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Why are schools falling apart when the Tory government had ALL SUMMER to fix them?

Hands up if you think the Tories have been gambling with your life: the government has known schools are in danger of collapse for years, but hasn’t devoted enough funds to fixing the problem or enough time to get the work done. Why?

It’s September, and here in the UK – every year – it means “Back to School”. That’s apart from kids whose schools are falling apart because they were built with RAAC concrete, of course.

This Writer woke up to the following tweet:

Putting the “2018” claim aside for a moment, the number 572 is what leapt out at me. Didn’t I already do an article about 572 schools?

Yes! I did!

Back on June 28, I wrote this:

According to the BBC, it means 700,000 school pupils – a little more than six per cent of the total school population – could be in danger because of the dilapidated state into which the Tories have allowed schools to fall.

The National Audit Office (NAO) report says the Department for Education (DfE) has, since 2021, assessed the risk of injury or death from a school building collapse as “very likely and critical”.

The NAO, the UK’s independent public spending watchdog, said risks had not been addressed because of years of underfunding.

It said the deteriorating condition of school buildings was damaging pupil attainment and teacher retention.

Instead of acknowledging the failures, the Tory-run Department for Education has protested that it has been “significantly investing in transforming schools”. Into death traps?

The article went on to quote the claim that £15bn had been allocated to school repairs since 2015, and after 2020, the Department for Education was allocated £3.1bn per year to keep schools safe and operation. But the DfE had requested £4bn, with £7bn per year the “best practice” level.

So the government had allocated less than half the cash needed to restore these schools properly.

This information has all been regurgitated in the news today – although the £3.1bn has been increased to £4bn for reasons not known to This Writer.

Also repeated in today’s stories is the fact that the Tories stopped funding the Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010:

The only new element seems to be the identification of bubbly “RAAC” concrete is the reason these schools are crumbling.

And apparently 104 unsafe schools are set to close (although more announcements are happening all the time, so the number could become much higher):

Let’s get back to the length of time during which the Tory government has known about this problem.

If 2018 is indeed the year it was discovered, then the failure to use lockdown time (when pupils were at home)  during the Covid-19 pandemic is unforgiveable.

If it was 2021, then the Tories still had many school holiday periods to start building works to fix these problems.

Ah, but they had only put aside less than half the cash needed for it – and by this time, the government was spending huge amounts on the consequences of Brexit.

That brings us to June 28, when I published my initial article about this. We were told that the government was aware of the issue, and that it had been told the amount of cash allocated to solve the problem was not adequate.

It would have been reasonable to expect the government to allocate the necessary funding to this problem so that building work could take place during the summer holidays.

But it seems that has not happened.

And most people probably think this is something that has only just come to light!

Now, the education of hundreds of thousands of school pupils is going to suffer because the Conservative government was too irresponsible to do the right thing at the right time.

I saw a video clip by Maximilien Robespierre, suggesting a plausible reason for this, and I’ll put it to you as a question:

Did the Tories procrastinate about this because they were hoping it would become an issue for a different government after the next general election? Because they were hoping to be able to blame this on the Labour Party?

If so, you need to ask yourself a question that should be of paramount importance when you consider how to vote in that election:

Have the Tories been gambling with the lives of your children, just to save money and win an electoral advantage?

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Starmer SCRAPS (not ‘waters down’) his pledge to strengthen workers’ rights

Keir Starmer: if he bothered to do some work instead of lounging around listening to right-wing donors, he’d known that protecting workers’ rights means employers’ productivity and profitability improves. His claim that watering down those rights is pro-business is ridiculously silly.

Keir Starmer has really done it this time; he has scrapped the Labour Party’s reason for existence.

In case it hasn’t occurred to you, the “Labour” in that party’s title means it was created to represent working people and people who have to seek work in order to make a living.

Not very long ago, Starmer pledged (he loves to pledge) stronger rights for workers if his party were to form a government.

