16-year-olds have been voting in polls in Scotland and Wales for a few years now, with no apparent societal degeneration.
This Writer tends to believe the Tories are worried that younger people, given the vote, will use it to keep Labour in power. But that’s based on an out-of-date understanding of Labour’s position on the political map.
When Labour was left-wing, and had policies that would have given people starting out in life a better chance for success, then 16- and 17-year-olds might have voted for that party. They would certainly have come out very strongly in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s version of that party.
But Keir Starmer has systematically ditched all of Mr Corbyn’s left-wing policies, turning a once-democratic Socialist party into a mirror-image of the Conservatives.
Teenagers – at least, those with any political nous at all – are therefore far more likely to cast around for other political organisations to support.
If the Tories have anything genuine to fear, it is that impressionable teens – those who don’t have any political savvy – will be fooled by a slogan into voting unexpectedly.
But wouldn’t that be poetic justice for the Tories, who have spent decades trying to train us to support three-word slogans rather than thinking for ourselves?
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Shutting down young voices: after this incident it is clear that, despite his own speechifying, Keir Starmer doesn’t want to allow anybody to speak up for themselves.
This is too good to leave for the News in tweets: while giving a speech on how young people need to learn how to express themselves vocally, Keir Starmer was challenged by two young people on Labour policy – and told them to shut up.
The youths from Green New Deal Rising were standing as part of a group of youngsters Starmer had arranged behind himself to make a good photo – but while he was talking about “oracy”, and his desire for people to be able to express themselves verbally, as well as on paper, they stepped forward.
This is what happened:
“We need a green new deal now”
Starmer – “we did that last month”
Utter humiliation during one of the most boring speeches I’ve witnessed for some time pic.twitter.com/SxLJvEE1lB
Another commentator, tweeting a similar clip, stated: “Keir Starmer making a speech about how important it is that young people learn how to express themselves & articulate their thoughts clearly. Starmer to young people expressing themselves & articulating their thoughts clearly: stop drowning other people out.”
Quite.
Worse than what happened today (Thursday, July 6, 2023) is the fact that Starmer has form in cold-shouldering young people from Green New Deal.
Remember this, from a recent Labour Party Conference?
Brillant.
“We’ve tried to speak to you about it but you haven’t replied to us Keir”
Like the Tories, Sir Keir doesn’t want to go to young people or about climate change does he? pic.twitter.com/jFVfB3BgYl
Put it all together and not only do you know for sure that Rishi Sunak isn’t the only leader of a UK political party who is “simply uninterested” in the environment – Starmer couldn’t care less either…
But you can also be sure that, for all his own speechifying, he really doesn’t want anybody to be allowed – let alone able – to speak for themselves.
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Rishi Sunak: the richest man in the UK is the UK’s prime minister. He isn’t affected by inflation or interest rate rises – but he, his government, the Bank of England and businesses are all determined to make sure that you are. How long are you going to sit there and let them mess with you, because you’re “not interested in politics”?
Now do you get why politics should matter to you?
Today (June 21, 2023), we’re all being told that inflation has remained high despite promises from the rich old folk in suits that it would plummet down to more manageable levels.
The reason for this is being touted as high food prices, according to mainstream news outlets like the BBC (UK inflation shock as food costs keep cost of living high) – but this isn’t true. The real reasons are corporate greed and Brexit.
(I know it doesn’t help that the mainstream media keep misleading you. Their job is to distract you away from what’s really happening, of course.)
So the utility firms (energy and water) and the supermarkets are fleecing you by charging whatever they want for goods that they’re actually buying far more cheaply, and this is offsetting the increased costs of importing goods that was caused by Brexit (and the war in Ukraine, although that is a secondary issue now).
The response from the government and the Bank of England is to make everything even more expensive by increasing the cost of money. If you don’t understand how they do this, it’s by raising interest rates on borrowing.
Businesses borrow habitually – for investment, or to finance temporary deficits during hard times, or (as we have learned about the privatised water firms recently) because they are diverting all the money they make into dividends for their shareholders and top executives.
Raising interest rates means the amount they will have to pay back to their lender of choice increases, meaning they have less spending money. Normally this creates a knock-on effect in which they stop buying the goods they need (because they can’t afford them), forcing the suppliers to reduce their prices in order to make sales. As inflation is all about price rises, this means inflation falls.
