Tag Archives: pay

The news in tweets: Monday, July 17, 2023

Ruling-class privilege: there’s no ‘class ceiling’ for grotesqueries like Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer – they are laughing at you when they say they can’t do anything to help you. Remember: it is political choice that has dumped the UK in its current crisis.

Backlash against Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party grows as he insists he’ll do nothing for ordinary people

It’s a good question. Jeremy Corbyn promised to provide dentistry on the National Health Service but Keir Stürmer is promising to deny it to more people (although he hasn’t said it in as many words).

He’s also planning to inject much more privatisation into the NHS, probably to complete the transformation of the service into nothing more than a banner under which public money may be passed to private companies that perpetuate illness and refuse to provide cover where it is not profitable, making healthcare a postcode lottery:

More privatisation?

Read this:

There’s the problem with more privatisation in a nutshell. Once these private health bloodsuckers get a monopoly on the provision of care, they’ll push prices through the roof – knowing that you and I will have to pay for it, no matter what.

By supporting increased private involvement in healthcare, Starmer supports this plan to drain the public purse of its funds and effectively put you into debt to grotesquely rich corporate fatcats – forever.

He’s being nicknamed #SirKidStarver because he won’t end the two-child limit on child benefit and is therefore continuing to impose poverty on millions of children, nor will he provide free school meals for everybody who needs them.

Stürmer’s ‘Right-hand Liar’, Yvette Cooper, was pressed to justify the policy that will deliberately keep a quarter of a million children in poverty and 850,000 more in increased poverty, on the morning media round. Judge her failure by this clip:

Labour’s answer to criticism is apparently to say we should vote for the Substitute Tory Party because its members have ancestors who were working class:

It seems Stürmer and all his little stürmtroopers need a lesson on how a Labour Party governs a nation. Here’s one:

The consensus opinion is increasingly that Stürmer is lying:

Thankfully not everyone, even in the Parliamentary Labour Party, supports the wholesale betrayal of Labour Party values that Stürmer is preparing:

And outside the party, some of us are already agitating for direct action:

The article states that Stürmer is actively planning to fail the nation on many levels:

– Climate change
– Renewables
– Transport reform
– The economy
– Public sector pay
– The NHS
– Social care
– Education
– Law and order
– Housing
– Trade unions
– Reversing Tory policy
– Support for local government
– Electoral reform
– Europe
– Interest rates
– Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
– Defence
– Inequality
– Taxing the rich

It calls for us to make Stürmer as uncomfortable as possible, for as long as possible, on all those issues until the pressure on him to reform becomes unsurmountable and he is forced to change.

How to do this?

– Inform yourself
– Join groups
– Talk to people
– Write to MPs, councillors and anyone else
– Phone in to the radio (you are likely to get on)
– Consider peaceful protest
– Join a union if it is appropriate for you
– Write a blog
– Comment here
– Tweet, Thread, use Mastodon, create a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram post.

But just don’t suffer in silence. Starmer has to know he is failing, already. Only then might he change, or be forced to. Things are far too serious to accept the dire policy options as those Starmer is now proposing. We all have to demand better.

And in the short term there is only one option: anyone who understands how bad the situation is at the moment must vote for anybody but Labour or the Conservatives. Who the other party to support may be will only be apparent locally.

The best places to start are at Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Thursday (July 20, 2023).

Where is the evidence that the Tories are ‘transforming’ the economy?

It seems that the only evidence of any such action by the Conservatives is a plan to close down what Rishi Sunak calls “rip-off” degrees that don’t guarantee a job to graduates.

It seems a strange demand – that degree courses guarantee a job to the people taking them. By that standard, shouldn’t they all be shut down and a multi-billion pound education industry destroyed overnight?

You see, the point of most degrees isn’t to fit people into a job; it is to teach people how to think. That way, they can work out how to get, for themselves, the job that best suits them. This policy reveals Tory ideology: they don’t want people who can think – they just want livestock who can be slotted into jobs that will make money for their friends and funders:

But it’s hard to tell, because it seems the Tories are doing their utmost to hide what they are doing – probably because the only people they are helping are themselves.

Example:

How about the way government departments under the Tories have been blacklisting media organisations that publish information that is critical of them? Here’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace apologising for such treatment of Declassified UK:

What else do they not want us to know?

Perhaps the fact that yet another Tory MP has been arrested – for sexual impropriety and misconduct in public office?

