Today (Monday, July 3, 2023), it is raining. Cheer yourself up:
Feel better?
I hope so, because this week’s going to be a long one.
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His response: this image of Audrey White and the Labour letter expelling her, by Labour Heartlands, sums up Keir Starmer’s Stalinist response to any criticism he receives.
A video clip of a woman confronting Keir Starmer with accusations that he lied about uniting the Labour Party and instead witch-hunted members “in the most vicious way” has been viewed more than three million times.
This Writer can’t say that all the views were by people who approved of what Audrey White had to say – but at least they have all heard the heartfelt criticisms of a leader who has betrayed the Labour Party’s reason for being, which is to look after the best interests of people in the UK who have to work for a living.
Let’s push those viewing figures a little higher, shall we?
Speaking to him in July 2022, when Starmer had the cheek to visit Liverpool after writing an article in The Sun, which had insulted the people of that city by accusing them of causing the Hillsborough disaster, she said he had bought into Tory ideology of opposing strikes and privatising more of the NHS,
It was clearly too much for Starmer to handle as one of his flunkies tried to manhandle Ms White away (and then lied about touching her), and the so-called Labour leader made no response at all.
It’s possible that the clip made its impact because Ms White’s credentials as a political campaigner are far more impressive than Starmer’s; he has only been an elected politician since 2015, remember.
White led a long campaign against sexual harassment to change employment law after she was sacked in the 1980s for complaining about the harassment of women at the Lord John clothes shop in Liverpool, where she was a manager.
A film, Business as Usual, was released in 1988, where White was played by Oscar-winner Glenda Jackson, who was a Labour MP for 23 years.
White acknowledged to Liverpool World that she had been suspended by Labour ‘at least twice and possibly three times for speaking out’ but maintained she had never been expelled by the Party.
Starmer’s apparatchiks retaliated four days after the confrontation by telling her she had been expelled in February that year… but they hadn’t bothered to notify her.
Ms White said her suspensions were
“for being interviewed by the [proscribed organisation] Socialist Appeal, the other was for tweets, which was because I was saying I had won a libel case against the Jewish Chronicle.”
In 2020, the Jewish Chronicle agreed to pay damages and issued a public apology to Ms White about articles published about her in 2019 which included details of alleged bullying and a plot to oust former Liverpool Riverside Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman.
The Socialist Appeal interview was given as the reason for expulsion.
But it seems clear that this heroine of the Labour movement was targeted by the party’s current figurehead for the heinous crime… of embarrassing him.
This is not leadership.
It is weakness.
Rather than even attempt to address the concerns of a party member with a far more impressive record of representing the people of the UK than his own, Starmer shunted her out of the organisation that he seems to think he owns.
We can only conclude that everything she said was right and he had no answers for her.
And I think that is why the video clip has had three million views – it shows him up for what he really is: a cuckoo in the Labour nest; a front-man for the Conservative Establishment.
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Check-up: if you haven’t made an appointment already, don’t expect to be in this position at any time… probably for the rest of your natural life.
Dental treatment in England is collapsing beneath the weight of demand.
Only three months ago, This Site reported that NHS patients were being told to wait two years for appointments. Now we learn that the wait has been extended to three.
By the time these poor souls get any treatment, they’ll probably have lost every tooth they have in their mouths!
The report by Healthwatch England confirmed that people are being advised to take private care instead – at cost.
Back in February, the same organisation reported that people were being asked to pay £1,700 to private practitioners for treatments that would cost £60 on the NHS.
Other findings in the latest report include:
People removed from the practice list for not making an appointment sooner.
Repeated cancelled appointments – even midway through treatment.
Dentists have reported that they have thousands of people on their waiting lists, with some patients claiming they are unable to even get on a waiting list.
Dentists shutting down or going completely private.
Patients being asked to wait up to three years for appointments – or six weeks for emergency care.
Some who called NHS 111 seeking emergency dental care were told to “use salt water” and carry on calling practices until they could find help.
Other patients have been told to use DIY filling kits while they wait for an appointment.
People being increasingly prescribed antibiotics with no prospect of a follow-up appointment to actually treat the problem.