But that’s not happening at the moment because businesses are simply factoring the interest rate hikes into their pricing structures – they’re passing those rises on to you, the customer.
The result is that prices continue to rise, so inflation remains high.
The economist Richard Murphy explains what has happened in a useful Twitter thread. First, he tells us that the reasons we are being given for inflation are not true:
That pushed prices for some goods and services up for a while. Cars were impacted heavily. So was the cost of new kitchens and building work in general. That situation is, however, now long gone.
But, again, and quite remarkably, most of that inflation has now gone. Wholesale food and shipping prices have now returned to pre-war levels. Gas and petrol prices have fallen drastically from their peak. The underlying causes of price war-based rises have now gone.
So inflation is not being caused by influences outside the control of the UK’s politicians and businesspeople. Mr Murphy continues:
Second, there is profiteering. Banks, oil companies and many companies in food supply chains are very clearly increasing their absolute levels of profit, and their profit rates. This is not true for all companies, but it is for many.
They’re allowed to do this because our politicians let them. The government could cap prices, but doesn’t want to. Is it because our MPs and their political parties are receiving weighty donations from the businesspeople?
Here’s Mr Murphy again:
The Bank of England pushes up the interest rate in an attempt to reduce the demand for goods and services. Its logic is that if borrowers pay more in interest cost they will have less to spend. That means demand in the economy should fall, and so, it thinks, should prices.
So he agrees with This Writer (or more accurately, I agree with him – he’s the expert).
If you’re asking how this has anything to do with you, here comes the bombshell:
This belief is based on theories on the cause of inflation developed in the 1970s. It was presumed then that inflation was caused by wages rising faster than prices. The excess spending power that this created then dragged prices in its wake, resulting in inflation.
So, again excepting the wealthy and high earners, pay in this country has not and as a matter of fact could not have driven inflation, and nor can it do so for a long time to come because most wage earners have neither the income or savings to force prices up.
The bottom line is that not only have you been deprived of the cash to buy the things that make life worth living (due to cuts that mean your pay is at 2005 – or even 2000 – levels while prices have surged) but you are also now expected to cover the increased prices demanded by the profiteers and the interest rate-setting banks from what is left.
Those are political choices.
Politicians whose own salaries (plus the afore-mentioned corporate donations) mean they aren’t affected by these decisions have used high inflation to take your money away from you.
The reason is simple:
They don’t want you to have any money.
Money provides security, and the lack of it means the lack of security. And an insecure person is controllable; you’ll do whatever you think you must, in order to survive. Right?
The ultimate aim – as This Site and others warned more than 10 years ago – is to put you in a permanent cycle of debt. This provides the fatcats with a population who will work like dogs for peanuts while they reap massive profits. Happy days – for them. Misery for you.
The only way to prevent this is to get rid of the people who are inflicting it on you – and that means using your vote to shift the rot out of Parliament.
Ah, but you don’t vote, do you? You can’t be bothered with politics because it doesn’t affect you.
Take a look in your wallet. Take a look at your bank account. Do you have as much in either as you did last year?
No?
Then politics does affect you. It doesn’t matter if you’re not interested in them; the oldies in the suits are definitely interested in you.
How badly are you going to let them mess up your life before you actually do something about it?
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“Be normal” was Matt Hancock’s message to young Conservatives who have been tasked with attracting other young voters to the Tory banner.
There’s just one problem with that: they are, quite clearly, not normal at all.
The way they dress, the way they talk, the way they act – all point to a life of extreme privilege that has made them insensitive to the fact that people from other areas of society will find them – and I’m sorry, but someone has to point this out – ridiculous.
At least they’re not trying to lie to us about what they are, though.
That makes them a huge improvement on their party’s actual representatives – or indeed, past representatives… like Hancock.
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Connection lost: apparently a million people in the UK have cut their broadband connection to save money as the cost-of-living crisis bites. What will young people do, deprived of their escape from the harsh truth of life here in the 2020s?
If as many as one million people in the UK have cut off their broadband connections due to the cost-of-living crisis, does it mean disaffected young people are being deprived of their distractions?