Now that pledge is as much a part of history as all the others he has made:

Let’s be clear on this: Starmer has gone on the record many times, stating that his word is his bond and if he makes a pledge, he’ll stick by it (the following clip discusses renationalisations of privatised national utilities and the scrapping of university tuition fees, which are both Starmer pledges that have since been consigned to history):

Saul Staniforth points out that Starmer’s supporters have excuses for his decisions to withdraw all the pledges he made when he became leader of what was still, then, the Labour Party. But Saul also clarifies that the same conditions are not relevant to the pledge on workers’ rights:

It seems clear from shadow minister Stephen Morgan’s interview response below that the pledge on workers’ rights is now history:

Here’s the at-a-glance guide to what Starmer has done:

Alternatively, follow the link below for a more in-depth examination:

Amazingly, Angela Rayner is still claiming that the policy is intact and the only difference is that, now, the way it will be implemented is being laid out:

But nobody is taking that seriously, including leading figures within the party:

Ultimately, last week’s announcement means just one thing to most people:

And finally: here’s Damo with exactly the kind of earthy commentary we should expect from him:

The punchline is that Starmer’s claim that scrapping this policy is pro-business… is childish nonsense.

Firms whose employees have strong rights and support are more successful than those whose workers don’t – because their job security instils loyalty, pride in their work and a genuine desire for the entire business to prosper. They are healthier in body and mind, and more productive.

Firms that treat their employees as they will be able to continue treating them under Starmer’s new policy… well, they go under. And then the bosses blame the workers they mistreated.

Starmer would know that if he had bothered to do any research.

Sadly, it seems he doesn’t know the meaning of work.

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Starmer shouts down young people – in speech saying youngsters should speak up

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:

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?

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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Dominic Raab is to stand down as an MP. Will the tributes mention these moments?

Disgraced former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab is quitting Parliament at the next general election; he won’t stand for election again.

And it’s just as well, after he was found to have bullied civil servants on two occasions by an inquiry that reported just over a month ago.

The BBC report on his decision does its best to give him a reasonable send-off, covering his career in terms of the jobs he’s held in government.

This Writer feels no compulsion to exercise such restraint. So what shall we talk about?

How about his decision, as Justice Secretary, to refuse an inquiry into the sexual abuse of thousands of (now) men at youth detention centres when they were young boys? We still don’t know why he did that. Will we ever, now he is going?

His failure to get the late comedian and TV presenter Paul O’Grady’s name right while trying to pay tribute to him (and his ill-advised decision to combine this blunder with an attack on so-called ‘woke’ comedy)?

I’ve got a clip of this:

His plan to strip human rights protections from people who have been targeted by police for ‘stop and search’ procedures and/or questioning over their immigration status, which was dubbed racist because ethnic minority groups are far more likely to have been targeted in these ways?

His refusal to accept the facts of unemployment? I have audio of this:

His almost fact-free defence of Evgeny Lebedev’s elevation to the House of Lords?

His hopeless attempt to defend then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s failure to wear a mask during a hospital visit, when rules dictated that everybody should wear masks at all times? Let’s have some video of that as well, shall we?

His fascist claim that his planned overhaul of the Human Rights Act would include a mechanism to “correct” (ha ha!) rulings by the European Court of Human Rights?

His rejection of calls to treat misogyny as a hate crime – despite the fact that he didn’t know what misogyny is?

His speech to a Tory Party conference in which he used a hypothetical situation that it is doubtful any judge would allow to happen as an excuse to justify removing human rights from all of us?

His admission (as Foreign Secretary) that the evacuation of Afghanistan was a shambles because the UK’s intelligence agencies were outsmarted by a gang of desert-dwelling bandits?

The fact that he was on holiday in Crete when Kabul fell to the Taliban, and at first refused to return to the UK when the emergency was reported to him? He did deny paddleboarding while UK citizens scrambled to escape the new regime; according to Raab, the sea was “closed”.

His failure to realise that much of UK trade relies on the Dover-Calais crossing?

His 2018 tweet about wages rising faster than they had in years – which only brought attention to the fact that wages had fallen drastically under the Conservatives and had never been as high as they were under Gordon Brown?

The list goes on and on. The above only goes back five years!

Raab has been an utter disaster as a member of Parliament and a government minister and his departure will improve the quality of the UK’s leadership. Sadly, though, he isn’t even the worst Tory minister. What will it take to winkle them out?

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The Coronation is bringing out the worst in SOME Britons

King Charles: does he really think people should be forced to seem happy, under threat of arrest if they display … alternative viewpoints?

I don’t know about you, but I’m already fed up with having jolliness forced on me because of the Coronation.

It isn’t because I’m an anti-monarchist; my attitude to the Monarchy is primarily indifference.

No, it’s because the occasion has brought out all the officious types who want to tell us what to do and how to feel.

So I agree with the sentiment below – although, like Wolfie, I’ve no idea who crystallised it.

For those who can’t read images, it states: “”Dear rest of the world.

