UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said “eye-watering” decisions on tax increases and public service cuts will be made in his Budget on Thursday. But can we trust him to make the right choices?
Labour’s Chris Bryant doesn’t think so. On the BBC’s Politics Live, he pointed out just a few of the financial disasters inflicted on the UK by a Conservative government and raised fears that Hunt will demand more from the people who have the least.
Watch out for the party political nitpicking from Conservative Siobhan Baillie, who doesn’t have a leg to stand on but still tries to undermine the solid points Bryant makes.
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This report from Sky News might not be shocking if you know a few teenagers living near you:
Kids are being used to deal drugs. And some of them are going to be harmed or even killed because of it.
Whether the measures outlined in the report can help prevent this from happening, This Writer cannot predict.
But the fact that funding for children’s services has been cut by 75 per cent since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 is an indictment against Tory government.
Could this situation have been prevented if the Tories had not cut the funding?
Were the Tories told that this was a possible outcome of them doing so?
We already know (from Covid and from their attitude to state benefits) that it’s too much to hope that they would care.
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Liz Truss’s new Chancellor – old Health Secretary Germy C- er, Jeremy Hunt – announced in his very first media interview that he will be imposing further austerity on the UK in order to balance the books after the unforced errors of Kwasi Kwarteng.
Wow.
More austerity, of course, means the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Let’s have some analysis:
We all know this isn’t the first u-turn of the Truss administration.
But do you know the full extent of her dithering?
Here’s a clip that lays out the situation for you:
She has created a huge problem for herself, electorally, with this.
We know that she has thrown away Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto; most of the plans in that document won’t materialise now (and that’s a good thing, by and large).
But by announcing policies on the hoof – and then u-turning on them – Truss is leaving the electorate in limbo.
What does she stand for? Does even she know?
Well, if she doesn’t work it out soon, she’ll self-destruct because the public won’t support a politician with no policies.
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Award-winning: Reading Buses regularly invests back into its services and have one of the greenest fleets in the UK.
Greater Manchester has won the right to cap bus fares at £2 for adults and £1 for children after a landmark ruling by the High Court.
The ruling allows the metropolitan authority to regulate bus services there in the public interest.
Liverpool, West Yorkshire and Sheffield plan to do the same.
But the victory has opened up the debate on whether local authorities should continue to be banned from running services for people and not profit.
Even the Tory government seems to have shifted its position on this, believing the ban on municipal ownership is now “ripe for review”.
According to We Own It,
Only 9 municipal bus companies around the UK survived Thatcher’s disastrous deregulation. Because these bus companies don’t have to pay dividends to shareholders, they can invest more into improving local services.
This makes them incredibly popular, with Nottingham City Transport, Reading Buses and Lothian buses all regularly winning awards.
The power of public ownership has led Reading to have the best passenger numbers outside London, with a 40% jump in just 6 years! Talk about levelling up.
If the Reading model of public ownership was rolled out across the whole of Great Britain, it would save well over £500 million a year.
Sadly the Tories seem to have lost track of this great idea, amidst all the emergencies they have created over the last year, in order to distract us.
We Own It has launched a petition to raise interest and prompt the Tories to remember the statement they made as part of Bus Back Better, their national bus strategy, launched on March 15 last year.
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Dominic Raab: as Foreign Secretary, he refused to return from a foreign holiday when the Taliban took over Afghanistan – and the public reacted appropriately. Should we really expect his comments on Lord Lebedev to be any more reliable than his reaction to that crisis?
We should not be surprised that Dominic Raab has emitted a flurry of falsehoods in defence of Evgeny Lebedev’s elevation to the House of Lords.
His prime minister, Boris Johnson, has been accused of creating a security risk to the UK by letting the son of a former Russian KGB agent have access to Parliamentary documents via the front door.
So Raab appeared on the BBC’s Sunday Morning Programme spouting a lot of nonsense that “There is a very strict and stringent process when anyone is granted a peerage” and that the rules around the honours process were “applied very rigorously in this case. This was done properly and correctly and we have procedures and systems in place to make sure it is.”
It is possible that he was right in all these statements but they are nonsense because the procedures he described do not prevent people who are a huge security risk from being granted a peerage.
