This BBC Question Time audience member didn’t mince her words on the Conservative government approach to anti-social behaviour – she turned the Tories into mincemeat instead.
Watch as she describes how it is the Conservatives’ own choices that have increased the risk of crime while failing to do anything to counter it.
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Who is this audience member from the BBC’s Question Time on March 9, 2023?
He explained the reasons behind the Conservative government’s Illegal Migration Bill in highly perceptive terms; anybody could see the truth behind his words:
Someone should sign him up for their political party and get him to contest a Parliamentary seat at the next election.
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Twilight in Westminster: should MPs get a medal and a large ‘golden handshake’ payment when their days here are done?
MPs leaving Parliament should be awarded with medals and a more generous redundancy payment in order to help them move into other jobs, according to a committee… of MPs.
The claim is that some MPs face “financial challenges and hardship” after leaving Parliament, with the average loss-of-office payment being far less than in comparable countries.
That’s all very well – but MPs are already paid much more than the average UK wage. Many of them have second (or multiple) jobs as well. And of course we know of infamous instances when MPs also used their positions to corruptly feather their nests.
The issue was discussed on the BBC’s Politics Live show:
Watching the clip, though, do you think the panel got to the heart of the matter? Or did they avoid the more difficult points?
This Writer certainly thought there was more to it, as my tweeted commentary bears witness:
Ha ha! MPs should get medals and bigger payoffs when they lose their seats – according to a cross-party group… of MPs! What a gang of grasping crawlers! Don't they take enough from the public as it is? Their salaries are THREE TIMES the national average! #PoliticsLive
How do you attract the best people to stand for Parliament? Difficult question, @kezdugdale – certainly not through the party political system that favours yes-people for the current leaders of the parties.
Perhaps MPs should get performance-related pay? They should be paid on how much they've done to improve living standards, raise pay, lower bills, cut crime and defend the nation? That sort of thing? Trouble is, then none of them would be paid at all! #PoliticsLive
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For the many? It seems Labour is pursuing many people with questionable accusations that may seem like misbehaviour but don’t actually amount to it.
The UK’s political party that should be standing in solidarity with people facing serious life problems has just suspended a member in exactly that situation – for no very good reason.
Liam Stephen has spent the last seven Christmases fundraising and running food drives for the homeless in his hometown of Scunthorpe.
He also once ran his own charity providing free musical opportunities and instruments to disadvantaged children called Songbooks and Glory.
But he was left facing eviction after losing his grandfather, his partner and his job, and having treatment for psychiatric problems.
The left-wing YouTube programme Not The Andrew Marr Show learned of his troubles and launched a crowdfunder that has paid his rent – for the moment.
Liam was a member of the Labour Party – but then the show’s creators learned of another bombshell that hit his life:
Today the Labour Party suspended Liam for 'discussions and associations with previous suspended members'. Labour know Liam has just come out of psychiatric care having attempted suicide and is facing homelessness.https://t.co/Aaoxa0D2Rx
It’s the reason for the suspension that is dumbfounding: “discussions and associations with previous suspended members”.
There’s no reference to the reasons these people’s part memberships were suspended, and no suggestion that Liam has even shown any sympathy with whatever offences these other – alleged – people were said to have committed.
Well done, Keir Starmer! Way to kick a man when he’s down.
One really has to question the direction the Labour Party has taken under this man.
It seems to have gone from being a party that supports people through unjust accusations and hardship to one that makes such accusations and inflicts such hardship.
Fortunately people – whose beliefs actually coincide with those on which the Labour Party was originally founded – have taken up Liam’s case and are helping him.
But how many more are being deliberately targeted by the right-wing husk of a once-great organisation that has been hollowed out by a leader who got where he is under false pretences*?
*Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership after making a series of 10 “pledges” in support of socialist ideals – all of which he has since broken.
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Red light district: but it seems some MPs are treating the Parliamentary estate in a worse way than a brothel, as the alleged shenanigans here are not necessarily consensual.
Four years after the so-called ‘Pestminster’ scandal, the UK’s Parliament is still packed with perverts.
