Tag Archives: mick

The news in tweets: Sunday, July 23, 2023

‘No more Green New Deal’ is what we can see on the banner – and that is exactly what Keir Starmer is offering as he panders to the fossil fuel firms in his relentlessly grubby bid for power.

Tories AND Labour throw green policies into the fire – but who is most responsible?

Let’s make a few connections.

Energy minister Grant Shapps has unilaterally decided that the environment can burn, and to this end has announced that he’ll extract all the remaining fossil fuels from the North Sea in the name of “energy security”:

If we’ve learned anything from the state of the environment lately, it is that there is no security in energy generated from fossil fuels. As Richard Murphy states, the planet is burning and the Tory response is to stoke the fire.

Now let’s go over to the party formerly known as Labour, where leader Keir Stürmer is trying to dictate to London Mayor Sadiq Khan that he should “reflect on” (ditch) the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone that keeps more heavily-polluting traffic out of the centre of the capital because it was the issue that lost their party the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election.

This is idiotic for several reasons. Firstly, Stürmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Party) should not have lost because of ULEZ, which is a Conservative policy. It was imposed by Boris Johnson – the former MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, whose resignation triggered the election – so all Stürmer’s candidate had to do to counter criticisms of his party and mayor was point this out.

Secondly, we know this didn’t happen because people with non-polluting cars, who would not have paid the charge, were complaining about it on the doorstep. Perhaps they didn’t like being told it was nothing to do with them, but it’s more likely that they simply weren’t told that at all.

Thirdly, the ULEZ is not something Khan can unilaterally change; it was imposed on London by the Department for Transport when it was being run by… oh yes! Grant Shapps.

So Shapps is magically facing in two different directions at once.

And Stürmer is apparently being dishonest about the reason his party lost the election.

It’s all very well saying, “We lost because of the ULEZ”, but if his people didn’t actually defend themselves on it, that’s their fault.

Doesn’t it seem more likely that it is an excuse that is being inflated to hide a different reason for the loss.

What could that reason be?

That’s not his only blunder…

Also:

Call me a scaremonger if you like, but it seems to This Writer that the most logical reason his party lost in Uxbridge and South Ruislip is Keir Starmer himself.

Keir Mather: fact and fiction about the new, Starmerite MP for Selby and Ainsty

And on that subject…

Apparently he was a researcher for former Tory MP Matthew Parris.

Forgive me, but I question whether that’s the right sort of grounding for a person who now represents the party that is supposed to support working people.

The Tory government has decided that saving the lives of disabled people who have to live in high-rise tower blocks is too expensive

How many hundreds of billions of pounds have they given to their friends and donors in return for absolutely nothing at all?

Sunak’s doublespeak: he wants you to think his theft of your rights is something you have demanded

Standing ovation for Mick Lynch after speech about the ‘stench of corruption’ in Tory government

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Why are private rail firms paying shareholders so much profit when they’re so far in debt?

Mick Lynch: he knows what he’s talking about. What a pity his interviewers can’t say the same.

Have a gander at this video clip, courtesy of the TUC – if you can get past the bizarre behaviour of the interviewers.

To me, it seems a very strange way of running a business.

If a firm is making a loss, it seems very strange behaviour for a national government to subsidise it – especially if it is still handing over huge amounts in dividends to shareholders.

That money should be covering the firm’s losses, shouldn’t it?

No wonder Mick Lynch’s union members haven’t had a pay rise in four years – and I’m willing to bet it was a pittance then!

Some might say low wages are better than being unemployed – but if these firms are being parasitised by fatcat investors, then by rights, they should be closed down and the bosses (and the investors) prosecuted for misuse of public funds.

Or so it seems to me.

Perhaps the government believes that the railways must continue running – but in that case, the obvious answer presents itself. It’s one that Mr Lynch himself points out the government has used.

Re-nationalisation.

Then there would be no shareholders to take dividends that should be invested.

Am I mistaken?

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Rail strike: Network Rail says a deal is close – the RMT says otherwise. Who’s right?

Network Rail’s chief negotiator Tim Shoveller reckons a “repurposed” version of a pay off made to rail union members last September may bring the rail strike to an end – but is he telling the whole truth?

He told Sky News that a ballot on the offer had won support from 36 per cent of the RMT members who voted on it:

But RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch pointed out that 36 per cent in favour meant 64 per cent – an overwhelming majority – were against the offer. He said the companies have continued to make profit during every strike day because the government has taken the losses instead – around £320 million.

And he added that the government and the railway companies are determined to run down pay, conditions, and – crucially – safety in a rush to grab as much profit as they can from the UK’s rail network, that suffers from crippling underinvestment:

This Writer is just a lay-person but from my position it seems this industrial dispute is far from being over – and won’t be until the company bosses and the government start listening to the concerns of the people who do the actual work.