We know about this because The Guardian told us, back in October 2020 [boldings mine]:
Two days before Johnson met Lebedev in March [he did this on March 19, right after telling us all to stay in our homes because of Covid-19, so this happened on March 17], the House of Lords appointments commission (Holac), which scrutinises all nominations, wrote to the prime minister. It is understood to have expressed concerns about Lebedev’s proposed peerage and asked Downing Street to reconsider.
The commission, made up of cross-party peers, carries out “propriety checks” on candidates. It does not have the power of veto. But it can suggest that a party come up with an alternative, which is what is understood to have happened in Lebedev’s case.
Peers were apparently alarmed following a confidential briefing from the UK security services. They told the commission Lebedev was viewed as a potential security risk because of his father, Alexander Lebedev, a one-time Moscow spy. During the late cold war period, Lebedev Sr worked undercover at the Soviet embassy in London. His real employer was KGB foreign intelligence.
In reality, the security risk has been defined as low – because peers do not see classified documents.
But in reluctantly accepting Johnson’s insistence on ennobling the Russian-born son of a spy, Holac allegedly called on Johnson to examine Russian influence in the House of Lords, something highlighted by parliament’s intelligence and security committee in its Russia Report.
And the security services said Lebedev’s “family links” meant he was still regarded as a potential concern.
So Keir Starmer’s call for Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to review all the reports on Lord Lebedev that Holac saw seemed entirely reasonable and proportionate.
Downing Street’s claim that “all peerages are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission” fails to acknowledge that Holac can’t veto an appointment, which always remains within the gift of the prime minister. Neither does Raab’s.
So these government representatives, it seems, are deceiving us about their treatment of a potential Russian security risk at a time of high international tensions between the UK and Russia. Fit to lead?
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Whistleblower: this image is representative (the revelations in the article were made by a woman). Many whistleblowers suffer for their principles, in spite of assurances that this won’t happen. It will be interesting to see what happens to Alice O’Keeffe’s career from now on.
The timing is exquisite.
On the day This Site published an article about allegations that a report on institutional racism was scripted by the Tory government to support a lie that there isn’t any in the UK, a whistleblower attacked another report – on the policing of protests – saying it was scripted by the Tories too.
The claim is a huge blow to the credibility of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services. Another blow to its credibility is the fact that it will apparently examine whether there is any truth to it.
For clarity, whistleblower Alice O’Keeffe has said
The official policing inspectorate showed repeated bias in favour of the police and against peaceful protesters…
[The report] was skewed in favour of the government view, with conclusions reached before evidence was gathered and assessed.
The civil service code was breached.
HMICFRS told the home secretary in a private letter it backed the need to change protest laws five months before its report was published.
Some in the inquiry team… likened peaceful protesters to the IRA, which waged a terrorist campaign against the UK.
Ms O’Keeffe’s written complaint was made as HMICFRS worked on a separate report on the policing of a vigil for Sarah Everard. She said the biases she had seen left her fearing a report into the policing of the vigil would be a whitewash.
That report totally exonerated the police and found fault with those of us who criticised police violence against and manhandling of women at the Clapham Common vigil.
HMICFRS has defended itself by claiming independence – based on nothing more than reputation. But reputations can be broken by facts.
And Ms O’Keeffe has spent five years working for the police inspectorate, so it is reasonable to believe she may know her subject.
Well, I hope she made copies of her evidence and put them in a safe place because if HMICFRS holds any information corroborating her claims then you can bet the hard drives have been wiped and the hard copies shredded already.
The upshot of all this is that in the short term we have another reason to distrust a police service that seems to be working for a totalitarian Tory government – and against us.
And in the long term?
We can expect another report that whitewashes the Tory-supporting inspectorate and gives us even more reason to live in fear of our government and the police force that smashes our heads in its name.
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Voter confusion: a survey has shown that voters’ policy preferences indicate they should have put Labour in power, not the Tories.
The Independent reckons Boris Johnson is facing a dilemma after a survey found voters who gave him his election landslide want him to raise taxes on the rich.
There’s just one problem:
That was never a Conservative manifesto promise so he’s under no obligation to do anything of the sort.
Did these people not realise that they were voting for the promises the Tories put in their manifesto?
Voters have never had the right to make demands on a government after putting it in power.
And I know it must seem unfair, considering governments very rarely act according to their manifestos. Theresa May’s 2017 manifesto was obsolete almost before it was published.
And in Johnson’s case, the dilemma isn’t even “Does he deliver for Conservative voters or business leaders?” as the news website claims.