Perhaps the fact that 2022 was the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century since the early 1970s, meaning their fairy story that increases in your wages are fuelling inflation is a lie?

Perhaps the fact that they spent more than one-and-a-half times as much money on duff Covid-related contracts through their illegal “VIP lane” as they have allocated to the building of new NHS hospitals?

People are being stopped from renting homes because they have children. Sign the petition to stop this

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

One rule for them: shocking government double-standard over pay is revealed

Under a cloud: considering the number of MPs who work long hours on multiple secondary jobs, it’s a wonder any of them ever have time to set foot in this place at all.

Once again Rishi Sunak is undermined by the behaviour of his own MPs.

In the week he insisted that a below-inflation, six per cent pay rise for junior doctors (meaning it is a real-terms pay cut) is not negotiable, the obscenely inflated amounts his fellow Tories (and a couple of others) earn from secondary employment have been revealed.

And some MPs are saying they need the extra cash from these second jobs because they can’t make ends meet otherwise.

Their MP salaries put these people among the highest-paid in the UK and they still reckon they can’t live without having more. They cannot justify this while pushing down pay for public sector workers including the junior doctors.

Here’s Sunak, follow by commentary that puts him right in his place by the great Peter Stefanovic:

The pay imposition means that, depending on their experience, junior doctors will receive a raise of between £3,000 and £3,700 per year (rising to £32,300 and £43,900 respectively).

If that seems like a lot, bear in mind that these are highly-skilled jobs for which they spend many years in training.

MPs, on the other hand, are unskilled; you don’t need any training for the job – you just need to persuade people to elect you.

Then you receive £86,584 a year as your basic wage (this is the figure as of April 2023), rising to £167,391 (as far as I can tell) if you are prime minister Rishi Sunak.

This puts him in the top one per cent of earners – and all MPs in the top two per cent.

And still they want more.

Sky News has published an exhaustive list of MPs’ earnings from second jobs, and it is a catalogue of greed, with those who have held ministerial jobs among the top earners. Now why would that be…?

The article states:

MPs with second jobs have an average wage of £233 per hour, Sky News can reveal.

The typical rate for MPs is 17 times the national average – and over 22 higher than the minimum hourly wage.

Indeed. According to the pay deal Sunak is determined to impose, junior doctors will get just £14 per hour, which is only slightly better than the absolute minimum wage.

Ms Truss’s most lucrative work since leaving Number 10 has been a speech in Taiwan. She was paid at a rate of £20,000 per hour – nearly 1,500 times the UK average hourly wage – for her insights into global diplomacy.

Even higher than Ms Truss is Boris Johnson, who resigned as an MP last month. His hourly rate comes in at £21,822, but having left parliament, he is free to work without having to publicly record his earnings.

The leaderboard of the MPs with the 20 highest hourly rates in this parliament reveals a clear pattern: 18 have government experience, suggesting a ministerial background is valued by some employers.

Or it means employers have been paying them in order to influence their decision as ministers?

Here’s Sky‘s Sam Coates explaining it:

Let’s have a look at the list.

Top is Boris Johnson (Conservative) – now an ex-MP after one Partygate scandal too many. He worked 117 hours outside Parliament and earned £2.5 million. That’s £21,800 per hour.

Then:

Liz Truss (Conservative): 12 hours, £189,200, £15,700 per hour.

Alok Sharma (Conservative): four hours, £20,000, £5,000 per hour.

Theresa May (Conservative): 622 hours – that’s nearly 12 solid working weeks! £2.7 million, £4,400 per hour.

Fiona Bruce (not the broadcaster)(Conservative): 245 hours, £733,100, £2,900 per hour.

Sajid Javid (Conservative): 174 hours, £412,300, £2,300 per hour.

Julian Smith (Conservative): 67 hours, £147,800, £2,100 per hour.

Greg Clark (Conservative): 14 hours, £17,770, £1,200 per hour.

Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party): 31 hours, £38,120, £1,200 per hour.

Michael Gove (Conservative): three hours, £3,100, £1000 per hour.

The next 10 are all Conservatives, most notably including Sir Geoffrey Cox at 12 (2,560 hours, £2.4 million, £960 per hour). This means he worked nearly 49 weeks solidly for other employers than Parliament. Has he actually turned up to represent his constituents at all? Even if he has, how can he be expected to have done a good job, working full-time for other employers?