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Why is the Transport Secretary trying to force ‘reforms’ on unions that want better pay?

Mick Lynch: he’s frustrated because the rail companies and Network Rail say they don’t have the power to negotiate meaningfully with him over pay and safety conditions for RMT Union members.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper reckons rail unions need to accept “reforms” that would free up money for pay rises.

Why?

On the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, he said: “It is the reforms that free up the savings that then unlock the ability for the companies to make an offer to the trade unions on pay.”

But that is to assume no more money could be brought in – and that is a political choice by the Tory government.

He also said: “I do not have a bottomless pit of taxpayers’ money to throw at this problem.”

And he doesn’t, because taxpayers’ money doesn’t pay for any public services at all. Public money – created by the government – does. It’s time our politicians stopped trying to hoodwink us with this lazy lie.

The government can very easily create as much money as is needed to provide a “proper seven-day rail network” – also Harper’s words, and why doesn’t the UK have that network any more since privatisation anyway?

Taxation relieves inflationary pressures that may be created by investing money into public services – and may be used by progressive governments to re-balance the gap between the richest and the poorest citizens in the country, by taking money from those who can most easily bear it. Of course the UK’s Tory government is as far from progressive as one can get.

And Harper said any money saved through reforms would have to be split “fairly between the taxpayer and the people who work in the industry”. Why give savings back to taxpayers when so much needs to be done to improve the rail service? Is he looking for another tax cut for the rich?

The whole spiel strikes This Writer as self-serving claptrap.

If Harper really wanted to do some good, wouldn’t it be better for him to offer to give the private rail operators and Network Rail the mandate for meaningful negotiations with the RMT union that its general secretary, Mick Lynch, has been told they don’t have?

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Rail strikes suspended for talks on new deal – but is anything new on offer?

Mick Lynch: he wasn’t holding back when he appeared on the BBC’s Question Time. Has anything changed?

Does Mick Lynch have a good reason to suspend rail strikes?

Here’s a quick summary of the story:

Mr Lynch, the RMT union’s general secretary, said

there had been “the promise of an offer” on pay from the rail operating companies.

However, when contacted by the BBC, rail employers and the government said their position had not changed.

If they’re not offering anything new, then there’s no reason to suspend strike action – is there?

The BBC’s report added that the suspension has been announced 11 days before a fresh RMT strike ballot is due to close on November 15.

Mr Lynch previously told the BBC that he expected workers to vote in favour, and warned that there could be strikes for another six months if no agreement is reached.

Will the new talks affect the way the ballot goes? Will they even take place before it finishes, so union members can be sure of the situation when they go to vote? Is the new offer – whatever it is – just an attempt to interfere with the result of the ballot?

Could Mr Lynch have behaved any differently?

This Writer isn’t sure he could have. But I wonder whether the future of rail services is being wagered on a form of negotiation brinkmanship.

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Rail union’s Mick Lynch gives top-notch analysis of Boris Johnson. WATCH

Mick Lynch: he wasn’t holding back when he appeared on the BBC’s Question Time.

Here’s Mick Lynch of the RMT Union, giving a terrific verdict on Boris Johnson during last week’s BBC Question Time.

You only need to watch the first minute and 50 seconds; the rest takes the debate beyond Mr Lynch and you end up listening to a lot of meaningless Tory ranting. Here it is:

We need more people like Mr Lynch in Parliament. We used to have them, too – before the Labour Party was taken over by students in suits.

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US pundit ridicules Kay Burley for trying to incite RMT’s Mick Lynch to promote violence

Better times: Kay Burley of Sky News once interviewed an empty chair while Tory chairman James Cleverly cowered 15ft away, too terrified to face even the kind of cross-examination she gave Mick Lynch.

This is very funny and I’m planning to keep an eye on Jimmy Dore from now on.

Have a gander at his analysis of Kay Burley’s interview with Mick Lynch of the RMT, in which the Sky News host tries to talk the union boss into promoting violence by striking rail workers:

This Writer isn’t totally hostile to Burley; her line of questioning is likely to have come entirely from the news producer talking into her earpiece. That’s the usual way.

But Dore’s ridicule of the whole interview is well-deserved.

And his discussion of the strike is well worth watching.

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IDS – the most vile product of ‘welfare UK’

The parallel here should be obvious to anyone who's seen the newspapers today.

The parallel here should be obvious to anyone who’s seen the newspapers today.

Dept. of ‘Giving Them A Taste Of Their Own Medicine’: The Daily Mail’s front page today is itself, of course, entirely vile.

It is an attempt to make us believe that every single benefit claimant in the UK is as evil as Mick or Mairead Philpott, who were convicted yesterday of killing six of their own children.