Johnson will deliver for himself, as always. If anybody else profits, that’ll be their good fortune.
But the survey does make one thing very clear.
Voters who want government intervention in the economy, tax rises for the wealthy and spending on public services made a mistake voting Tory.
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Not for sale: That’s unless you live in North West London, it seems.
More than two million Londoners are set to have their NHS services rationed in a scheme to save cash that may do little for their health.
The Tories are using North West London as a testing ground for the scheme that will deprive patients of essential NHS services in order to save £60 million.
That’s right – unlike previous schemes that targeted elective treatments, this round of cuts will take away services that patients need.
I recall reporting on the rationing of hip operations in 2017. At the time I stated that I foresaw huge extra costs: “Either you spend a fortune having your hip operation done by a private company, or you cost the NHS a fortune in unnecessary further costs from delayed treatment and pain management.”
I think many Londoners may be induced into forking out to have their care provided by a private company – and/or having to rely on the NHS for help to manage complications caused by the rationing.
The programme of cuts was announced on the same day Boris Johnson reinforced a commitment to NHS spending. But then, what are his promises worth?
Apparently the NHS in that part of London has racked up debts of more than £120 million. I wonder how much of that has been caused by spending on unnecessary profit-driven health “care” companies?
Services to be hit include:
• Patients currently receiving treatment from more than one consultant may no longer be able to access treatment from both or all of the specialists.
• “Repatriation” of some acute treatment from various specialist hospitals to local ones.
• New scrutiny – described as “demand management” – of GPs who refer patients for acute treatment, with GPs being asked to look at “alternative ways” of dealing with patients’ needs.
• Reduction in intravenous feeds through “better prescribing”.
According to The Guardian,
North-west London has previously been the testing ground for major NHS blueprints across the country, such as Shaping A Healthier Future, a failed hospital closure programme which wasted £76m on management consultants alone.
Health campaigners fear that the cuts to essential NHS acute services contained in the list could be rolled out nationwide to deal with budget shortfalls.
I wonder how the Tories plan to hide the adverse effect of their changes on NHS patients?
Will they pretend the problems they create have “many causes”, as they do with the deaths of benefit claimants?
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This is a media-led scandal; if the Tory-dominated mass media had not spent the last four years demonising Jeremy Corbyn, members of our armed forces would not have used an image of him as target practice.
And supporters of the armed forces would not have voiced their own hatred of Mr Corbyn. Consider the comments of Trevor Coult, founder of ‘For Our Veterans’ – and the organisation’s own comments in support of him:
People are outraged that British war veteran charity @4OurVeterans is defending its founder @TrevorCoultMC for praising UK paratroopers using an effigy of Jeremy Corbyn as gun target practice
The fact this charity is defending their founder says more about them than it does us pic.twitter.com/liU8pDWQdu
It does say much about both the organisation and the man.
But with 13,000 veterans homeless thanks to Conservative government policies, and Jeremy Corbyn the only political leader likely to change that…
To the soldiers shorting at an image of Jeremy Corbyn. When the army have finished with you and you find yourselves having to claim Universal Credit, or you join 13,000 other veterans without a home, Mr Corbyn will be there to help you.
… these servicepeople are going to feel like a proper bunch of patsies if they actively oppose him becoming the UK’s democratically-elected leader – as some are predicting:
Here's a report of the comments made by that unnamed general. Identifying him, I would suggest, should be an even higher priority than investigating the soldiers who have deeply imbibed the anti-democratic culture that dominates British army life https://t.co/mDdABhBVHZ
“Apolitical”, is it? Here’s one ex-serviceman’s response to that:
Can we please get the idea that the armed forces are apolitical out of our heads, please?
Back in 1986, I joined the RAF. I vividly remember standing at ease on the parade ground and the intake being asked to put their hand up if they were a Labour voter 1/
— Andy Vines #BLM #NTAT #GTTO (@aerospacemango) April 3, 2019
… you'll all be out of a job before you know it."
Even then, I knew I was Labour as my family had supported the miners during the strike and we'd had one stay over on a journey between pickets.
I was once detached to USAF Greenham Common for a month, to guard the wire… 3/
— Andy Vines #BLM #NTAT #GTTO (@aerospacemango) April 3, 2019
I don't believe that will ever change.
Even with all the cuts and the veterans on the street, the will always be drill instructors telling kids what to think.