And Jacob Rees-Mogg is at 18 (123 hours, £92,910, £750 per hour).

Some MPs are saying they need multiple jobs because the current salary isn’t enough for them. One can only agree with Richard Burgon:

Nor does our democracy need Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, who earns almost as much in a week as many of us do in a year, and wants employers to push your wages through the floor. Here’s Jon Trickett:

Yes it is. “Do as I say – take home rapidly-decreasing remuneration for the grinding hours of hard work that you do, while I spend increasingly less time in the job where I’m supposed to represent your best interests so I can moonlight for the big corps and earn 17 times as much as you.”

Put like that, do you think you’re getting value for money from your Tory MP?

I don’t.

Note this also:

Now consider this:

These are the kind of people we need in Parliament. But Keir Starmer is doing his best to purge Labour of its left wing in order to make it into his dream: a Substitute Tory Party (STP). The SNP is incapable of forming a government because it would never have enough MPs. And the Green Party is habitually ignored by voters who think they have to support Labour or the Tories because their choice is the only one they think can keep the other one out.

Without better representation, the situation described by Robert Peston below will worsen:

Finally: the information provided in this article is vital for anybody in the UK who has a vote. It tells you what you need to know in order to make an informed decision when you come to vote. But I can predict that only around 200 people will read it.

This is because Vox Political must depend on the social media platforms for articles to be seen, and they are run by corporations that depend on other corporations’ advertising revenue to make their own profits, and fear regulation by a right-wing government that wishes to suppress dissenting viewpoints. So of the 42,000+ people who supposedly like This Site’s page on Facebook, only around 300 will actually see the link to this article on their newsfeed.

This is how Sunak, Bailey and the other greedy fatcats keep you down:

By making sure you don’t know how to impose change.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

The news in tweets: Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Who thought we could see this again? It perfectly sums up Boris Johnson’s behaviour towards the Covid Inquiry over his mobile phone and the WhatsApp messages therein.

Boris Johnson refuses to hand over mobile phone containing Covid WhatsApps by inquiry deadline

This is more complicated than it seems. If you were to take Carol Vorderman’s tweet at face value…

… you might think she was saying he hasn’t handed over any of the WhatsApp messages he received and sent at that time. This is not true.

The story is about “Phone 1” – the telephone he used up until April 2021, but (allegedly) switched off amid claims that it could have been hacked by a foreign power.

Johnson himself reckons he is trying to comply with the Covid Inquiry’s demand for the information but is working with government security officials on a way to turn on the old phone without creating a security emergency.

But here’s the thing: the security breach happened long ago – he switched the phone off (he says) because it emerged that his phone number had been public knowledge for 15 years. Apparently this means it could have been hacked.

In that case, it seems to sane people, he should have left it on and handed it to the security people two years ago, so they could work out what possibly compromising information could have been lifted from it by hostile foreign governments (or even teenage hackers living down the road).

He didn’t do that, so…

Yes. When will that happen?

Oh, and it should be possible to retrieve the WhatsApp messages by other means anyway. Why haven’t these “experts” tried that already?

Government response to ‘Kindertransport’ lord on removal of mural at child refugee centre is shockingly insensitive

Lord Alf Dubs, who was himself once a refugee from a foreign country (Germany before World War II – he was a Jewish child who arrived on the Kindertransport) asked the government why it cruelly ordered that a welcoming mural at a child refugee centre in Kent should be over-painted. Here’s the response:

Jessica Simor is right: it is incredibly insensitive of this Tory lord to tell a fellow peer – who was welcomed into the UK as a child – that national policy is now to make the country as unwelcoming as possible.

It seems the government has regressed – de-civilised – during the last 13 years of Tory misrule.

The big Tory wage lie

Read:

Why would the Tories say wages are rising at record rates?

Could it be to justify their demand that they need to be held down in order to slow inflation?

If so, it’s a false argument – as Richard Burgon makes clear:

Here’s some proof about the corporate profits:

Sainsbury’s wouldn’t be paying its chief executive so much if he wasn’t raking in the Long Green.

So it’s definitely the big profits that are pushing up inflation. And what is the Tory government doing about it?

