Tag Archives: empty

News-hacks take note: Army ‘on standby’ to deliver food after BREXIT drained UK of lorry drivers

At least Metro couched its reporting of the government-sponsored lie by saying the crisis caused by the lack of lorry drivers “is thought to have been exacerbated by the so-called ‘pingdemic'”.

We know the shortage of lorry drivers has little to do with the government’s Covid-19 warning app on mobile phones, though, don’t we?

It happened because of Brexit; the drivers have all been sent back to the EU nations where they were born.

And now the army has been put on standby to deliver supplies to supermarkets.

That’s 2,000 qualified HGV drivers to make up an expected shortfall of 100,000. Does that seem realistic to you?

We all know the truth, and we’re all saying more or less the same thing:

There is one conclusion to be drawn from this story.

It is that Metro is written by stenographers for government propagandists, rather than by proper reporters.

That’s not my opinion; it’s that of Ian Leslie in The Critic, who wrote the words quoted here:

“Journalists check our stories about what’s going on against the facts and give us different, more truthful angles.”

That certainly doesn’t seem to have happened here! A caveat that the problem “is thought to have been” due to the ‘pingdemic’ doesn’t cut any ice.

Aren’t we lucky to have journalism like that of Vox Political, here on the social media! And what a shame most people are too busy reading Metro to even give it a glance.

Here’s a thought:

Why not share this article with your friends, to show them what they’re missing?

Source: Army ‘on standby’ to deliver food amid shortage of lorry drivers | Metro News

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Brexiteer bread-maker tries to blame driver shortage on Covid-19

Brexiteer Tory-funding bread manufacturer Warburtons has tried to blame its failure to keep up with local deliveries on Covid-19 when the shortage of drivers is actually attributable to Brexit.

In an article in The Grocer on July 19, the firm responded to a tweet complaining about non-delivery due to driver shortages:

We, like many businesses, are experiencing higher levels of absence due to the rise in community infection rates of Covid-19 and the knock on effect that has with more people having to self-isolate.”

But industry leaders soon went on the record to say that the shortage of lorry drivers is due to Brexit – and that supermarket shelves are likely to stay empty for at least five months:

They say the shortage of drivers can only be fixed if EU drivers are allowed back in the country.

Logistics UK, which represents freight owners including supermarkets.

It estimates a shortage of 90,000 HGV drivers including an estimate 25,000 EU truckers who have gone home following Brexit. On top of that there is a backlog of 25,000 applications for trucker driving licences.

Being a Brexiteer company, Warburtons is unlikely to admit that Brexit has affected it. Chairman Jonathan Warburton has previously made his feelings known:

“Brexit is a very good thing to have happened. We are well out of the rotting corpse of Europe. We could either continue to be in the European Union and wait for it to all to collapse around us, or we could make our own way out of it and crack on as an independent nation.”

Now we see how that is working for him – and he is trying to deny it.

Several thoughts occurred to me while watching this train crash.

Firstly, they could solve their problem by hiring new drivers. Unfortunately, this is not possible because they would all need HGV licences and “there is a backlog of 25,000 applications for trucker driving licences.” So the Tory government is letting industry down. Should have thought of this before finalising Brexit – they only had four years of thinking time!

Secondly, there’s no reason to have any sympathy for this firm. It supported Brexit and is a regular donor to the Conservative Party whose government under Boris Johnson pushed Brexit down our collective throats. See This Site’s article on Tory donors for further information.

Finally, This Writer is old enough to remember news reports showing empty shelves in the former Soviet supermarket GUM, with Tories of the day spouting dread predictions that this would happen in the UK if the socialists were allowed back into government.

How ironic that it is under a Tory government, and due to Tory policies, that our supermarket shelves have emptied.

Source: Warburtons struggling to keep up with local deliveries as driver shortage bites | News | The Grocer

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Why have UK university students had to waste £1 BILLION on digs they couldn’t use?

Rent strike: students are permanently penniless. When you see how much this year’s alumni have had to pay – for NOTHING – you’ll understand why they’re raging.

Those Tories really are selective about who they help with the costs of Covid-19, aren’t they?

I remember being a student. Most of the time, I hardly had two pennies to rub together. The rented accommodation available to us was – mostly – diabolical. And expensive.

One place was damp. It gave me bronchitis.

But at least I got to live in it!

Since the Covid crisis started, according to a survey, the

average student has so far paid £1,621 in rent for unrefunded empty rooms.

