Tag Archives: power

How Sunak Can Cling to Power – is this the best April Fool of them all, because it’s plausible?

Rishi Sunak: has he actually received any communications like the satirical memo from “Jon Swift II”? If so, did it put an expression like this on his face?

An organisation called 99% has produced a document that it alleges was passed to it by a member with contacts close to the government – and which purports to show how Rishi Sunak can win the next election.

It’s clearly an April Fool’s joke because it is apparently a memo from “Jon Swift II” – a reference to the satirist Jonathan Swift.

The trouble is, in places it seems alarmingly plausible.

In the section marked “Disinform“, for example, it states:

With the support of the media, it is still possible to persuade many people that the UK is suffering from global issues and handling them better than other countries.

I am impressed by the work that Chancellor Hunt is doing – given current performance, it is not easy to maintain a stance that the UK has the fastest growth rate in the G7, but he seems able to deliver the line straight to camera. And he has positioned himself (and you) well to take credit for the inevitable fall in inflation.

Indeed. Note that the UK’s growth rate may take on a much weaker quality if it is examined over a period of several years – and of course the fall in inflation is inevitable and has nothing to do with the Tories.

Remember also that a fall in inflation doesn’t mean prices will drop. It just means they will rise at a slower rate, so those effective pay cuts everybody has been taking don’t look so clever now, do they?

A subdivision marked “Divide the population” states:

Anti-immigrant rhetoric works extremely well, especially coupled with “over stretched public services”.

It continues:

I would single out Suella Braverman for her use of inflammatory rhetoric – it is no small achievement to blame 40,000 economically inactive (at government insistence) people for the economic woes of 68 million.

Finally, for this article, a section marked “Destroy” calls on Sunak to

Destroy democracy: make it practically impossible to elect any other party.

You need a plausible excuse to delay the elections if you cannot win them, and that will require violence on the streets (which you must be able to blame on your opponents, of course).

So far, the violence has been on the part of far-right groups, so you need to change that. Your policy of criminalising climate protests and inflaming the workers’ strikes is sound. I am sure it is not beyond your abilities to find ways of ensuring that some of these erupt into violence.

How interesting. I find it highly credible that the Tories are criminalising protests and attacking striking workers to create left-wing violence threats  – in the mind of the general public, at least.

The memo concludes:

I need not remind you that, should you relinquish power, an incoming administration would set up investigations and inquiries into corruption and other issues which would be extremely damaging to you and your party.

Fake, it may be – but it seems some of the threats in this document are all-too-real.

Source: How Sunak Can Cling to Power – 99%


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Why are the Tories giving huge anti-protest powers to the organisation that employed David Carrick?

Here’s a very good point:

David Carrick admitted 49 sex crimes including 24 rapes yesterday; he used his status as a Metropolitan Police officer to force his victims into silence.

Wayne Couzens is, of course, the Metropolitan Police officer who raped and murdered Sarah Everard, then burned the body in an attempt to evade detection.

The question is: how can we trust police services that employ such people not to abuse the new powers?

And the answer is: We can’t.

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Detainees with weapons cause disturbance at immigration centre

The scene of the action: Harmondsworth immigration removal centre.

A power outage at a London immigration removal centre seems to have given detainees the opportunity to cause trouble.

According to the BBC,

a group of detainees left their rooms and went into the courtyard at the immigration centre armed with various weaponry.

Police officers arrived at 7.45am and Prison Service officers were also there. The detainees involved were returned to their rooms and nobody was injured.

But why did it happen?

Was the incident connected with complaints about the Manston immigrant processing centre, a concentration camp in Kent where conditions were compared with prison by one inmate who wrote a message in a bottle and managed to pass it to the press.

The chief inspector of prisons reported filthy cell toilets, problems with pests and dilapidated communal showers.

Other concerns raised included high levels of vulnerability among detainees, people assessed to be at risk of harm being held for too long and detainees being locked in their cells during lunch and overnight.

Diseases including diphtheria are also said to be present, but the sick – along with people who are pregnant – were said to be treated with nothing more than Paracetomol, according to the ‘message in a bottle’.