The claim is the kind of utter nonsense we have come to expect from the paper commonly dubbed the ‘Daily Heil’ or (as in the image above) the ‘Daily Fail’ – and it has sparked widespread fury.

We all know that it is ridiculous to claim that everybody on social security benefits is evil.

And we all know that you don’t have to be an evil person to receive social security benefits – look at the current government!

In fact, let’s look at the Secretary of State responsible for social security benefits – he likes to call them “welfare”, possibly because it gives him a feeling of superiority over their recipients. This is interesting in itself, because he used to be one of them.

Iain Duncan Smith was on the dole for several months during 1981, after leaving the Scots Guards, where he famously enjoyed a career as a bag-carrier for a higher-ranking officer. Did he get out by finding a job? Hard to tell. What we do know is that he married the very wealthy Betsy, daughter of a very wealthy man, the following year. In other words, he got off benefits by marrying into money. That’s not evil in itself, but how many of us have that option?

I don’t propose to rehash the hypocrisies of Iain Duncan Smith in full here, but I will quote three relevant paragraphs from the Edinburgh Eye piece I reblogged earlier today, as follows:

“He has four children, yet argues that families with more than two children ought to be sanctioned: in 2009 he took six months paid leave without notice to care for his wife when she was desperately ill, yet has instigated changes in benefit to ensure that neither sick people nor their carers will be supported. In 1981, jobless and unqualified, he took full advantage of the welfare safety net to claim benefits for months while looking for suitable work, yet in a recession as bad as that of thirty years ago he claims graduates are “snooty” if they don’t agree to work for Poundland for free. While attending further education for two short periods, IDS gained no qualifications, and asserts that shelf-stackers are more valuable than scientists. While benefiting hugely from MP expenses, Iain Duncan Smith tells many untruths about the cost of people claiming disability and welfare benefits.

“Iain Duncan Smith has made many speeches in favour of law and order. Yet when IDS’s workfare sanctions were ruled unlawful by the courts, instead of accepting that millions taken unlawfully would have to be repaid and that people unlawfully made to work for commercial organisations for free had a claim to minimum wage for their hours (or, if determined to fight lawfully for welfare, proceding to the Supreme Court for a further appeal) IDS decided to have emergency legislation passed making his unlawful sanctions retroactively lawful.

“Iain Duncan Smith lives in a large and comfortable home which he does not own and which it’s doubtful he pays market rent for, yet has instigated the bedroom tax. The idea behind the “bedroom tax” is that the housing shortage can be remedied not by building more social housing or by preventing bankers from gambling on house price rises, but by forcing people who live in social housing and have a “spare room”, to move out into private rented accommodation of a more suitable size. This won’t save money at any level (Iain Duncan Smith calls this the ending the spare-room subsidy).”

And there remains the matter of the 73 people per week, on average (and that average was reported nearly a year ago, so it may well have risen massively since then), who are dying as a result of the pressures put on them by the merciless Employment and Support Allowance assessment regime for people who have long-term sicknesses or are disabled.

If the Philpotts are a “vile product of welfare UK”, then is Iain Duncan Smith – who admits he has been on the welfare system, equally vile?

This week, he was in the news because he claimed on the BBC’s Today programme that he could survive on £53 per week if he had to, after market trader David Bennett said the bedroom tax meant he must now live on that amount.

Almost immediately, a petition by Dom Aversano appeared on the change.org website, calling for him to put his money where his mouth is.

His reaction? “This is a complete stunt which distracts attention from the welfare reforms which are much more important and which I have been working hard to get done. I have been unemployed twice in my life so I have already done this. I know what it is like to live on the breadline.” (Quoted from the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian).

In other words, this slimeball is trying to slither out of it! Could this possibly be because he knows the benefit regime he has instigated is much harsher than the system he enjoyed in 1981 (and again in 1989) and he knows he would not fare well as a part of it?

The report of this story in The Guardian seems intentionally hilarious. It states: “The Daily Mail [that rag again] reported Duncan Smith as saying: ‘It was a shock – absolutely awful. I felt pathetic. I remember telling my wife. We looked at each other and she said: “God, what are we going to do for money?”‘”

The report continues, straight-faced: “Duncan Smith’s wife, Betsy, is the daughter of the 5th Baron Cottesloe who served as lord-lieutenant of Buckinghamshire in the 1980s and 1990s. Duncan Smith and his wife, who sent their children to Eton, moved into Lord Cottesloe’s 17th-century Old House in the village of Swanbourne in Buckinghamshire in 2002.”

What were they going to do for money, indeed!

He is a man who has played the system for all he could take and then changed it to make sure nobody else could enjoy the benefits he received. He is a man who talks a good fight but runs away from supporting his words with real action.

If ‘welfare UK’ has any ‘vile product’ at all, then it must be Iain Duncan Smith.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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