A few days ago, in a different article, This Writer mentioned a friend who is a father, and who deplored young people’s refusal to engage in politics.
He said he saw little that interested the young apart from YouTube shorts and TikTok; anything lasting more than 15 seconds bored them, and they had no interest in society because they feel that society has taken everything that makes life worth living away from them.
So they distract themselves with Internet-based escapism.
And then this happens:
As many as one million people in the UK may have cut off their broadband due to the cost-of-living crisis.
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I want to do a series about this so if you have any suggestions about how young people could get involved – and get what they want – please leave a comment!
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Despair: it seems many people in the UK are losing the will to live – even (or especially) the young. How can we restore their joie-de-vivre?
It seems many older people, despite being in good health, are tired of life.
They provide numerous reasons for feeling that way, as listed here:
Aching loneliness, pain associated with not mattering, struggles with self-expression, existential tiredness, and fear of being reduced to a completely dependent state.
Tiredness of life also seems to arise in people who consider themselves to have lived fulfilling lives. One man of 92 told the network’s researchers:
You have no effect on anything. The ship sets sail and everyone has a job, but you just sail along. I am cargo to them. That’s not easy. That’s not me. Humiliation is too strong a word, but it is bordering on it. I simply feel ignored, completely marginalised.
For some people, this elicits a deep-rooted sense that life has been stripped of meaning – and that the tools we need to rebuild a sense of purpose are irretrievable.
The article goes on to say that this feeling is similar to what some of us can experience at other points in life – but it’s not the same.
I wonder…
How many of us are experiencing the same feelings of “not mattering” – and not being able to matter, because we live in a society that completely suppresses us.
I was talking to a friend a while ago about ways of getting young people interested in voting at the local elections. He said he thought it would be close-to-impossible to motivate people aged between 18 and, say, 24 because they lack one basic element that makes life worthwhile.
They lack hope.
So they immerse themselves in video games, in the instant gratification of social media attention… in meaningless sex. It’s simply to give themselves something to do.
They don’t believe that anything they do will make a difference. The environment is permanently maimed, in their view. Politics is a closed shop where only “elites” are allowed. And business is likewise controlled by a few barons and their families – look at Akshata Murty, the wife of UK prime minister Rishi Sunak.
In short, there are no opportunities for social mobility – for improvement of the conditions of their lives. Tory government over the last 13 years has locked off any such opportunities.
What is the answer?
Logically, it would be to give these people their hope back. That is an extremely tall order for the elderly, who feel that all of their usefulness is behind them and (in many cases) all of the skills they learned in earlier life are obsolete. It would involve finding a way to re-engage tired minds with the modern way of life, and medical advances that would restore their physical abilities.
But the young?
They can’t help us because they don’t know how to regain something they don’t think they’ve ever had.
Do we look at history? Examine how young people were motivated in past times? Do we look at geography – examine how young people are motivated in other nations?
I’m asking because I don’t have an answer.
What’s yours? I’d especially like to know if you happen to be a young person.
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Knife crime is rampant in the UK, much of it involving young people. How is £5 million of sports funding supposed to turn it around?
Here’s the story. Discussion below:
I was talking about this only last night, with a 19-year-old friend of mine.
He told me that stunts like this from Dominic Raab are pointless.
Young people are surrounded by a culture of knife crime, he said – in the music they hear, the social media they visit, and in the people they meet in their daily lives (including, often, family members).
In the year ending March 2022, there were around 45,000 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales (excluding Greater Manchester Police Force), according to the Office for National Statistics. This was nine per cent higher than in 2020/21 and a massive 34 per cent higher than in 2010/11.
How is a pittance of cash spread across the UK to fund sport supposed to help turn that tide?
Not only is it not enough, it will not be interesting to many of the youngsters who may have been involved in creating the statistics quoted above.
I wonder who provided the advice on which this was based, and on what information it was based.
And I wonder who knows how much it will cost to effect real change.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Packed: the Young Labour rally that Keir Starmer’s Labour conference app falsely stated was cancelled. Now Young Labour is refusing to campaign for party members who break picket lines.
This may have deep repercussions across the Labour Party – and indeed the Labour Movement, although the two are now very clearly separate entities.