And this small disturbance kicked off, the instant the power went down.

Earlier this year, the UK was facing the threat of widespread power cuts due to low fuel supplies.

That threat seems to have subsided now, but what if it hadn’t? How many more such disturbances would we have been facing – and how bad would they have been?

The people involved in this one were said to have had weapons – what exactly were they and how did these people come to have them?

Even if we had the answers to these questions, it seems clear that there are many reasons for concern here.

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Why are the Tories going back to fossil fuels when they could back this instead?


This should be self-explanatory:

Imagine the power that could be generated if they installed a few of these next to the Tory seats in the House of Commons.

(Of course we know why Truss has gone back to fossil fuel, really, don’t we? Because she used to work for a fossil fuel corporation, because her Tory leadership campaign was backed by fossil fuel tycoons, and because she wanted to give them a kickback. Or have I got that wrong?)

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Labour grandee calls for abolition of the House of Lords

Gordon Brown has published a document calling for a wide range of reforms of the way the UK is governed, including better tax-raising powers for devolved governments and abolishing the House of Lords, to be replaced with an elected constitutional guardian.

Watch:

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Robert Llewellyn roasts Rees-Mogg while explaining why wind is better than gas [VIDEO]

Fully charged: Robert Llewellyn.

It seems there’s a bit more to Robert Llewellyn than playing Kryten on Red Dwarf.

He also hosts a show on YouTube called Fully Charged, in which he has just delivered an excellent summary of why the UK should shift to cheap, renewable energy and away from expensive gas.

Yes, that’s right. Gas is hugely expensive in comparison with renewables. The only reason Liz Truss is pushing it is that she has surrounded herself with fossil fuel promoters who are (presumably) giving her reasons to support them.

And watch out for the sideswipe at Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new energy minister.

Here’s the clip:

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Renters ‘Refund’ Bill: there has to be a catch. Can anybody see what it is?

Rent: are the Tories really going to reverse the hated changes imposed by Margaret Thatcher, that made tenants practically powerless to stop landlords walking all over them?

The instant This Writer saw that the Conservative government is planning to allow tenants to reclaim their rent from “dodgy” landlords, I questioned it.

There has to be a catch, right? This is the Tory Party – the party that puts landlords over tenants and would return us to Rackmanism and rack-renting at the flip of a coin.

Maybe Michael Gove is trying to make himself look good ahead of the now-inevitable Conservative leadership contest…

Whatever the reasons, I remain staggered to be able to relay to you a decent policy from the Conservative government:

Tenants will be given new powers to claim refunds on their rent from landlords if their homes fall below standard in the biggest shake-up of the private rented sector since the 1990s.

The Government published it’s long-awaited ‘Fairer Private Rented Sector’ White Paper with reforms which are set to be brought into law under the Renters Reform Bill.

If they become law, experts say the White Paper’s proposals will directly improve the lives of millions of people and become the most radical thing to happen to the private rented sector since Thatcher’s deregulation and the introduction of Buy to Let mortgages in the early 1990s.

Measures include:

Abolishing “no fault” Section 21 evictions: S.21 allows a landlord to evict their tenant with just two months’ notice without having to give them a reason. In recent years this sort of eviction has become a leading cause of homelessness and there have been reports of renters being evicted when they ask for basic repairs.

Overhauling tenancy agreements: The Government is proposing a shift from assured shorthold tenancy agreements (ASTs) that generally run for six or 12 months to open-ended tenancies.

No more rent hike clauses: The Government wants to end arbitrary rent review clauses which allow landlords to hike up rents without justifying them.

Improving basic standards of rented homes: According to the government, 21 per cent of private renters are living in “unfit” homes which means they are damp, mouldy and contain electrical hazards. The White paper proposes to make the Decent Homes standard law in the private rented sector, which means homes must be free from serious health and safety hazards, and landlords must keep homes in a good state of repair, so renters have clean, appropriate and useable facilities. But how will cash-strapped local authorities enforce this?

New housing ombudsman to make landlords accountable: the aim is to enable disputes between private renters and landlords to be settled quickly, at low cost, and without going to court, with powers to compel landlords to issue an apology, take remedial action, and/or pay compensation of up to £25,000 in the form of refunds on rent.