In total, according to advice website Save the Student,

university students have wasted nearly £1bn on empty rooms in flat shares and halls of residence that they have been unable to use because of coronavirus restrictions this academic year.

The website estimates rents are so high that they take up three-quarters of their maintenance loans at an average of £146 per week, so it’s no wonder that

Students’ anger with high rents… boiled over on UK campuses this term as students launched the largest rent strike in 40 years.

There has been a patchy response from universities, private halls of residence and landlords, with some refusing discounts while others have offered full rebates.

I have a lot of sympathy for the universities, and for the landlords – as well as for the students themselves.

It is unfair for the accommodation providers to foot the bill for thousands of empty rooms when the situation was thrust on them by the government – albeit admittedly in response to a nationwide pandemic.

It just happens to be even more unfair for them to demand that students pay the bill, rather than the government. This is loaned money, remember – they have to pay it back, plus interest, over a period of decades to come.

Businesses – especially the bigger ones – have received huge subsidies, and employees have had 80 per cent of their wages paid by a government “furlough” scheme. Why weren’t students added to that, at the very least?

The Guardian story tells us the government has provided students with £70 million in hardship funding, which seems to fall quite a long way short of what they’ve had to shell out.

Considering the billions given to Tory cronies and their – let’s be honest – fake firms for nonexistent or inadequate Covid-related services, this is an insult to the next generation of the UK’s movers and shakers.

Let’s hope they remember it.

Source: UK university students wasted £1bn in a year on empty accommodation | Student housing | The Guardian

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‘Starve a kid to save a quid’ Tories face surging campaign of ’empty-plate’ protests

Perhaps they thought we would forget. If so, they thought wrong.

Conservative MPs who voted to starve children whose families have been plunged into poverty as a result of their selfish policies are being made to face the realities of their decisions, with scores of paper plates, empty apart from messages of condemnation, delivered to their constituency offices.

They aren’t likely to make a fuss about it, as they did about social media condemnation, for a simple reason: they can hide the evidence and pretend it hasn’t happened.

So This Site recommends that anybody laying out a plate protest at their Tory’s constituency office take photographs of it and put them on Facebook, Twitter and your favourite other social media.

That’s what people in Brecon and Radnorshire did when they launched a plate protest against local Tory MP Fay Jones, who voted to starve children in England even though those in her own constituency will receive meals over the holidays, courtesy of the Labour-run Welsh Government.

An initial set of plates was put out yesterday morning (October 29) and looked like this:

But when more people arrived to add to the protest later, all of this original set had disappeared – cleared away by Tories who were desperate to pretend there was nothing to see, it seems.

So they put down some more:

This site knows of two protests over the weekend.

One is at Pemberton Conservative Club.

The other is at the Con Club in Leigh.

The explanatory information makes chilling reading:

“In a country that rates 8th in the world for military spending, cutting free school meals during a pandemic impoverishing working class children is totally unacceptable and shows the cruel and callous attitude of the current government towards its own citizens.

“This is a political party which is completely out of touch and has shown nothing but contempt for the electorate that trusted them with power in 2019.

“We will stand in solidarity as a community to oppose this form of state-inflicted cruelty against those who are most vulnerable in society.

“After 10 years of austerity we will not agree that normal people should be the ones to suffer, especially children. We demand this government reverses its decision to end free school meals.”

Plate protests are taking off across the country, as these news reports show:

Plate protest at MP’s office

Empty plate protest outside Wrexham office of Sarah Atherton MP after vote against school meals extension

Paper plate protest at Walsall MP’s office as free school meals row rages on

Paper plates sent to west Dorset MP, Chris Loder, in protest

Empty plate protest over Norwich MP’s vote not to extend free school meals

‘Plate protest’ to be held outside under fire MP Selaine Saxby’s office

Falmouth MP Cherilyn Mackrory empty plate protest at office

Paper plates stuck to Walsall MP’s office in protest over free school meals row

‘Empty plate’ protests held outside Nottingham Conservative Party offices

We aren’t forgetting.

We aren’t going away.

Will you come and use a paper plate to have your say?

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#ANewSlogan for #Labour and #KeirStarmer – but it’s the same old #NewLabour underneath

Empty: Keir Starmer’s slogans are as empty as the promises in the 10 pledges he made when he was trying to be elected Labour leader (he has broken nine of them already).

Keir Starmer isn’t fooling anyone with his new empty slogan.

On the eve of Labour Connected – the party’s virtual conference, he’s replacing the previous empty slogan, “Under New Management” with one making the unlikely claim that he and his party are “A New Leadership”.