That’s the obvious conclusion to draw after it was claimed that 56 MPs have been accused of sexual misconduct under the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS).
Three of them are apparently members of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet – and two are alleged to be in Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet.
Allegations range from making sexually inappropriate comments to criminality.
The ICGS was set up as an independent process with cross-party backing in 2018 after Pestminster when, if I recall correctly, it was claimed that Theresa May had details of sexual misbehaviour by dozens of Tory MPs.
This Writer wants to know how many of those on her list then are also on the ICGS list now – and if they are, why haven’t they been arrested?
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Recused: Chris Bryant can’t chair the Commons Privileges committee while it examines Boris Johnson’s behaviour because he has already called the prime minister a “proven liar”.
The House of Commons Privileges Committee – that will decide whether Boris Johnson deliberately lied to MPs about Partygate – could be temporarily replaced with an entirely new membership for the job.
Committee chairman Chris Bryant has already recused himself because he has publicly accused Johnson of being a “proven liar”.
The Labour Party must now appoint a new chair, and is said to be looking for a ‘grandee’ to take Bryant’s place.
And there are concerns that that three of the four Tories on the committee – Laura Farris, Alberto Costa and Andy Carter – are on the Government payroll as ministerial aides.
It is entirely possible to replace the whole committee in order to ensure fair process – as happened for the Parliamentary inquiry into Tory former Cabinet Minister Damian Green.
The process may be slightly disrupted if, as is being reported, seven Conservative MPs defect to Labour over Johnson’s Partygate criminality and alleged dishonesty (Dehenna Davison is the only possible defector to have been named).
Obviously they could not be nominated onto the committee but defections would make it harder for the Tories to find candidates.
— Rachael Swindows 85k (@Rachael_Swindon) March 15, 2022
Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed £2,588 last year for heating oil at his Suffolk home, where he lived with his wife.
Just when you thought you couldn’t dislike him much more.
You get a £200 loan.
— Rachael Swindows 85k (@Rachael_Swindon) March 15, 2022
Conservative MP Virginia Crosbie claimed back more than £2,600 to cover her gas and electricity bills last year.
Again, you get a £200 loan.
— Rachael Swindows 85k (@Rachael_Swindon) March 14, 2022
These are just three examples. Want to know how many MPs are sponging thousands of pounds from you – that’s right, you personally – this way?
340:
How much more prodding are the people of this country going to take before they finally react and fight back?! pic.twitter.com/vi5NJlXNdP
— Paul Gibson 💙💛🇺🇦🇵🇸✊ #GTTO (@Paulgibson69) March 15, 2022
Connected to this, here’s a good question:
If MPs on £81,932 need a pay rise of £2,212 to cover the cost of living increase, then by the same logic, minimum wage earners on £17,374 need a pay rise of £66,770 to cover the cost of living increase
In fact, the pay rise is supposed to cover extra work that MPs have to do now – and RD Hale’s argument still works.
By the same logic, if MPs deserve £2,212 to cover the value of the extra work they’re having to do, then minimum wage earners deserve £66,770. And their heating costs paid by the government.
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Rolling in it: MP pay has increased by nearly one-third since 2010, while the rest of us have become thousands of pounds worse-off, in real terms, because of austerity restrictions imposed by Boris Johnson and Tory prime ministers before him.
We’ve had some daft excuses for MPs’ pay rises before now but this one takes the biscuit: they’ll have £2,212 extra from the beginning of April because their responsibilities are said to have “dramatically increased”!
What utter dribble.
MPs’ pay will increase to £84,144 (for backbenchers) – a rise of almost £20,000 from the £65,738 they were getting when the Tories slithered into office by the back door in 2010.
The rise is being represented by the so-called Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which was established in 2009 after that year’s infamous scandal over the expenses claimed by MPs.
In 2015, IPSA recommended a massive 10.9 per cent salary hike for MPs – to £74,000, justifying it by saying it would be offset by new tougher rules on parliamentary expenses, higher pensions contributions and the end of pay-offs to MPs who retire or voluntarily step down.
David Cameron was prime minister at the time. He said it was “simply unacceptable” – right up until his backbenchers decided they wanted to grab as much cash as they possibly could and threatened to rebel.