It’s a racket, isn’t it? Blackmail.
Dentists have realised that the Covid-19 lockdowns have created huge queues for treatment that they know the surgeries they run for the NHS cannot service.
They are greedily worsening this bottleneck by closing NHS practices, forcing people either to pay a fortune for private care or face a future of pain and possible disfigurement as their teeth decay.
Perhaps it will serve them right when they find that the victims of their scam can’t afford to pay them; and consider even NHS prices to be too expensive:
The watchdog warned that even when people can get access to dental care on the health service, three fifths (61%) of people deem treatment too expensive.
Healthwatch England has called for sweeping reforms to NHS dentistry to avoid harm to the dental health of the UK as a nation.
Fat chance.
The Department of Health has said it is committed to ensuring everybody can access affordable, high-quality dental care.
But it has said nothing about how it will achieve this miracle in the face of dental practitioners’ unwillingness to co-operate. Its spokespeople have been able to talk about only what they did in 2019-20.
You can bet Boris Johnson’s corrupt crew won’t do anything at all for the rest of us. They can afford dentistry, after all.
Anybody who voted for the Conservatives voted for their own teeth to rot out of their head.
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A pub in New Brighton, Merseyside, has re-branded itself after new ‘Tier 3’ rules forced it to close again.
For the time being, the pub formerly known as the James Atherton, after the founder of New Brighton, is now The Three Bellends – after the architects of the area’s misery: Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Dominic Cummings.
Anyone who is familiar with vulgar slang will understand exactly how appropriate the title is, as attached to those individuals.
According to the Huffington Post,
Daniel Davies, chief executive of pub owners Rockpoint Leisure, said the new name “really reflects the mood of the nation” and was chosen on Tuesday when he was forced to tell his staff the pub would have to close.
“It really tears the heart up,” he told HuffPost UK. “It just really, really infuriated us and made us think: why are they doing this? All the evidence points against shutting down places like public houses.
“They’re bellends because Boris and co said they would invest a lot in the north when he got in – but they’ve done nothing for the north. They’re not being affected by this lockdown.”
The change has been rung in with huge support:
My day is now complete, something to bring a smile to everyone’s face
New Brighton Merseyside have got a cracking sense of humour😂
Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock & Dominic Cummings as the Three Bellends
This Wirral pub has changed its name to ‘The Three Bellends.’ In protest at the new Tier 3 restrictions placed on the Liverpool city region. pic.twitter.com/uLp0E1HEdE
A Liverpool pub has renamed itself 'The Three Bellends' as a comment on how Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Dominic Cummings have handled the pandemic 😂 #Lockdown2pic.twitter.com/8d65WOishc
Never did I think, that a mad idea sent my way at half 11 on a Monday night would receive this much coverage 😂 long live The Three Bellends 🔔🔔🔔 biggest design to date! 😂@danieldaviesRPLpic.twitter.com/e8KfTvfx6W
And it has launched a rallying cry for pubs across the country to rebrand in similar ways – as visual demonstrations of their disgust at Johnson, his government, and their daft policies:
Rockpoint Leisure is calling on pubs across the land to follow us and do a temporary name change (for the duration of Marshal Law) to reflect the mood of the nation. Let’s get some name ideas going! The Three Bellends 🛎🛎🛎 #LongLiveHospitality RT @wearethentia@alanvibepic.twitter.com/uNoX5oA2A2
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The coronavirus crisis isn’t all bad news, it seems:
The Minister for Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson MP (pictured below), has today confirmed that disability benefit awards have been automatically extended by six months for claimants due to be reassessed within the next three months.
PIP (Personal Independence Payment) reassessments are notoriously harsh on claimants because these are people with serious conditions who find the demands of the assessments extremely difficult.
So this is good – if it’s true.
Tory government promises haven’t been wonderfully reliable so far.
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Radical solution: It’s unlikely that the government would really want us to adopt the methods of Hannibal Lecter, but its current policies are little better.
The research the FT quotes says that many families have been pushed into poverty because the lockdown means they have suffered “stark drops in income” – but isn’t this because the Tories have tried to cover the loss of employment income with a patchwork of policies that don’t cover everybody and are spectacularly complicated to administrate, rather than simply bringing in a Universal Basic Income that is simplicity itself?