Ban on landlords refusing to rent to benefit claimants: Landlords are not supposed to discriminate against people receiving benefits (known as No DSS) or families but they do. The white paper promises to make it illegal for landlords or agents to have blanket bans on renting to these people.

The right to keep pets: Private renters the right to have a pet and say that landlords cannot “unreasonably deny” them this.

The big irony of all these reforms is that landlords (or alleged landlords) like Philip Davies and Christopher Chope have filibustered (talked out) attempts at rent reform in Private Members’ Bills – but will probably support this.

Source: Renters Reform Bill: Tenants’ rent to be refunded by dodgy landlords as Michael Gove reverses Thatcher reforms

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Back to coal says Johnson as energy crisis puts carbon-zero plan on indefinite hold

Carry on polluting: Boris Johnson’s – and Tory in general – short-sightedness means coal-fired power plants will remain open for the foreseeable future. He’s blackmailing us by saying it’s that or power cuts when winter comes.

How fortuitous for fossil fuel profiteers.

Boris Johnson’s government has ordered Britain’s last coal-fired power plants to remain open this winter after predictions warned up to six million households could be affected by power cuts.

The excuse is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it’s really because successive Tory governments since 2010 have ignored renewable energy sources in favour of helping fossil fuel corporations maintain their profits by stinking up the country with their greenhouse gas pollutants.

Downing Street confirmed a request had been made to keep coal power plants running, which had been scheduled to wind down operations by the autumn.

The move has raised questions about whether plans to slash carbon emissions were still on track, as the heavily polluting fuel source had been due to be phased out.

A Government spokesman has said it was still committed to ending coal power use by 2024.

Yeah, right. And what excuse will they use when 2024 rolls around and it still hasn’t been turned off?

Source: Government sneaks out bad news under the cover of the Queen’s Jubilee

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Johnson is dodging demand to explain why being fined doesn’t break ‘uphold law’ rule

Lord Geidt: he has said the only reason he didn’t offer advice to Boris Johnson on how to conduct himself within the Ministerial Code is he would have had to resign if Johnson didn’t take it. This implies that he expected Johnson not to, doesn’t it?

Boris Johnson’s desperation to hold on to power while exercising it in only silly and pointless ways is becoming increasingly blatant with every passing day.

The latest development is a demand by Johnson’s standards advisor, Lord Geidt, for the prime minister to explain why his fine for breaching Covid-19 laws by attending a party does not break the Ministerial Code duty to comply with the law.

Johnson’s only response is the legally illiterate claim that “paying a fixed penalty notice is not a criminal conviction”. Maybe not – but it is a criminal sanction. People don’t get fined if they haven’t broken a law – and the Code’s conventions demand that ministers breaking the law must resign.

In his annual report on ministers’ interests, Geidt said the Partygate fine meant “a legitimate question has arisen as to whether those facts alone might have constituted a breach of the overarching duty within the ministerial code of complying with the law”.

Even if Johnson thought there was no breach, Geidt stated that he “should respond accordingly, setting out his case in public.”

Do you think he will?

This is just the latest evidence that, as a recent Guardian editorial claimed, the UK is “not being governed seriously in very serious times”.

Anxiety that the UK is rudderless while Johnson desperately tries to bail himself out of trouble that he caused won’t be dispelled by current government policy, the writer claims – because it has been formulated purely to distract us from the prime minister’s illegal antics:

There can be no other purpose for the proposal to restore trade in imperial units. The tiny number of people who will be thrilled by the restoration of a right to exclude metric measurements from displays of goods will be hugely outnumbered by the people, including many Conservatives, who can smell the decay in such gimmickry.

Reports of a plan to lift the prohibition on expanding grammar schools belongs in a similar category, although it sounds weightier. This is a zombie policy that staggers on in the Tory imagination as a solution to problems of social mobility, despite ample evidence that selective education has the opposite effect. If Mr Johnson thinks his levelling up agenda will be enlivened by reviving discredited schools policy, he will be disappointed.