Look:

And here’s a pertinent comment on that choice:

He’s joined in his crackdown on your livelihood by fellow millionaire Andrew Bailey, head honcho at the Bank of England:

Is this the reason Ed Balls tried to dominate the discussion of George Osborne’s wedding on Monday?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

If Rachel Reeves represents Labour’s best thinking, the UK is deep in the you-know-what

Fakes: Rachel Reeves, the fake Labour Chancellor, with her fake Labour leader, Keir Starmer.

I don’t know what image Rachel Reeves hoped to present with her stage-managed interview in The Guardian yesterday (Monday, July 10, 2023) – but the one we got was utterly, utterly awful.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, read the article and you’ll see what I mean about stage-management. She comes across as a total fake.

The really disgraceful stuff is in the segment about Ken Loach. The legendary film director was expelled from Labour in August 2021. It came amid accusations of anti-Semitism but that was never given as the reason for pushing him out.

So in the article we get this from Reeves:

(Loach himself was expelled from Labour in 2021 for appearing on a Labour Against the Witchhunt platform way before that organisation was proscribed by the party. The group was formed to campaign against what were seen as politically motivated allegations of antisemitism in the Labour party). This doesn’t sound like a broad coalition, does it? “Look, Keir’s No 1 thing when he became leader was he was going to tear out antisemitism at the roots, and that means there is a zero-tolerance approach.”

I tell her I am Jewish and that I agree with a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism, but the party is so gung-ho that it is now labelling people antisemitic who simply aren’t – and there is a danger of destroying lives in the process.

“Well, look, I’m not on the bodies that make those decisions, so I don’t know the details of that case. But it is so important that we are seen to – and we do – tackle antisemitism. Ken Loach, you might like his films, but his views … well, certainly, they are not ones I share.”

That doesn’t make him antisemitic, I say.

“You don’t think Ken Loach is antisemitic? OK. Well, I think we might have to agree to differ.”

Why does she think he is antisemitic? “Look, I’m not on the bodies that make these decisions, but I think it’s right we have a zero-tolerance approach,” she repeats.

You can’t make such an accusation without supporting it, I say.

“Well, look, I’m not on the body who makes these decisions,” she repeats yet again. Loach later tells me there was no due process in his expulsion: he was just told he was unfit to be a party member; antisemitism wasn’t mentioned.

She couldn’t support her claim that Mr Loach was anti-Semitic for one simple reason: he isn’t. And Labour doesn’t have any evidence to the contrary.

But I’ll tell you who was anti-Semitic: Nancy Astor.

Why do I mention this? Because of this:

If you want proof of Reeves’s support for Astor, I can provide it – because I called on Labour’s then-General Secretary to do something about it:

I never heard back from Jennie Formby. It seems that, like the Tories, the Labour leadership follows a One-Rule-For-You, A-Different-Rule-For-Us principle.

We can follow this through to some of the other things Reeves has said lately, like her refusal to commit to paying public sector workers a fair wage:

Public sector workers have seen their pay crumble away under the Tory government. Reeves, as a member of Parliament, has had her own pay shored up with public money, and her pay packet is worth as much in real terms as it was in 2010 when she was first elected.

As I suggested: one rule for us; a different rule for them.

She won’t put any public money into building new houses for people on councils’ waiting lists:

See? She wants to make profit for builders by getting them building private houses. Great for those who can afford it – but those most in need won’t be able to, because she won’t make sure they’re paid the living wage that is required to make that happen. One rule for them…

So she won’t support the “ordinary working people” (as Labour now defines us) – but she’ll happily speak up for a former member of the Tory government that inflicted on us the cruel austerity that has caused so many of these problems.

In so doing, she also took a swipe at protest movements – causing This Writer to note (in another article) that without protesters, she wouldn’t have the right to vote, let alone the chance to have the second-highest job in the land. Here’s Howard Beckett to explain:

That brings us back to the Guardian interview, that took place in Reeves’s home town.

It seems she was desperate to demonstrate that she was still in touch with her family roots.

Sadly, she and her party have long since left their political roots far behind them.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tory lies: Steve Barclay wants you to think nurses are getting a pay rise

Bare-faced: how Steve Barclay has the nerve to spit out falsehoods about valuing nurses and giving them a pay rise must be beyond the understanding of anybody with a brain.

There can’t be many spectacles as ugly as that of a Tory minister crowing about giving a pay cut to nurses who kept us all alive during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here’s Steve Barclay:

In fact, while Barclay enjoys real-terms pay parity with what MPs had back in 2010 plus his very large ministerial pay packet, many nurses have suffered a real-terms pay cut of 20 per cent during the same period, meaning they already effectively work one day a week for free.