According to the FT, researchers at the Food Foundation found that six per cent of surveyed adults – equivalent to three million people, said someone in their household had to go without food during the last three weeks because there wasn’t enough food.
The same survey found 16 per cent of respondents – equivalent to 8.1 million people, said they had faced food insecurity of some kind – but, again, I’m going to have to take issue with the survey (and the report), because where it says
as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic
I would say it’s as a result of the measures brought in by the government in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Also, the sharp rise in food poverty is not
being driven by self-isolation and a lack of money as an unprecedented economic shutdown leaves millions of workers newly unemployed, furloughed or dependent on government support.
It is being driven by unworkable policies imposed by a government that is desperate to avoid giving everybody enough money to survive. What’s the thinking behind that?
The survey said three per cent of respondents – equivalent to 1.5 million people, had gone a whole day without eating since the lockdown came into effect.
Half of those who said they were facing food insecurity were struggling because of shortages related to the pandemic, and a quarter because they could not leave their homes to shop.
Those are both government failings; shortages from panic-buying and people unable to leave their homes also being unable to access government schemes that, we’re told, exist to help them.
Around 21 per cent were hungry because they simply did not have enough money, and more than two per cent of respondents, the equivalent of a million people, said they had lost all their income since the lockdown had begun.
The Food Foundation and other charities have called for the government to urgently set up a task force to provide food parcels for those who are self-isolating, and to address the lack of cash faced by those who have lost their jobs, the foundation and other campaigners have also called for an end to the five-week wait for universal credit, and to double child benefit.
Why not just bring in a Universal Basic Income? Then everyone will have the cash they need to buy food, and the government will have the time to set up deliveries for people whose health conditions mean they may not leave home.
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Some of you may remember that, back in 2015, I managed to force the Conservative government into admitting the number of people who had died within two weeks of being refused sickness or disability benefits of one kind or another.
The statistics were kept within that tiny time frame because the spokespeople for the Department for Work and Pensions said it did not monitor what happened to people after it kicked them off its books.
So how does Sarah Newton know that 7,990 people died within six months of having their claim for Personal Independence Payment rejected?
The figure itseslf is bad enough but the possibility of a cover-up lasting many years would be a massive scandal.
We’ve had no report of any change in DWP monitoring policy.
Yet Alex Tiffin, on his blog Universal Credit Sufferer, reported that Labour MP Madeline Moon had received a response to a written question, saying: “Of the 3.1 million people who claimed PIP between April 2013 and April 2018, 7,990 died within 6 months of having their claim REJECTED.
“‘3,680 Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants died within three months of their initial application being disallowed.'”
It has also been revealed that “5,290 claimants who’d applied under the Special Rules for Terminally Ill people (SRTI), (those [who have] a terminal disease with less than 6 months to live), died before the DWP made a decision on their claim”.
If the figures on PIP claimants who died three months and six months after their claims were rejected are known to the DWP now, it seems likely that the figures on other sickness and disability claimants were known when my Freedom of Information request was slowly working its way past the obstacles the Tories kept putting in its way – and they lied about it.
There’s only one way to find out. I’ll have to write and find out.
But will we be able to trust the answer?
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It seems that every single Conservative MP has slavishly followed Theresa May through the ‘No’ lobby at the House of Commons, ensuring the success of her desperate bid to keep her own role in the racist victimisation of the so-called Windrush generation secret.
The vote was won by 316 votes to 221 in favour of the motion, which would have ensured that all papers relating to the Windrush scandal between 2010 and 2018 would be released.
But in ordering her MPs to hide the facts, Mrs May has admitted that there are facts about her involvement that she does not want the public to know.
She has admitted that she has not told the truth – or at least, not the whole truth.
That is the message that should be put to voters before they cast their ballots in the local elections tomorrow (May 3):
Does anybody seriously want to support the woman who imposed the most racist policy ever to blight the UK’s citizens – and then tried to deny her role in it?
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Secret smirk: Theresa May thinks she has got away with imposing the racist ‘hostile environment’ policy that deported UK citizens, by letting Amber Rudd take the blame. Shouldn’t she resign too?