The same unoriginal impulse is being brought to ignite a proposed bonfire of EU regulation – the function of the “Brexit freedoms bill” announced in the Queen’s speech. Sunset clauses will be retroactively scattered across the body of retained European law, so that they expire regardless of whether a suitable replacement has been conceived. It is a wildly irresponsible idea, conceived in the delusional realm of Europhobic imaginations where every British economic problem has its origin in Brussels directives. In reality, it means legislating for deliberate uncertainty, as if the goal is deterring investment.

The writer goes on to make this bold statement: “the harder the prime minister scrapes the bottom of the policy barrel, the more desperate he looks.

“But the task of political survival is now consuming all of the energy that should be applied to running the country… Conservative MPs.. can have Mr Johnson as their leader, or they can have a functional government; not both.”

Sadly, even this is not true.

There is no evidence to suggest that a Tory government will function any more adequately without Boris Johnson than with him; considering the alternatives, they all have to go.

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The elephant in the room: why are the Tories trying to sideline Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland: most people here aren’t bothered about the protocol that puts a trade border between the Province and the rest of the UK. Are the Tories entertaining the DUP’s block to the restoration of the Stormont assembly because it aligns with their own differences with the European Union?

Isn’t it strange that the Queen’s Speech made no mention of the Northern Ireland Protocol that is currently the greatest threat to peace in the United Kingdom?

Prince Charles, standing in for Her Majesty, announced no fewer than 38 planned new laws – and not one of them explained how Boris Johnson’s government plans to tackle the constitutional crisis that has flared up in the Province.

I think it’s because Johnson doesn’t know what to do. He has painted himself into this corner with his silly rushed Brexit and now he can’t get out of it.

For those who don’t know: the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Brexit agreement keeps open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland by creating a hard trade border between the Province and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Last week’s local elections returned a majority of members to the Stormont assembly who approve of that agreement – but Stormont is run on a power-sharing basis, and the second-largest party, the Democratic Unionist Party, is refusing to nominate any of its members to the new administration until a deal is struck that dismantles the border with the rest of the UK.

Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein, who is set to be the new First Minister, has said it is the responsibility of Boris Johnson and his government to resolve the problems over the protocol – by negotiation with the European Union. This has created something of a domino effect.

The EU itself has acknowledged that the Protocol has created difficulties – and offered proposals last October to ease the burden of checks and paperwork.

The EU said it would mean inspections of food products would be reduced far below what is usually required at single-market borders, but the plan came with caveats and the UK said the EU needed to do more.

Now, Universities Minister Michelle Donelan has said the UK may decide to scrap the protocol altogether – and a source close to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she was considering legislation to scrap parts of the Brexit treaty unilaterally – without seeking agreement from the EU.

In turn, the EU’s chief negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, has said that the EU had already “shown a lot of flexibility by proposing impactful, durable solutions and we stand ready to continue discussions. We need the UK government to dial down the rhetoric, be honest about the deal they signed and agree to find solutions within its framework”.

This has been interpreted as a threat of a possible trade war if Truss goes ahead and trashes the protocol.

It’s a big mess – of Boris Johnson’s making. But some have suggested that the only people with whom the UK government should be negotiating are the DUP.

The majority of people in Northern Ireland support the protocol as it stands – or at least, they have voted a majority of representatives into Stormont who support it – and some say this means the DUP should accept it as it is, and not use it to disrupt the power-sharing agreement that helps to maintain the fragile peace the Province has enjoyed since 1998.

It seems only six per cent of the NI electorate see the protocol as a major issue, which suggests that the problem lies only with the DUP.

This Site has previously mentioned rumours that the DUP is only using the protocol as a means of ensuring that the unionist party will not take a position subordinate to nationalists – even though the titles of First Minister and Deputy First Minister are practically meaningless; power is shared between the two major parties.

The possible consequences for Northern Ireland could be catastrophic. But surely, nobody wants a return to the situation before the Good Friday Agreement, do they?

So perhaps NI Secretary Brandon Lewis simply needs to take a robust stance and present it to the DUP. Or are the Tories entertaining the DUP’s rebellion because it suits them to?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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