a long-term career choice”. This amount could be cut to £250m.

Source: Government ‘to cut £250m from social care workforce funding’ in England | Care workers | The Guardian

Why is Keir Starmer ignoring racism and Islamophobia exposed by the Forde Report

Starmer takes the knee for Black Lives Matter: to him it meant nothing more than a photo opportunity. Black lives don’t matter to him – as we discovered when he attacked the organisation shortly after. Now we find he’s turning a blind eye to racism identified in the report by Martin Forde KC.

Anti-black racism and Islamophobia in the Labour Party, raised by Martin Forde KC in his report to that organisation last summer, has been ignored by party leaders including Keir Starmer.

Starmer has not contacted Forde since he published his report confirming that anti-Semitism and other racism had been a battleground between left- and right-wing factionalists within Labour. It seems this was not what the party leader wanted to hear.

Fortunately for him, very few mainstream media journalists had been interestest either:

Yes – odd, that. Mainstream hacks had been able to doorstep Jeremy Corbyn at the drop of a hat, but Starmer seems uncontactable.

Worse, Starmer seems to have ignored concerns raised by black and minority ethnic figures within his own Parliamentary party:

Here’s some evidence to back up the assertion:

Strange how anti-Semitism against pro-Israel Zionists can be such a vital issue for Starmer, but racism against non-Zionist left-wing Jews, black people and Muslims gets a free pass.


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