“Don’t be fooled by any propaganda you see coming out of the UK this weekend. The mood here is not jubilant, it is sour. England is a fascist nightmare, where there are more food banks than branches of McDonalds. We don’t want pageantry, we want affordable food, and rent, and bills. The timing of this coronation, with all its gold and bejewelled opulence, couldn’t be more distasteful and sickening. It’s unjustifiable and it’s unwanted. If we’re asking God to save anyone it should be the 14.4 million people living in poverty, not the King.”

Needless to say, the comment has been disputed – by people who want to impose a happy mood on the rest of us.

I don’t think anyone should bother protesting against the coronation, though. There’s no point, with the fascist Public Order Act now in force and police empowered to arrest anyone expressing a dissenting point of view in public. Here’s an example of them using their new powers to do just that:

The Metropolitan Police have already said they are running a “multi-layered” security operation that includes “managing crowds” and “carrying out searches”, with “low” “tolerance” for “disruption”:

And they have the full support of some highly dubious public figures.

Here’s one:

I mean, wow.

Last I heard, even after the Public Order Act, here in the UK it is a principle of justice that someone has to actually commit a crime before they can be jailed.

And here’s another: prime minister Rishi Sunak once criticised the Chinese government for refusing to listen to protesters in that country, but apparently he thinks only people in foreign countries should pay any attention to protest; anyone taking issue with whatever’s going on in the UK now clearly needs to suffer a “clampdown”.

So, even though most of us have been driven into poverty by the Establishment that is propping up the Monarch, even though there will be “low tolerance” for anyone pointing this out and the police will be on hand to make sure we do as we’re told, and even though the money being spent on this event would be better-used helping the long-suffering people of the UK to survive…

We’re all supposed to be happy? Or else?

I’m not sure I can manage that.

Here’s the reason nobody is stopping online scammers

This is revealing from Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis – who came out with a naughty word in a Parliamentary committee while discussing online scammers.

It seems the government won’t legislate to stop online scammers because it’s too complicated – but the firms running the big internet platforms can’t be bothered unless it’s worth their while; the cost of being sued for failing to do it is less than the profit from the advertising revenue they get from the crooks.

See for yourself:

And why not employ people to stop the scammers, rather than rely on a tech solution? The tech companies are the biggest and most profitable, so they can afford to do it.

They just need an incentive. If they won’t take the carrot, maybe it’s time for the stick.

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Truss v Biden on ‘trickle-down’ economics – while her government hides the facts

It is as though Liz Truss spent the Mourning Period asking herself how she could make herself appear stupider than Boris Johnson on the world stage.

She has gone to a summit in the United States, pushing her tax-cutting plan to boost the economy, saying “trickle-down” economics will work – at the same time as President Biden posted on Twitter: “I am sick of trickle-down economics. It has never worked.”

Worse still, she already knows her plan won’t work because she has economic forecasts telling her that. So her government is refusing to publish that information.

Watch:

The BBC report mentioned in the clip can be found here.

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Cost-of-living crisis: Tories demand clampdown on people who steal to eat

Tory Kit Malthouse: his party has inflicted poverty on millions and now he is determined that if anybody is driven to steal food, just so they can eat, police should prosecute them with the full force of the law rather than exercise their discretion to deliver justice.

The Tory government has opened up a rift with the new Chief Inspector of Constabulary over people who steal to eat because of the cost-of-living crisis.

“The impact of poverty, and the impact of lack of opportunity for people, does lead to an increase in crime. There’s no two ways about that,” Andy Cooke, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said.

He said officers should use their “discretion” when deciding whether to prosecute people who steal in order to eat: “What they’ve got to bear in mind is what is the best thing for the community, and that individual, in the way they deal with those issues.”

But he insisted he was not advocating an amnesty for people who commit crimes of poverty, nor “giving a carte blanche for people to go out shoplifting”. Instead, he advised officers to make sure such matters of law enforcement are “dealt with in the best way possible”.

The Guardian found at least one police representative who agreed with this approach:

One chief constable whose area includes pockets of poverty agreed with Cooke. “There is a difference between a first-time offender who steals bread, cheese or milk to eat, and someone stealing to feed an addiction,” they said. “Police are there to help people in extreme need, that’s why we joined. We can signpost them to a food bank or help like that.”

But the Tory government takes a different view – Policing Minister Kit Malthouse wants to crack down hard on the people his party’s policies have driven into poverty.