End/
— Andy Vines #BLM #NTAT #GTTO (@aerospacemango) April 3, 2019
Meanwhile, members of the public have been making up their own minds – and they’re not impressed:
The Ministry of Defence have confirmed this is real. Following on from recent threats & attacks made on Jeremy, it really is a matter of urgency that the press reconsider the merits of doorstepping Jeremy at his family home address pic.twitter.com/rvvUhZGLGM
Less than 3 years ago an MP was murdered. Yesterday we learned how close we came to another MP’s murder. The footage of soldiers using images of @jeremycorbyn for so-called “target practice” are disgusting, shocking and utterly unacceptable. MOD must investigate and act urgently
Am sure many Tories would be delighted if someone murdered him as a result of their rhetoric. While wringing their hands and professing innocence and shock of course.
(Robert Peston, below, is one of those best-placed to answer his own question, as a member of the mass-media representatives who have been so instrumental in demonising Mr Corbyn, in accordance with the wishes of the Conservatives.)
The media must change. Corbyn and LAB have been demonised by the media since 2015. The media must own this. #BrokenMedia
This is absolutely horrific, and speaks of a growing dangerous radicalisation on the right against Corbyn in particular and the left in general https://t.co/DtXbmQ21Wa
Back in 2015, an unnamed general called for a de facto military coup against a hypothetical Corbyn government, and another general publicly spoke out against Corbyn, which I debated at the time here https://t.co/ZfBT9LSfwa
Amongst the squaddies I know the dislike him because he is a pacifist. I find it more alarming how many squaddies read the Sun and believe the bullshit they print.
Obviously the Army must investigate this shocking video and the soliders involved. But if this is how they view the British leader of the opposition, there are wider concerns for how they view and, more importantly, treat, local Afghan people https://t.co/r9SdftMvkA
Sad to see ordinary, likely working class UK troops so seemingly brainwashed by UK media into hating someone who, perhaps more than any other politician, risked his political career by trying to stop UK troops being killed and maimed in unnecessary UK warshttps://t.co/KE6eETlKMb
Whatever the facts of the matter really are, this incident has undermined trust in the UK’s armed forces – to a devastating extent.
People no longer believe they can trust the services to defend our nation, its laws and the way of life that we, as citizens of the United Kingdom, hold dear.
Instead, it seems the forces have been perverted until they exist only to defend the ruling class – meaning the Conservatives and representatives of the political far-right.
What will their leaders do to repair the damage – and will they even bother?
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Powys is, geographically, the largest county in Wales – with the smallest population. It habitually receives the least extra cash in the annual settlement from the Welsh Assembly.
As a result, it struggles to provide services – partly because private companies that carry out many of those services assume local authorities have money to burn and charge accordingly (I had that from a council officer).
It must be true, the reasoning runs, because just look at the salaries paid to the council’s chief officers.
And salaries paid to chief officers are high because if they weren’t on a par with richer councils, nobody would even offer to do the job.
So everyone with a chance to demand more is on the take – and who can blame them in these uncertain times?
And public services suffer.
But the only reason we pay our taxes – council tax, income tax, and any other tax that feeds into local authority budgets – is to receive public services.
But (again) we can’t withhold our tax money on the grounds that these services are being withheld from us, because that is a crime and we would be fined at the very least (thereby giving more money into the pot).
Whatever happens, we lose. And this will continue as long as public servants are paid £55 for doing nothing at all.
Incoming Powys chief executive Dr Caroline Turner, has been given a cash boost worth more than £25,000 by Powys councillors.
This will be on top of her salary of £138,000 a year.
At the Full PCC meeting on Thursday, January 24, councillors had to appoint Dr Turner to … statutory roles [including] election returning officer.
There are five sets of fees, some of which are set by external bodies:
Parliamentary elections fees which are set at Westminster – £2,685 for Brecon and Radnorshire and £2,500 for Montgomeryshire.
Welsh Assembly election fees of £4,730 for Brecon and Radnorshire and for Montgomeryshire it’s £4,730.
Elections for Police and Crime Commissioner (set by the Police and Crime Commissioner Board) – £2,870 for Brecon and Radnorshire and £2,574 for Montgomeryshire.
European Elections (which may not happen again) – £5,952.
Local Government elections £110 per contested ward and £55 per uncontested ward.
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