After Labour members of Sheffield City Council broke the picket line at that city’s university, where UCU workers were striking over pay, pensions and other working conditions, Young Labour – the party’s youth branch – has announced it will not campaign for such people in any way:
Trade unions are the bedrock of the labour movement and are at the forefront of defending workers rights against corrupt bosses and Tory governments which have harmed the lives of millions of workers.
We believe if you are elected or seek selection wearing a Labour rosette, you should always respect picket lines and the tough decision workers face to take industrial action against bad bosses.
Labour was founded by trade unionists and we are proud to continue this tradition.
We will instead direct our energy, our members and events towards contributing to the election of those Labour candidates who explicitly stand by trade unions, respect picket lines and who will unwaveringly represent workers interests in elected office.
Make no mistake – this announcement is a calculated slap in the face for Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, who with his barely-legitimate general secretary David Evans unilaterally cancelled Young Labour’s conference, that must run alongside the main party conference, according to its rules.
That decision was apparently because the Young Labour conference would have featured an event showing solidarity with Palestine – at least, that’s how YL chair Jess Barnard saw it.
Note the line that a lack of solidarity “has no place in our movement”. Keir Starmer is fond of flinging that phrase around and this seems a deliberate choice to fling it back at him.
What will Starmer do?
Will he condemn his councillors and cause a rift with them? Will he condemn Young Labour and cause a rift with them?
Or will he just hide wherever he goes for weeks on end when difficult questions present themselves?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Packed: the Young Labour rally that Keir Starmer’s Labour conference app falsely stated was cancelled. This is the way to beat liars like Starmer.
The antipathy shown by Keir Starmer, David Evans and their right-wing-dominated NEC toward Young Labour suggests that it is one of the few parts of the party that deserve to grow during their blighted reign.
According to the excellent Skwawkbox, Labour’s official conference app falsely announced that Young Labour’s “Rally for a Socialist Future” yesterday evening was “cancelled”; it wasn’t.
Our rally is very much happening!
Come to the grand hotel, empress room. Get here early to make sure you get in! https://t.co/r8JUyhtkXo
Instead, the event was packed with young socialists who heard speakers including Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, Nadia Whittome and representatives of the union Unite and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
And it was a huge success:
Thank you everyone for coming to our rally tonight! After years apart and such a struggle to get here, it was wonderful to share a few hours filled with hope and determination with fellow socialists. See you next time! pic.twitter.com/N84M1JgBGf
It seems to This Writer that Young Labour is one of the few parts of the Labour Party that is actually fulfilling its stated function as an organisation for democratic socialists.
As it represents a starting-point for people who will form the future heart of the Labour Party, CLPs should not only urge young people in their constituencies to join; they should actively find roles for Young Labour members as they mature – ultimately seeking to find Parliamentary candidates among them.
It’s a way of preventing Starmer and/or his successors from parachuting Tories in as candidates instead.
Also popular among the fringe events yesterday evening was a discussion between John McDonnell and former US Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who said left-wing Labour should challenge Starmer over his rejection of socialist policies.
According to the BBC,
Mr Sanders said what “the progressive movement” on the left was calling for was not “radical demands”, but it was time to put those who said no “on the defensive”.
“There is no reason why in the UK or the United States all workers should not be able to earn decent wages and have decent benefits,” he said.
“There is no reason all over the world [why] we cannot provide quality healthcare to all human beings as a right of citizenship.”
The senator added: “Those people who tell you you can’t do it, you ask them why, why can’t you do it? Because you are afraid to stand up to big money interests? That is not an acceptable reason.”
Mr Sanders said the approach would lead to a good outcome.
He concluded: “When you speak truth to people, they often respond in a positive way.”
He makes a good point.
And when you are speaking the truth in the face of an obvious lie – like the Starmer-run Labour app’s claim that the Young Labour rally had been cancelled – you have an immediate advantage.
Starmer’s supporters have voted to make Labour’s internal struggle a long, slow war of attrition, focusing on internal party politics while Boris Johnson and his Tories do whatever they like in the real world (and I use the word “real” advisedly). That has been their choice.
It should be the choice of socialists to call out their lies, put them under the spotlight and explain in the simplest possible terms why policies for everyone – upheld by honest people – are better.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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