The problem is, neither Keir Starmer nor Labour under him have provided any leadership at all.

What are his achievements to date? Hmm…

Approving Boris Johnson’s disastrous Covid-19 strategy.

Agreeing with Boris Johnson that schools should open in September.

Paying off a gang of media-savvy ex-Labour apparatchiks before they could take the party into a court case that Labour was expected to win.

If that is leadership then Boris Johnson is the world’s greatest statesman (ha ha)!

Iain Watson of the BBC reckons the slogan has a lot of work to do:

First, it is designed to contrast favourably with Boris Johnson’s leadership – and build on Sir Keir’s sustained attempt to portray the current government as lacking competence.

Second, it dovetails with Labour’s plan to “introduce” Sir Keir to the country.

Third, it will be deployed to try to eliminate a negative.

While he may not have been fully introduced to the electorate, the good news for Sir Keir Starmer is that his personal ratings are positive.

The bad news for Starmer is that while he has made a relatively positive impression since becoming Labour leader in March, the party has been lagging behind the Conservatives in most polls.

The aim now is to bring the party’s standing closer to Starmer’s.

That’s a lot of work for a three-word falsehood to do.

If you visit the BBC story, you’ll see that among the illustrations is one of Tony Blair unveiling his slogan, “New Labour, New Britain” back in 1994.

They were empty words. New Labour, we soon discovered, was just a continuation of old Tory neoliberalism. Margaret Thatcher later described it as her greatest achievement.

I mention this because there seems to be a clear progression in Starmer’s slogans.

Could it be that he is marching with ponderous predictability, from “Under New Management”, through “A New Leadership”…

… back to “New Labour”?

Source: Labour Party: Starmer aims to build trust with ‘new leadership’ slogan – BBC News

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How needy is this? Liberal Democrat sends leaflet after leaflet of flapdoodle into our letterboxes

Truer words were never told: I don’t know the context of Lana Lane’s original post but it applies very well to constituents of Brecon and Radnorshire who might actually be considering placing their vote with the Liberal Democrat candidate – or indeed the Conservative, Brexit and UKIP candidates, for that matter.

I don’t know about you but I am sick to death of Jane Dodds, the Liberal Democrat candidate in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election.

We constituents are being bombarded by her. Leaflet after leaflet comes thudding through our doors.

Campaigner after campaigner has come tramping up to finger our doorbells.

Yesterday (July 13), no less than four different election communications landed on my doorstep.

Two were about Brexit. The first – a letter – said, “As your new MP, I’ll fight to stop Brexit. I’ll work hard every day to stand up for local jobs, our NHS and for the local community services we all depend on.”

How? How, exactly, is she going to do that?

She doesn’t say. She scares local farmers with a warning that the “no-deal” Brexit plans of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage will saddle them with 40 per cent tariffs on lamb exports – but doesn’t say a single word about how she would stop it, because she can’t. One MP won’t make any difference at all.

In fact, she wouldn’t have to do anything in any case. Current Parliamentary arithmetic makes a “no-deal” Brexit of this kind unlikely to win any support at all, and if any future prime minister tries it, it would probably break their government.

What does she mean by saying she’ll “stand up” for local jobs and community services? That doesn’t imply that she’ll actually do anything – and you’d be a fool to think that she will.

And of course the NHS is a devolved responsibility; the Welsh Assembly has responsibility for it, not Parliament, so Ms Dodds won’t have any influence over it at all.

The second – a leaflet intended to gather voter information (that’s what the coupon at the bottom is for) – is even more misleading. “This by-election is a unique and urgent opportunity to change the direction of our country,” it states.

How is Jane Dodds, a member of a minority party who has lost three elections in Montgomeryshire, going to manage that where so many hundreds of experienced Parliamentarians have failed? She won’t.

If she wins on the basis of this information, then I invite Liberal Democrat voters to come back after October 31 and demonstrate how she stopped Brexit.

The third election communication – another letter – is so full of flannel I thought she was trying to wash me. Or brainwash me, at least.

“I want to do more to tackle injustice, help people to get the best chance in life, and end years and years of being let down by Westminster politicians.” Flannel!

“Living here in Powys, just outside Welshpool, I understand all too well just how important it is that we have an MP who understands the unique challenges we all face.” Flannel – and falsehood. Welshpool isn’t in Brecon and Radnorshire and conditions there are different.

“I love living in Powys but that does not mean I don’t think it can be even better.” Flannel!

“At home and in Westminster, I will fight to fix our broken politics. I will fight to help protect our Welsh health services. And I will fight to stand up for Welsh farmers and businesses.” Flannel!

Worse still is the claim that she has been “overwhelmed by the number of Labour, Plaid and Green supporters who’ve told me that they will be backing me in this election”. I know that Plaid Cymru and the Green Party stood aside to allow Ms Dodds to be the single candidate who unequivocally supports the undemocratic position of cancelling Brexit without referring the decision back to the people of the UK – but Labour hasn’t. For the good of the whole of the UK, Labour won’t.

And while it is entirely likely that some habitual Labour voters have been hoodwinked by the usual Liberal Democrat flannel that a tactical vote for them is the only way to keep out the Tories or the other right-wingers, I think her claim that “many” have done so is stretching credibility to breaking-point.

Finally, the fourth election communication was another leaflet, containing her “positive plan” for Brecon and Radnorshire. Here are the bullet-points:

  • “Back our health services and improve social care” – this is a devolved responsibility that is nothing to do with Westminster MPs.
  • “Protect vital rural services” – an impossibility for a single MP in a party that is not in government.
  • “Oppose Conservative cuts” – a meaningless promise, especially from a member of the party that, in Coalition with the Conservatives, helped impose many of those cuts between 2010 and 2015. That’s the reason I used the image at the top of this piece, warning about people voting for the removal of free health care, free education, affordable housing and social security. As a Liberal Democrat, Ms Dodds belongs to a party that helped push us towards the dismantling of those vital services – and a vote for her now may well help finish the job.
  • “Fix our broken politics” – another meaningless promise, and she doesn’t even try to say what this means.
  • “Stand up for Welsh farmers and local businesses” – also meaningless, because she does not say what she will do.

The end result is a big pile of waste paper, covered in soundbites. Ms Dodds doesn’t even talk a good fight.

She just fills our homes with meaningless gibberish.

And how will she be if she wins? My bet is, we’ll never hear from her again – at least until the next election.

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Death throes: Semi-empty auditorium at Tory conference suggests the Party is over

Empty seats: Apparently the auditorium is smaller than some local theatres yet fewer than half the places were filled on the first day of the conference. Conservatism is a dying movement.

Remember the general election campaign last year, when every appearance by Theresa May was carefully stage-managed to make it seem she was surrounded by admirers – right up to the moment someone took a wide-angle photograph showing only about 20 people turned up?

As you can see from the image above, matters have only worsened in the year-and-several-months since then and the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham has practically nobody attending.

One reason for this may be the fact that the Tories’ conference app was found to be giving away attendees’ personal details to anybody who asked (as described yesterday).

A few others are listed in the tweet below including, most perceptively: “No ideas. No inspiration. No clue.”

This Site will discuss elsewhere the Grenfell and Windrush blunders listed in the hashtags. For now, the following images tell their own tale:

https://twitter.com/MattTurner4L/status/1046397806196469760

Nadeem Ahmed was right – Momentum carried out a protest against the conference, which led to the following complaint from Tory MP Nadine ‘Mad Nad’ Dorries:

If anything could highlight the failings of the current crop of Conservatives, it’s that remark. The Tories can’t be the party of free speech if they’re trying to shut it down.

Bevan Boy makes the matter clear:

So Ms Dorries has confirmed the Tories as the party of repression, as she wanted to stop voters exercising their right to free speech.

And what does the fiasco of the malfunctioning conference app tell us?

Well, we are told it was created by a private contractor who was hired by the Conservatives…

I think we all know the answer to that: No.

But I am reminded of a phrase that has almost become a cliche over the last few years: “Repeating the same mistake and expecting different results is the very definition of madness.”

We all know that outsourcing to private companies can be a huge mistake. Look at Carillion. Look at the East Coast Main Line. Look at NHS England.

So it seems to me that the app disaster is a microcosm of the reasons the Conservative Party is disappearing up its own inadequacy.

They keep repeating the same mistake – and they’re getting the result we all expected.

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Lack of cash means NHS is mothballing entire wards, exactly when they are needed

There is plenty of money in the UK but the Tories have decided to starve public services like the NHS to give tax breaks to the very rich.

This has led to chronic underfunding for services across the board, including health – which has also had to cope with the introduction of profit-making private companies into the system which drain out even more money.

They talk about funding increases but the amount they provide each year is barely a quarter of the average since the NHS was formed in 1948.

There can be only one conclusion: Whatever the Tories are planning for the NHS, it isn’t good for your health.

Hospitals are mothballing scores of wards, closing them to patients despite the NHS’s ongoing beds crisis, new figures reveal.

At the last count in September 82 “ghost wards” were recorded containing 1,429 empty beds, the equivalent of two entire hospitals, according to data provided by hospital trusts across England. It represents a sharp increase on the 32 wards and 502 beds that were unused four years earlier, statistics obtained under freedom of information laws show.

The closures, often a result of hospitals not having enough staff or the money to keep wards open, have occurred at a time when the health service is under unprecedented pressure and struggling to cope with demand for beds.

Source: Revealed: 82 ‘ghost wards’ containing 1,400 empty NHS beds | Society | The Guardian

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Theresa May’s promise on affordable housing is emptier than her party’s conference

Congratulations to Theresa May, who has promised to invest an additional £2bn in affordable housing. Another empty promise.

According to the BBC: “The Conservative Party says that will fund the building of an additional 25,000 new homes for social rent, expected to be mainly council housing, over two years from 2019.

“In 2010-11, 39,570 additional homes were made available for social rent in England, either through being built or bought. In 2015-16 there were only 6,800 extra homes.”

Apparently that is not what the Tories said to the press at the conference, after Mrs May’s speech. It was as follows:

It’s also less than the amount built in 2015-16.

All in all, not much of a promise, is it?

Even if it were on top of the number built in 2015-16, or being built over two years – and we have no guarantee that developers will agree to help out…

It will not come anywhere near addressing the crisis in housing.

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George Osborne naked – but is it art?

Cor - what a big... carrot: The painting of George Osborne symbolising his empty promises by Kaya Mar [Image: www.kayamarart.com].

Cor – what a big… carrot: The painting of George Osborne symbolising his empty promises by Kaya Mar [Image: www.kayamarart.com].

He was not amused.

It seems this was not what George Osborne had in mind when he hosted a boozy awayday in the Cotswolds to boost Tory spirits ahead of the Rochester by-election and the general election.

The Guardian has reported that he was “straight-faced” when former Tory minister Sir Alan Duncan whipped out a naked portrait of him, representing Osborne’s empty policies and failed promises, during a speech at a dinner in a four-star hotel near Chipping Norton.

Apparently this is Osborne’s ‘just desserts’ for offering unfunded tax cuts to the electorate in advance of the election next year.

It seems the event – ostensibly held to strategise against the threat of UKIP – subsequently deteriorated into the usual chaos of any event attended by the Bullingdon hooligans.

The painting is by Kaya Mar, whose images of politicians in the raw can be viewed on his website.

The artist’s website had this to say: “It was reported that a stone-faced George Osborne was furious about being humiliated by Duncan, who went on to make comparisons between Kaya’s typically fat-bottomed naked politicians in his satirical paintings and the Chancellor’s own increasing waistline – a consequence, perhaps, of all those lavish breakfasts, luncheons and dinners paid for by grateful, un-prosecuted bankers and lobbyists working for corporate privateers and plunderers since he wafted into 11 Downing Street all those hundreds of billions of borrowed pounds ago.

“There is, of course, a glaringly obvious subtext to that weekend’s bad-tempered exchanges and barbs; namely the bitter acrimony felt towards David Cameron and George Osborne by a significantly large cadre of back-bench MPs, who have always disliked Cameron’s slick PR style of policy-lite governance which many feel has done the party a great deal of reputational damage.

“The internal blood-letting and back-stabbing … signifies that fiercely partiisan rival camps for the inevitable forthcoming leadership challenge are finally emerging from the shadows, and have now spilled out into the public view.”

The site went on to suggest that the greatest threats to Cameron do not come from Osborne, but from the “polar opposites” represented by London Mayor Boris Johnson and former Education Secretary (recently demoted to Chief Whip) Michael Gove.

“Johnson is hugely popular for his well-honed theatrical ‘bumbling’, which he uses as an effective smokescreen to disguise his enormous ambition to be Prime Minister,” the site claims. “Michael Gove, with his patently ‘British Empire’ beliefs around education, crime and punishment, is well-liked by the reactionary wing of the party, for whom he represents the best chance of putting the UK’s cultural clock back 90 years.”

It may be too much to hope that this resentment will bubble up beyond symbolic gestures like this – at least, before the election – but it seems that the writing, or at least the painting, is on the wall for both George Osborne and David Cameron.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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