Amid public outcry, 69 MPs later said they would give the amount of their pay rise to charity – but research by The Sun (of all places) subsequently revealed that only 26 actually did so. The other two-thirds, it seems, only paid lip-service to the idea.
In April 2016 IPSA lined up a 1.3 per cent pay rise for MPs – more than three times the national average – to £74,962.
The following year saw an increase of 1.4 per cent to £76,011. The reason in both cases was said to be the annual change in average weekly earnings across the public sector.
How odd, when most public sector workers had been subjected to austerity restrictions since 2010 and hadn’t had a pay increase at all!
And, of course, the comparison would have required parity between MPs’ working conditions and those of public sector workers, meaning nurses, teachers and so on could enjoy the same rules on working hours, the same workers’ rights and make the same kind of expenses claims.
They don’t, so the claim is impossible to justify. But MPs had their £1000+ pay rise all the same.
In 2018, the pay rise had increased to 1.8 per cent, meaning MP salaries rose by £1,368 to £77,369. Again, there was no parity with the pay and conditions of other public sector workers, despite the rise being linked to any rise in their earnings.
By 2020, MPs’ pay was being increased by an inflation-busting 3.8 per cent to £81,932. I commented at the time that this was after the Tory government had created a massive increase in in-work poverty for the rest of us; eight million working-age people, 60 per cent of whom had jobs.
Oh, and MPs were also awarded increased expenses, to rub our noses in it still further.
Now IPSA has announced that MPs are to receive £2,212 extra in the financial year starting in April. And, like all the other excuses, the current claim isn’t being swallowed by the general public:
MPs to get a pay rise of £2200, for ‘dramatically increased duties ‘ last year . I think the same could be said of NHS staff and other keyworkers 😡
— #hellomynameis ..💙#wear amask #VaccinesWork (@nixbee13) March 2, 2022
Yes indeed, especially as MP pay has been linked with theirs so often!
Some have made light of it with humour…
BREAKING: A Conservative minister has confirmed it was necessary to give MPs a pay rise because they are no longer allowed to accept money from Russia 😭
— Laura Kuenssberg Translator (@BBCLauraKT) March 2, 2022
… but it is time to accept that IPSA doesn’t work.
MPs can’t go back to proposing – and voting on – their own pay rises because there simply wouldn’t be enough money to keep the current crop of greedy money-grubbers in cocaine (or whatever else they may choose to buy with it).
Personally, This Writer thinks MPs should be given a very massive pay cut.
The average salary in January this year was £29,600.
If the rest of us have to cope on that (and many of us have to manage on much less) then there’s no reason MPs can’t – and we all have to deal with increased pressures that the Tories in government have heaped on us.
Maybe the Tories would think differently about heaping extra costs like the 10+ per cent rise in National Insurance contributions and massively increased energy bills if they themselves have to cope with them in the same way we do.
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For the many? Keir Starmer’s Tepid Tories are expelling people for being socialists. So much for their ‘broad church’!
What a rotten day for democracy in the Labour Party.
The ruling National Executive Committee of Keir Starmer’s Tepid Tories has voted to continue expelling people retrospectively for having anything to do with organisations that the party has since proscribed.
These people would have had no idea that they were doing anything wrong by their contact with these groups.
Indeed, at the time they weren’t doing anything wrong at all.
And in many, if not all, cases there is no reason to believe these groups have done anything to justify being proscribed, even now.
… And that means there is no reason to believe these now-former Labour Party members have done anything to justify the party expelling them.
On the other hand, there is ever reason to believe that Keir Starmer – and those others of his ilk who are responsible for this travesty – have done wrong.
But they can’t be expelled because they twist Labour’s rules to mean anything they want.
I find myself agreeing with a tweet I’ve just read, although I would paraphrase it slightly:
It’s a bad day for democracy, but a great day for corruption.
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Data theft: the Labour Party has admitted that details of members – and FORMER members, that it handed to a ‘third party’ without telling us, have been stolen. This includes information the party should not have had. Should we take the party to court over it?