She’s between a rock and a hard place.
Tories have been abstaining from voting on Opposition Day debates since the general election last year, so we may conclude from today’s three-line whip to block Labour’s ‘humble address’ that the information being requested is hugely damaging to Mrs May.
Of course, if the Tories continued to abstain – as I stated in a previous article – we would know what that information is.
Either way, the current prime minister’s guilt, her collusion in the targeting of the so-called Windrush Generation and their families, and her determination to continue attacking these people even after being told UK citizens were suffering as a result of her policies, seems clear.
If the Tories succeed in blocking Labour’s motion, do we – the public – accept it?
If not, there’s an obvious answer.
There are local and mayoral elections tomorrow (May 3). If people aren’t satisfied with Mrs May’s behaviour, they can make it clear by voting against Conservative candidates.
A large anti-Conservative vote cannot be seen as anything other than a response to Mrs May and her government. They may try to spin it as something else, but they won’t succeed.
This is an opportunity to rid ourselves of the worst prime minister in living memory. Let’s not throw it away.
Conservative MPs are under a three-line whip to vote against the so-called humble address motion, the same procedure used last year by Labour to force ministers to hand over their Brexit economic impact assessments.
In an opposition day debate later on Wednesday, Labour is to use the motion to ask for all papers, correspondence and advice on between ministers, senior officials and advisers from May 2010 until now.
This would be handed to the Commons home affairs committee and would include information about any detentions or deportations, the setting of deportation targets, and how the policies were seen as affecting people’s lives.
If successful, the tactic could undermine the government’s attempts to insulate May from the crisis over how some citizens of Caribbean origin who arrived in the UK from the 1950s onwards were wrongly targeted amid the “hostile environment” immigration policy, which placed the onus on individuals to actively prove their status.
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[Picture: I Am Incorrigible blog – http://imincorrigible.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/evidence-not-ideology-benefit-tourism-the-problem-only-fruitloops-and-tories-can-see/ – which agrees that benefit tourism is a non issue and distraction from the UK’s real problems.]
The UK is to cut the amount of time EU migrants without realistic job prospects can claim benefits from six to three months, according to David Cameron – who seems desperate to take attention away from Andy Burnham’s speech today on the Coalition’s unwanted privatisation of the National Health Service.
According to the BBC, Cameron said the “magnetic pull” of UK benefits needed addressing to attract people for the right reasons.
But the announcement seems to be deliberately confusing.
It seems this restriction will only apply to people born abroad who have had a job in this country and then lost it. They are the only migrant group currently allowed to claim JSA for six months before the benefit is cut off “unless they [have] very clear job prospects”, as Cameron put it in the BBC article.
EU migrants who were claiming benefits in their own countries must fill in an E303 form in order to receive benefits at the destination country – which are issued at the same rates as in their country of origin for a total of three months only. Failure to find employment in that time means the loss of the benefit or a return to the country of origin.
The BBC article is vague about this; it’s as if Auntie – and Cameron – are trying to hoodwink you (shurely shome mishtake? – Ed) into thinking he is restricting benefits for people who come here looking for work, which is something he cannot do.
Perhaps Cameron is trying to avoid the embarrassment created by his last attempt to claim he was doing something about immigration; he announced five proposals, one of which related to all employers (quadrupling fines for those that do not pay the minimum wage), while the other four were already part of the law of this land.
That little Con was exposed very quickly, on this blog and others.
Note also that he is still trying to say people are coming here from abroad in order to claim our benefits.
That is a lie.
From Vox Political‘s article last year: “UK citizens are a greater drain on the state than immigrants from Europe. Between 1995 and 2011 EEA immigrants paid in 4 per cent more than they took out, whereas native-born Brits only paid in 93 per cent of what they received. Between 2001 and 2011 recent EEA immigrants contributed 34 per cent more than they took out, a net contribution of £22bn.”
Considering the timing of this announcement, it seems likely that Cameron wanted something to take attention away from Andy Burnham’s speech on the Coalition’s dirty little backroom deals to privatise more of the NHS, reported on this blog earlier today.
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