On top of that, he’s now giving them a pay increase that is only just over half the current rate of inflation – meaning it is a pay cut.

This Site explained what Barclay and the Tories were doing, back in April. Read it here.

It seems that members of the Royal College of Nursing simply lost their ability to continue striking for better pay. Remember, they have been working one day a week for free, and that has to have an impact on their ability to resist further attacks on their pay; they don’t have the savings to support strike action. Many of them were already forced to visit food banks before the strikes even began.

Barclay’s claim to “hugely value” nurses’ work can be interpreted as nothing more than a bare-faced lie.

If he valued them, he would be offering them at least the same pay deal he gets – parity with the past. If he really valued them, he would offer more (because – remember – MPs receive significantly better pay than nurses).

Did he applaud them like a filthy hypocrite on Thursday nights during pandemic lockdown in 2020?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Corporate profits proved to be driving inflation. Why are Tories attacking your wages?

Rishi Sunak: the sign behind him says his government’s priorities are “your priorities”. This would only be true if “you” referred to corporate bosses and shareholders, and there was only one priority listed: bloating profits by robbing customers with increased prices.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published information that proves inflation in the UK and other European countries is being driven by the greed of corporations that have been pushing their profits up for no good reason.

Here’s the evidence:

(Some might say this applies only to countries in continental Europe but the question then is, why should it not apply to the UK too?)

So the answer to inflation is not to cut wages, and is not to increase interest rates; it is to force corporations to cut their bloated profit margins and pay for a rise in labour costs (increase wages).

This is the opposite of what Rishi Sunak and his corporate stooges in government have been saying since the crisis began. It seems clear that they have been lying to you all along.

And what’s he doing about it now?

His latest plan is to renege on all his promises about following the advice of pay review bodies:

“Workers need to recognise the economic context we are in.” Okay; well, this worker recognises that major corporations, many of which are probably donors to the Conservative Party and individual Tory MPs, have caused inflation by artificially increasing their prices. Now they’ve been caught doing it, they should cut their prices and increase wage to at least match the current inflation rate or be penalised for it.

This is what I expect my government to enforce.

(I don’t think it will happen for a single moment, but I do think that the longer Sunak refuses to do it, the more people will realise that he, his government and the corps funding them are all crooks and vampires, sucking out the lifeblood of the UK.)

Sunak is talking utter bollocks about it, of course:

People won’t accept that it’s right – or even acceptable – because we all now know it isn’t.

Here’s a doctor, responding to Sunak’s attack on the public sector workforce:

Would you like more proof of what’s going on?

Here’s Howard Beckett:

Sadly, there is no pressure from the Labour Party – the UK’s official Opposition to the government – to make Sunak and his bandits do the right thing. Labour is on their side and helping to rob us all.

Proof:

This Writer will be writing to all those in government or able to influence it, calling for a change of policy to demand responsibility from the corporations, and I urge you to do the same.

But this time I think we’re all going to have to get out of our armchairs and onto the streets – possibly with blazing old-style torches and pitchforks – to demand action “or else”.

You know what I mean: French-style.

Or would you rather just lie back like a weakling and let these fat cats carry on robbing you?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tory ‘useful idiot’ Helen Whately in new ‘foot in mouth’ crisis

Helen Whately: she’s smiling in the photograph, possibly because she’s just had her foot removed from her mouth. Shortly after it was taken, she would have re-inserted it.

Tory social care minister Helen Whately should spend half her life in hospital, considering how often she gets her own feet lodged in her mouth.

Here she is, discussing the forthcoming three-day junior doctors’ strike, starting on July 13 – saying the Tory government doesn’t habitually accept the recommendations of independent pay review bodies, followed by historical contradictions from the health secretary and prime minister (courtesy of Peter Stefanovic).

We can’t expect better from a minister in the Department of Health and Social Care who lies about the number of doctors and nurses available to the public who pay for them, as we see here:

For the sake of balance, I should add that the Conservatives have succeeded admirably in their ambitions for the National Health Service: they wanted to reduce it to a lower-quality, postcode-lottery system that provides no value for money to the people who pay for it, because their donors in the private health sector wanted to take public money that was formerly used on healthcare and put it in their offshore bank accounts as profit.