On Thursday’s (May 19) morning interview round, he told LBC: “I wrote to chief constables just a year or so ago saying they should not be ignoring those seemingly small crimes.

“We first of all believe the law should be blind and police officers should operate without fear or favour in prosecution of the law.”

What did you expect? Tory policy has been to privatise the prison service, remember.

Perhaps they want to fill those prisons for their private business cronies.

And one more thing:

Isn’t it hypocritical for the Tories to want harsh action against people suffering as a result of their policies – but think it is hardly worth mentioning when their own leader ignores their policies in order to have a big party?

Source: Officers should use discretion over stealing to eat, says police watchdog | Police | The Guardian

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Bristol ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters tear down statue of slaver Colston – and about time, too!

Over it goes: could there be any more clear ‘down with racism’ demand than the toppling of the statue to slaver Edward Colston in Bristol?

Having been born in Bristol, This Writer is aware of the unsavoury slaver history of Edward Colston, and the reverence in which he has been held has confused me for years.

But, being part of a Bristol family, it was hard to criticise him directly. Many of us have historical links with slavery and until earlier this week, I had believed that my family had such links.

Apparently I was mistaken. A BBC documentary about former Mayor John Kerle Haberfield (a great-(many times)-uncle revealed that he had not been involved with the slave trade and nor were any other of my family on that side. It’s possible that other ancestors were, although I have no evidence to suspect it.

I attended St Mary Redcliffe & Temple School, where around a fifth of the pupils were members of Colston House, named after the slaver. The school changed the house name last year (2019) in favour of African-American female mathematician Katherine Johnson. I was a member of Francombe House, which was less controversially named after a former head teacher of the school.

Campaigners have been working to end the veneration of the slave trader Colston, who ran the Royal Africa Company that enslaved around 12,000 children, for many decades. My understanding is that calls to tear down the statue of Colston were taking place 40 years ago, at least.

Read more about him here:

(Historians may also find this interesting:)

Well, yesterday it finally happened.

Public feeling against racism boiled over during a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration prompted by the death of George Floyd in the United States, and after years of campaigning to get rid of the Grade II listed (why was it Grade II listed?) statue, people decided to tear it down themselves and throw it into the River Avon – in a manner reminiscent of the way Colston himself would throw unruly slaves – weighed down with chains – into the sea during slaving voyages.

Satirically, Google Maps sprang into action, providing at least one element of humour:

Police have said they are treating the incident as an act of criminal damage, which they are investigating. This has given some people another opportunity for satire:

How will the people of Bristol replace the statue? It seems some have ideas already:

Personally, I don’t think a statue to a Sheffield group, in Bristol, would particularly please the people of either city.

I really don’t think this would be appropriate, either:

Maybe in Islington.

Perhaps most revealing has been the reaction of different public figures to what is a clear act of vandalism, even if the reasoning behind it is supportable.

Priti Patel’s response should be shocking, considering her own racial background:

As should Sajid Javid’s:

And, indeed, some members of the Labour Party have questions to answer:

Others take a different view:

If you’re confused about “structural” racism:

Of course, it’s not unknown for statues to be torn down if people and/or their deeds fall out of favour with the public.

You won’t see a statue glorifying Nazism or anybody who supported that movement in Germany!

And in Russia and Iraq, statues of Communist leaders and Saddam Hussein (respectively) were torn down after those regimes were toppled.

Even yesterday, the toppling-in-effigy of Colston wasn’t unique:

And back in the UK, people are eyeing possible future candidates for the Colston treatment:

https://twitter.com/niall_nowhin/status/1269725946778714112

https://twitter.com/JordanGSmith25/status/1269664099652308997

And of course the situation has provided more opportunities for right-wing idiots to make fools of themselves:

We are left with the overwhelming impression that the removal of the Colston statue was right, no matter how it was achieved.

But we live in a country where somebody may go to prison for making it happen. If you don’t think that’s right, you need to be thinking about what you are going to do about it.

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.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Priti Patel takes herself too seriously and that’s why this blunder is so satisfying

Gone is the trademark smirk: perhaps Ms Patel doesn’t think it’s funny when she makes a stupid mistake.

This is so funny I can’t let it pass by.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, announced over the weekend…

Without the slightest hint of self-consciousness, This Writer should add…

That shoplifting in the UK has fallen, when compared with the same time last year.

It seems she had forgotten a small detail:

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.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
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The Livingstone Presumption is now available
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HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
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HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook