Tag Archives: Martin

Forde Report: Pressure on Keir Starmer mounts

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

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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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Watch Martin Lewis’s appraisal of Jeremy Hunt’s Budget

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He was name-checked by Jeremy Hunt in his Budget statement on Wednesday, and Martin Lewis went on to provide an instant response to it after the Chancellor sat down.

Here it is:

For me – and for Mr Lewis, it seems – the interesting aspect was one that Hunt didn’t mention in his speech. MoneySavingExpert.com discusses it as follows:

The maximum annual tax-free amount you can save into a pension once you’ve taken money out of it will rise from £4,000 to £10,000 from 6 April. Meanwhile, the amount you can save into your pension tax-free each year is also set to rise, as is the amount you can save into pensions over a lifetime.

You can find out more about that in the MoneySavingExpert article.

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Months after the Forde Report was published, Labour STILL hasn’t contacted its author about future steps

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Keir Starmer: yet another own goal.

Martin Forde KC, the author of a major report on allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, has said there are serious issues of racism but, since it was published in July, nobody in the organisation has contacted him to discuss what should happen next.

Mr Forde told the Express

he has “anxiety” and “genuine underlying concerns” about “racial issues within the party”.

Referring to Sir Keir’s speech last month, in which the Labour leader said the party will “never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry”, Mr Forde said: “It is not a sufficient response to say ‘that was then this is now’.”

He added: “These are serious debates that need to be heard in a respectful context. And I just feel this there’s work to be done.”

His words come after he was interviewed by Middle Eastern broadcaster Al-Jazeera for an episode of its Labour Files documentary series, in which he claimed that the BBC Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic had been “objectively entirely misleading”, and that he had been contacted by BBC representatives who wanted him to “amend” his comments on the show.

Here’s how the Al-Jazeera documentary describes what happened:

The documentary also suggests that Labour leader Keir Starmer has reneged on a promise to party members from ethnic minorities, that he would take the findings of the Forde Report seriously:

You can watch the whole documentary via the link below:

I think I would urge you to do so.

You might be able to boost your state pension by tens of thousands of pounds. Here’s how

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Every little helps: but a bit of quick work checking your pension entitlement and the amount you need to pay to ensure you get extra cash could earn you a fortune in pounds, rather than pennies, in the long run.

This could help millions of people.

It’s possible that you could boost the amount of money you receive when you start getting the state pension – possible by tens of thousands of pounds.

It takes a bit of doing but it looks well worth it.

And the deadline for doing it has been extended from April 5 to August 31.

I’ll hand you over to Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis:

I’m going to check this. Are you?

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Jeremy Hunt may extend £2,500 energy price guarantee in major climbdown

Smirking Hunt: did he know he was going to do this all along?

After saying he would not provide any more help for households to pay their energy bills, it seems Jeremy Hunt is preparing to do just that.

The Express is reporting that he will extend the government’s £2,500 energy price guarantee for three months, until wholesale energy prices fall below the current Ofgem price cap in July, as they are expected to do.

Previously, the price guarantee was set to be raised to £3,000 in what would have been a £500 rise in energy bills for the average household.

It still represents an increase of £400, as the government’s grant that has kept bills down until now is ending at the beginning of April.

If the claim is true, it will be a major victory for Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, who had petitioned the government to use some expected savings to protect households.

As This Site stated in February,

According to Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, when the announcement that the price guarantee would rise by 20 per cent was made in Hunt’s Autumn Statement, energy prices were significantly higher than they are now.

The current expectation is that in July, energy regulator Ofgem’s price cap (rather than the government’s price guarantee) will drop below both the £3,000 set to come in April and the £2,500 limit in force now, so we will all pay less.

This means the government is likely to save around £10 billion on what it was expecting to spend on the price guarantee at the time of the Autumn Statement.

Mr Lewis has written to the Chancellor, informing him of these expectations and calling on him to keep the price guarantee at its current level until July – a measure that will add only £1.5 billion to the current cost (leaving £8.5 billion in the kitty).

He has said this is better than inflicting poverty – and its devastating effects – on the people of the UK.

The Express is now saying the cost is likely to be £3 billion, which is fine because it still leaves £7 billion in expected savings.

Let’s look forward to confirmation of this move in the Budget statement on March 15.

Source: Jeremy Hunt ‘to extend £2,500 energy price guarantee’ for three months

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No more help for households, says Hunt, despite energy price cap rise in April

Grinning Hunt: the Chancellor won’t help families cope with energy price increases in April – not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t want to.

Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer and well-known misprint, has said he won’t provide any more help for households to pay for their energy bills.

This means the Tory government’s Energy Bills Support Scheme will end in March, just before the cap on our energy bills rises to an expected average of £3,000.

So we’re all facing a real-terms rise of £900 on our energy bills and Hunt will do nothing about it.

He has said,

“We constantly keep the help we can give families under review.

“But if you’re saying ‘Do I think we’re going to have the headroom to make a major new initiative to help people?’, I don’t think the situation would have changed very significantly from the Autumn Statement, which was just three months ago.”

This is not true.

According to Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, when the announcement that the price guarantee would rise by 20 per cent was made in Hunt’s Autumn Statement, energy prices were significantly higher than they are now.

The current expectation is that in July, energy regulator Ofgem’s price cap (rather than the government’s price guarantee) will drop below both the £3,000 set to come in April and the £2,500 limit in force now, so we will all pay less.

This means the government is likely to save around £10 billion on what it was expecting to spend on the price guarantee at the time of the Autumn Statement.

That’s a pretty significant change, if you ask me!

Mr Lewis has written to the Chancellor, informing him of these expectations and calling on him to keep the price guarantee at its current level until July – a measure that will add only £1.5 billion to the current cost (leaving £8.5 billion in the kitty).

He has said this is better than inflicting poverty – and its devastating effects – on the people of the UK.

You can see him saying it here:

So it seems clear that Hunt has lied; he does have the headroom to help people with a new initiative, the situation has changed significantly and he can give more help to families.

He just doesn’t want to.

Remember this: the Conservative Chancellor would rather inflict poverty on you than do his job, which is to protect you from financial troubles that are no fault of your own.

Source: Jeremy Hunt says no more help for households despite energy bills increase in April

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Martin Lewis calls for government to hold energy prices down – and he has good cause

This is so simple, I’ll leave Mr Lewis to explain it:

The bit that sold this idea to me was that poverty is more costly to the nation in so many ways.

But Tories love inflicting poverty on us. Otherwise, why did they give away £700 billion to their rich friends during and after the Covid pandemic, thereby ensuring it would not be available to shore up public services and pay packets, and keep the cost of living down?

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Shapps pretends to be money-saving expert – but Martin Lewis has other concerns…

Isn’t it offensive when government ministers pretend to be concerned about the well-being of the proles and try to show us how to save money?

And isn’t it worse when media giants like the BBC play into their hands?

Perhaps that’s why Grant Shapps’s attempt to play at being money-saving expert Martin Lewis fell as flat as it did:

This Writer hasn’t heard Mr Lewis saying anything about it – but then, he’s been wrapped up in other concerns…

He has joined YouTube stars Mark and Roxanne Hall – otherwise known as LadBaby – to record a Christmas song raising money for people affected by the cost-of-living crisis created by Tory ministers like Shapps.

Proceeds from their cover of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas will be shared equally between food bank charity The Trussell Trust and the Band Aid Foundation.

According to the BBC (how ironic),

“We never intended to release a fifth Christmas single but as ambassadors of the Trussell Trust we were not prepared to sit back and do nothing in a year when people are struggling more than ever,” Mark and Roxanne said in a statement.

They approached Bob Geldof and Midge Ure (the original writers of Do They Know It’s Christmas) to ask for permission six months ago.

“I wasn’t as difficult as people might think,” said Mark.

“Bob said he was excited to see what we were going to do, and they’ve approved everything – all the lyrics we wrote, the music video, who we got involved. Everything.”

Lewis said he was amazed to have been approached for help.

“I thought they’d confused me with someone else,” he said. “The nearest I’ve ever got to thinking about a Christmas number one is going to the loo on Boxing Day after too much orange juice the day before.

“Yet once I knew they were serious, and it was for the Trussell Trust, a hugely important charity I’ve a history with, I decided to give it a go, and do it with gusto.”

Mark said he had approached the money-saving expert because “he knows more than most how to help people in this country”.

Here’s the result of their work:

The song is available right now, right here:  https://ladbaby.lnk.to/FoodAidID!6

Remember: 100 per cent of profits from every download of the recording will go towards the fight against food hunger – and that could make a real difference to lives across the country.

Interest rate rise will affect YOU. Read this to understand how

The bank of England has just imposed the biggest interest rate rise in a generation – increasing the base rate to three per cent.

There’s no reason for it. The inflation we’re facing isn’t caused by any reasons that an interest rate rise can combat – and energy prices are falling back to normal levels. The hike in interest rates will not affect the cost-of-living crisis in any way.

Instead, it will prolong the recession that the Bank of England has already said will be the worst in many years – if not the worst ever:

And this will affect you – as Martin Lewis explained on Good Morning Britain:

Buckle up, buttercup! It’s going to be a long, hard winter – because the bankers (who, by the way, have had their ability to give themselves unlimited bonuses restored by the Tories) want you to suffer.

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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