The amount of money that is wasted in such a manner is phenomenal – but then, the healthcare firms do spend millions funding ministers and shadow ministers.

As far as those ministers, shadow ministers and healthcare executives are concerned, all the right people are benefiting from this situation.

The only people who don’t are those who rely on the NHS – and who cares about them?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tories won’t listen to reason on the NHS – but will you listen to this American?

Tory politicians – they say one thing and do another.

For example: they said in their 2019 election manifesto that they would build 40 new hospitals by 2030 but they won’t.

They have cut pay for healthcare professionals working in the NHS and claimed that they were increasing it.

They said they were listening to staff concerns, but when this happens…

… people like Steve Barclay pay absolutely no attention at all.

And the Tories can do that because they’ve got all the power.

Isn’t it a shame we can’t ignore what they tell us – or indeed, what other people tell us about the meaning of what they’re doing?

Sadly, if you pay no attention to this…

… then before long, you will be forced to choose whether your insurance covers diseases that have been eradicated or total failure of the brain, too.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Not only are supermarkets making obscene profits – they’re cutting staff pay

Here’s another reason for young people to get off Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube Shorts or whatever, get off the sofa and go and vote.

One of the popular choices of job for young people is working for a supermarket chain. I did it for a while in my teens to raise cash for college, and my stepdaughter (technically just Mrs Mike’s daughter but she’ll kill me if I don’t call her that) did checkout work before going on to better things, too.

Would we have done those jobs if they hadn’t paid enough for us to enjoy our young lives and be able to store cash away for the future?

No, of course we wouldn’t.

Now we learn that, while they have been personally raking in nearly £1 million per day from their supermarkets’ profits, the owners of Asda are cutting pay for 7,000 workers and will sack anybody who won’t accept the new arrangement.

According to the GMB union, staff will lose 60p per hour, have their night supplement reduced and be dismissed if they refuse to accept the change.

You should be able to find evidence of the Asda owners’ riches here:

It’s pure greed, as far as This Writer is concerned – and a spiteful stab at the hearts of young people across the UK.

Possibly worst of all, the Issa’s are self-made; they grew up in a terraced house in Blackburn.

It seems that, now they have been able to work their way up to the higher levels of business, they’re pulling up the ladder behind them to make sure that nobody working for them can get to do what they have.

They get to do this because employment law in the UK allows them to.

The only way to change that is to change employment law.

And the only way to do that is to vote in a government that will do that.

Pensioners won’t demand it. They don’t care about kids who are just starting out.

Middle-aged professionals won’t demand it; they’re too busy trying to defend themselves from all the flak coming their way from the current government.

So that leaves young people.

What do you think, you teens and 20-somethings? Is that worth tearing yourself away from your social media influencers for a while?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Greedflation again as Shell posts £7.7bn profits for just THREE MONTHS

The astonishing level of oil giant Shell’s profits for the first three months of this year is appalling enough, when you consider the extortionate prices that corporation charges for its products.

Add in the fact that this money will be handed out to corporate executives and shareholders, and we see that the Tory talk about pay rises for nurses and doctors (for example) being inflationary is bunkum; the fatcats are raking it in and we see no inflationary pressure:

Some say that this profit is a good thing, because much of it goes into pension funds for (as an example) nurses.

But of course, nurses could contribute more to their own pension funds if they weren’t forced to pay huge energy bills. And the dividends do go to private shareholders as well.

Others have tried to be smart by asking how much of this profit has been generated in the UK. The answer, though, is simple: too much. UK prices are higher than elsewhere, remember – and with no real need for it any more.

So this is a nasty example of the bane of Britain in the 2020s: Greedflation.

The major corporations are charging whatever they like for their products – especially the privatised former public utilities, who know they operate monopolies in particular parts of the UK.

There is no relationship between what they are charging for their products and the cost of providing them.

But the price they charge puts up the cost of living. People have to pay, otherwise they lose the service.

The result? UK inflation has gone through the roof.

And what are the Tories doing about it? They are victim-blaming.

Working people who are struggling to cope are calling for pay rises to accommodate these huge, greed-driven increases in the prices they have to pay, simply to survive.

And ministers in the Tory government are saying they would be responsible for inflation if they receive those increases.

That claim is – well, it’s what Peter Stefanovic describes it as, in this clip:

If you haven’t voted yet, then please take this into account if/when you do. And remember that Labour wouldn’t increase wages either!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

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

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook