Tag Archives: plan

Social energy tariff plan quietly scrapped

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Plans to launch an energy social tariff which would help low income households with energy costs have reportedly been “quietly shelved” by the Government.

The Tory Government first pledged to consider energy social tariffs – which are cheaper tariffs for certain groups – in 2022, and this was doubled down on by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Energy Secretary Grant Schapps last year.

However, Government sources have indicated that social tariffs are “no longer a priority” and that ministers were looking into other ways to help those struggling with energy costs.

The move comes despite calls from charities, organisations and energy companies themselves calling for the introduction of a social tariff for energy. End Fuel Poverty Coalition co-ordinator Simon Francis said the decision to “abandon plans” for energy bill reform would be a “slap in the face to British households.

Well.

You didn’t really think the Tories would do anything to stop the privateers from fleecing us all, did you?


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ONS consults on plan to axe data on people who die while homeless. Why hide it?

Frozen: These snow effigies of homeless people were created in 2018 to demonstrate that rough sleepers were freezing to death. Has anything changed since then?

Is this another Tory government bid to hide the effect of its policies on the people of the UK?

It seems the Office for National Statistics is consulting the public on whether to scrap its annual count of the number of people who die while they are homeless.

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Read the following – and the source article too, if you want more information – and then please take part in the consultation here. It is running until March 5 so please share it with your friends.

Official statistics counting the number of people who die while homeless in England and Wales could be axed despite frontline organisations warning rising homelessness means “now is not the time”.

The ONS count uses death certificates to ascertain whether someone died while homeless alongside modelling to produce an estimate. The most recent count, published in November 2022, found an estimated 741 people died in 2021.

“This proposal does not reflect our view on the seriousness of the issue of deaths of homeless people. However the current homeless deaths statistics have included major caveats around factors including time of death, the definition of homelessness and their alignment with statistics on the total number of homeless people,” an ONS spokesperson said.

“ONS is open to re-establishing these statistics in future, and would value users’ views on their relative importance compared to other health and social care statistics through the consultation currently running.”

The move has faced criticism from frontline homelessness organisations.

Balbir Kaur Chatrik, director of policy and communications at youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, said: “Of the more than 700 deaths in 2021, 31 were under 25, thirteen still teenagers. Youth homelessness has increased significantly since then and we’re worried even more lives will have been lost.

“Statistics alone won’t end homelessness – but without a solid evidence base it will be impossible to tell how far we have to go.”

Again: the ONS consultation on whether it should stop publishing information on people who die while homeless is here until March 5. Please take part and share the link.

Source: Anger as ONS plans to axe data on people who die while homeless


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Israel’s UK ambassador reveals the plan for Palestine: ANNIHILATION

Tzipi Hotovely: in an unguarded moment, she has given away Israel’s entire strategy – it seems.

Out of the mouths of babies and rabidly racist, genocidal foreign politicians…

That country’s ambassador to the UK has made it abundantly clear that Israel has only one plan for Palestinians: to wipe all hope of a Palestinian state off the table and consign them to a hopeless existence as a permanent underclass in the New Israel.

This version of Israel would exist geographically “from the River to the Sea”. Strange, isn’t it, how that phrase is deemed genocidally anti-Semitic when applied to Palestine but perfectly acceptable when used to discuss an Israeli state that would have actually perpetrated genocide against Palestinians in order to achieve its aims.

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Here’s Owen Jones’s video on the subject. Also, take note of the way he destroys claims that Palestine can’t be suffering genocide because its population is increasing; it is affluent, contented societies whose populations fall – those that are under attack have constantly increasing populations.

Not convinced?

Try listening to a plethora of other Israeli politicians telling us what they want to do with Gaza:

Alternatively, how about this little gem?

So now we know.

But Israel is still being treated with kid gloves by the western governments. Why?


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Israel’s plan for Gaza: turn it into beach houses for Israelis

Beach houses: a developer of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land has published this image, suggesting that Gaza could become a beach resort for Israelis – after the Palestinians have been killed or removed.

This is as plain as the nose on your face: the Israeli plan for Gaza is to clear it of Palestinians completely, then make it a seaside resort for its own citizens.

Here’s evidence:

It seems clear that there will be no ceasefire because Israel’s government is hell-bent on committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

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The plan is to murder or move the Strip’s 2.3 million people.

No amount of talking is likely to deter Benjamin Netanyahu from this murderous – evil – plan. So, what else can we do?


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Tories announce ‘biggest cut in net migration’ and we’re punching holes in their plan

Rishi Sunak and his priorities: who would have thought that stopping the boats would contradict his plan to reduce inflation?

The following is misleading.

If you’re announcing a plan to cut net migration into the UK, then it hasn’t happened yet. The following tweet is therefore misleading.

There’s no way of telling whether these measures will actually bring inward migration down.

Also, there’s the issue of unforeseen consequences.

First, here’s another misleading message from Rishi Sunak. See my response to understand why it’s wrong:

Again, to remind you: The treaty with Rwanda that James Cleverly was sent to sign has nothing to do with stopping criminal gangs from transporting refugees (or whoever) across the English Channel.

It is merely an attempt to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling that Rwanda is not a safe place to send them once they have arrived in the UK.

Now, about those unforeseen consequences…

When Sunak says he will “end abuse via the Health and Care Visa, he means he will prevent care workers moving to the UK for employment from bringing their families. This will also apply to overseas students.

This will turn away expertise that the UK needs.

Tory voices like that of Brendan Clarke-Smith are already whispering that foreign workers will still come, because the UK is “a fantastic country”:

Is it?

It seems unlikely that highly-qualified people, who could earn a better living anywhere else in the world, would willingly give up their kith and kin to work in a country that will not appreciate their efforts and that – certainly in the case of health and care – treats its own people so badly.

No worries, though! Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick reckons workers from the UK will fill the gaps:

He said UK businesses would no longer have the option of hiring cheap labour from overseas, meaning they would have to “invest in the domestic workforce”.

Why should they?

Big businesses are more likely to preserve their profits by moving out of the UK altogether and hiring all that cheap foreign labour abroad, where it’s still cheap.

And small or medium-sized enterprises are not likely to be able to afford the kind of investment Jenrick is suggesting.

He went on to appear on Sky News, supporting the remaining point in the five-point plan – ensuring that people sponsoring dependents, who do come with them to the UK, can support them financially:

So the overall implication of this plan is that it is an attempt to nudge businesses into paying higher salaries to people working in the UK.

This appears to be an attempt to steal a policy from Reform UK, whose leader Richard Tice had already spoken in favour of higher wages and investment in people:

Opinion polls have suggested that right-wing voters are, themselves, migrating – from the Tories to Reform UK. This anti-immigration policy may be an attempt to woo them back.

But – perhaps crucially – this is a policy turnaround for the Tories, who have previously argued that increased pay for working people is inflationary:

TL;DR: this supposedly anti-immigration policy seems to be intended more as a way of stemming the flow of voters to Reform UK. Its stated aim of increasing pay contradicts Tory policy on inflation and is more likely to move businesses out of the UK than bring investment in.

Is THIS what Hamas hoped to gain from the October 7 incursion into Israel?

It seems The Spectator has been speculating on what Hamas hoped to achieve by breaking into Israel, attacking Israeli Defence Force positions and kidnapping civilians, who were taken as hostages into Gaza.

Israel was bound to strike back, and under current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that response was always going to be extremely forceful; genocidal.

So, why do it?

Here are my thoughts; let’s see if they coincide with those of that other magazine.

Well, sadly it seems this organisation has been playing with the lives of Gazan citizens in the same way one might play chess; sometimes, sacrifices have to be made in order to win.

Most of the analyses This Writer has seen suggest that Hamas in Gaza works in isolation, but this could not be further from the truth. Hamas is an international organisation – meaning Israel’s stated intention to destroy that organisation altogether is nonsense; part of its leadership is always based in other countries.

Hamas has allies in the governments of Qatar and Turkey. It used to be allied with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with Syria and with Iran but those relationships have been strained recently.

How, then, could Hamas bring all of these countries together to oppose Israel and its persecution of Palestinian people?

Isn’t it possible that the answer, for the organisation’s leaders, was to sacrifice thousands of Gazan citizens – in order to turn international public opinion against Israel?

So on October 7, Hamas breaks out of Gaza and acts according to stated intentions: eliminating the Israeli Defence Force’s Gaza Battalion and taking hostages to be traded with Palestinians the organisation claims have been jailed by Israel for no reason at all.

The operatives taking part in the operation stick rigidly to that plan; there are no atrocities – no beheaded babies, no rapes of girls or young women, and the hostages are all treated humanely. Israeli propaganda claiming otherwise then backfires, making that country’s government and military look like liars.

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Israel then retaliates – not with a surgical strike intended to recover the hostages and remove the Hamas threat in Gaza, as should have been possible after years of espionage, but with a genocidal show of strength intended to act as a warning of what will happen to anyone challenging Israeli power.

This is in accordance with the so-called “Hannibal Directive” demanding that IDF troops kill Israelis rather than allow them to stay in the hands of an enemy.

This provokes Hezbollah to strike Israel from Lebanon in an act of solidarity. Yemen, said to be part of a so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ against Israel alongside Hezbollah and Hamas, has also struck at Israel from the south.

What happens next?

That is a matter for Israel.

Will it turn its formidable arsenal – most of which is still idle, despite the constant and extreme bombardment of Gaza – onto Lebanon and Yemen?

If so, will that prompt Iran to turn its own considerable firepower on Israel, to defend its allies?

You see, the countries/organisations that have stepped in already have been able to claim a legitimate interest in defending the defenceless; and if they are attacked, any countries that step in to defend them will be able to claim a legitimate interest in defending their allies.

The logical choice is for Netanyahu to respond to Hezbollah and Houthi (Yemeni) attacks only in defence – for the time being.

But he is still losing the propaganda war, because his forces are murdering hundreds of Gazans every day.

And the fact of those deaths is likely to stir many more members of the Muslim world – Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemeni, Iranians, Qataris, Turks or whoever – into taking up arms against Israel.

So, whatever Israel does, it loses. And this is partly because of the unacceptably violent decisions of that country’s leaders.

All it will have cost Hamas is a few thousand Gazan lives.

Let’s remember: there are no “good” sides in this conflict. As This Writer wrote in another article, weeks ago, “there are only murderers in this room”.

That’s why I’m willing to believe that this is exactly the way the leaders of Hamas have planned it.


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Madeley apologies for asking UK-Palestinian MP if she knew of Hamas attack plan?

Clumsy: Richard Madeley (right) didn’t stop to think of the implications when he asked Lib Dem MP Layla Moran if her Palestinian relatives knew of the Hamas attack against Israel before October 12.

It is as though there is a kind of sickness sweeping through the UK’s broadcast media.

UK-Palestinian MP Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat), appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, was talking about her concern for family members in Gaza, facing the danger of attack by Israel, when host Richard Madeley asked her if any of them had had advance warning that Hamas would be attacking Israel on October 7:

What kind of stupid question is that?

Of course they didn’t know! They are ordinary citizens, not terrorists! The operation would have been secret and nobody would have been told who didn’t need to be.

Simply asking the question, therefore, implied that Ms Moran was related to terrorists.

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So now Madeley has rowed back, saying that was not his intention. What was he trying to do, then?

Here‘s The Independent:

Taken aback, the senior Lib Dem politician replied: “Not this, not this. Everyone, everyone has been surprised first of all by the timing and sophistication and they way that it’s happened.”

Ms Moran added: “I don’t believe it is right that my family is being held accountable for what Hamas is done. It is a choice to turn off the water and the electricity and the way that has happened – I don’t believe that is right.”

Issuing an apology following widespread outrage, a Good Morning Britain spokesperson said: “Richard is sorry that he has upset viewers with his question to Layla Moran.”

They added: “His intention was to understand the mood and atmosphere amongst the civilian population of Gaza immediately before the attacks … He did not mean to imply that she or her family might have had any prior knowledge of the attacks.”

Madeley’s words have been widely condemned and there have been calls for him to be taken off-air.


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Keir Starmer’s economic growth plan doesn’t allow for contingencies. Awkward…

There are two serious flaws in Keir Starmer’s plan to fund public services by growing the economy.

While you’re watching this clip, have a go at working out what they are:

Firstly, economic growth doesn’t necessarily mean more money for the Treasury.

In order to put new public money into services, a responsible government (that isn’t borrowing) will need to tax a similar amount out of us all – and a responsible Labour government would ensure that such taxation is weighted to put most of the burden onto the rich and profitable businesses.

Has Keir Starmer publicised plans for a new taxation structure for the UK? No. He has been courting businesses because he wants their donations. In turn, this means they’ll want tax breaks from him, or they’ll threaten to remove their financial support.

So it is hard to envision much extra cash making its way into the public purse under Starmer (although we would see more of it than under the Tories, who want to cut both taxes and public services to the bone).

Worse still is this: Keir Starmer has no contingency plan if the economy does not grow.

Three times, in the interview above, he was asked to explain what he would do then – and all three times, his only answer was that he believes the economy will grow.

Faith is a wonderful thing, but you can’t fuel the economy of a developed western nation on hot air and fantasy.


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Labour to give 16-year-olds the vote if it wins an election: good or bad?

Why are the Tories wringing their hands about this?

16-year-olds have been voting in polls in Scotland and Wales for a few years now, with no apparent societal degeneration.

This Writer tends to believe the Tories are worried that younger people, given the vote, will use it to keep Labour in power. But that’s based on an out-of-date understanding of Labour’s position on the political map.

When Labour was left-wing, and had policies that would have given people starting out in life a better chance for success, then 16- and 17-year-olds might have voted for that party. They would certainly have come out very strongly in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s version of that party.

But Keir Starmer has systematically ditched all of Mr Corbyn’s left-wing policies, turning a once-democratic Socialist party into a mirror-image of the Conservatives.

Teenagers – at least, those with any political nous at all – are therefore far more likely to cast around for other political organisations to support.

If the Tories have anything genuine to fear, it is that impressionable teens – those who don’t have any political savvy – will be fooled by a slogan into voting unexpectedly.

But wouldn’t that be poetic justice for the Tories, who have spent decades trying to train us to support three-word slogans rather than thinking for ourselves?


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Look who’s opposing this plan to house asylum-seekers on a barge

Richard Drax: his ancestors transported slaves to the Caribbean in cramped, unhygienic ships. Now he is opposing a similar (albeit somewhat more comfortable) scheme for asylum-seekers.

When a Conservative MP whose family were pioneers of the slave trade opposes a plan to house foreign asylum-seekers on a “completely inadequate” barge, his colleagues in government ought to take notice.

They won’t, of course.

Richard Drax’s ancestors ran sugar plantations based on slave labour, in Barbados and Jamaica, until the British Parliament banned slavery in 1833. The slaves had been transported from Africa on ships where conditions were appallingly cramped, unhygienic and inhumane.

Now, single men who have already suffered to get to the UK are set to be billeted on the 222-berth barge Bibby Stockholm while they wait for their asylum claims to be processed. It is expected to be in use for 18 months.

It will be moored in Portland Port, near Weymouth, and is said to have been refurbished since the Dutch government used it for the same purpose, when it was described as an “oppressive environment.”

Drax’s constituency includes Portland, so the reason he doesn’t want this seems clear (Not In My Back Yard-ism).

According to the BBC,

he was “very concerned” about the impact on the area which “relies on small businesses”.

That being said, the mere fact of him opposing this should carry some weight.

The plan has been touted as a way to get asylum-seekers out of hotels where their accommodation has been costing the government more than £6 million per day and angering local residents.

But Labour has said it is

“in addition to hotels, not instead of them, and is still more than twice as expensive as normal asylum accommodation”.

So whichever way you slice it, the evidence in support of this new scheme is wafer-thin.


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