The Labour Party has informed This Writer – and many others, it seems – that my data may have been hijacked after it was given to a “third party”.
This is very concerning for several reasons:
Firstly: I am no longer a member of the Labour Party and it should not be holding any information of mine, for any reason at all.
Secondly: I have not given permission for any data held by me to be passed on to any third party, and it is illegal for the Labour Party to have done so.
Next: The Labour Party has not passed on details of the identity of this mysterious third party. Why not? Is it embarrassing? Is it potentially incriminating? I want to know, and I reckon thousands of others will want to know as well.
Finally: Why am I hearing about this on November 4, possibly an entire week after the incident took place – and a day after many other victims were informed? Why were we not all informed at once?
According to Labour’s letter to affected people (which the party is apparently asking us not to share, although that part seems to have been cut from mine), party officers were informed of the incident on October 29.
This implies that the data was hijacked on a still earlier date, meaning that we went uninformed that our illegally-held data had been held by wrong-doers for a longer time than Labour suggests and that we have been vulnerable to cyber crime for all of that period without even knowing about it.
The crime itself seems to be a ransomware incident in which data is rendered inaccessible to a user unless it pays the hijacker some form of remuneration. If such payment is refused, the hijacker may go on to use the stolen data to harm the people to whom it belongs. Labour doesn’t mention this in its email.
Nor are we informed of the nature of the data that was stolen. It may include personal information that could be used for identity theft or blackmail, and/or financial information that could result in plain theft from our bank accounts. We don’t know because Labour hasn’t told us.
The email goes on to say that Labour has reported the incident to authorities including the National Crime Agency (NCA), National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). No doubt those organisations are busy doing very little about it (I have experience of the ICO’s dawdling with regard to Labour Party data breaches; it says it has received so many reports about the party that it is swamped).
And we are told that the Labour Party “takes the security of all personal information for which it is responsible very seriously”, which seems plainly untrue, considering the fact that it should not have had any of my personal information at all.
Members – old and current – are up in arms about this:
Labour was in possession of data that should have been deleted years ago.
It is possible to confirm this because tonight they are emailing old email accounts long discarded by members who left years ago.
That on its own poses and exceptionally serious legal question.
Given I resigned from @UKLabour over a year ago via the correct process I'm angry to receive an email from [email protected] telling me my data may have been breached
The fact Labour *still* had my info on file is surely a data breach in itself
i got one too BUT truth is they’ve been leaking my data for YEARS. i complained to ICO who said they had received so many complaints about Labour they were snowed under AND theyn they employ an allegedly ex Mossad spy to oversee Members!!!! these mother f***ers!! https://t.co/6WOKNTs6rR
Just received an email from the Labour Party telling me they have been hacked and that my data has been compromised. I left the Labour Party a year ago. Are they allowed to hang onto my data without my permission?
I’ve just had the email informing me of this data breach but very little detail of what information was leaked or who the third party provider was. #labourdataleak2021@PeterStefanovi2@MidWalesMike
— Aaron M AMUK #SOA #Standup #fairness #equal (@mnet_stratford) November 3, 2021
If the @UKLabour Party need to retain my data- despite expelling me- for future reference, ok, but why have they given it to a “third party”?
It is the Labour Party I was a member of & the Labour Party which I was expelled from.
We do need to know the identity of the “third party”. For one thing, it might be an organisation we would not want to have any of our information at all.
I would also be concerned if my information had been handed to the Jewish Labour Movement, the organisation Labour has said it would task with providing training to members on the nature of anti-Semitism and indoctrination against it.
That organisation is highly prejudiced, in the experience and opinion of This Writer, and I would not trust it with my personal details in any event.
One final point: Labour Party members may have no choice on who receives their information because party secretary David Evans and the leadership helmed by Keir Starmer demand that they automatically agree to everything the party does with it, as a condition of membership.
But I am no longer a member.
I think a class action lawsuit on this case may be appropriate, don’t you?
I would certainly be interested in hearing from anybody who feels the same way and is interested in taking the matter forward (although I would not want to be the principal claimant as I am already involved in a highly time-consuming court case, as is well known).
Who’s interested?
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