Downfall

Just a quick one. I know people get fed up with politics ...

The latest version of the Tory government has essentially held a mini budget which many thought would address the key cost of living problems we're having, but what it actually did was make rich people fabulously more wealthy (the stopping of the 45p tax rate, so billionaires will now pay the same 19% that a care worker pays) and poor people more worried because they're going to be forced to try and work more hours or lose any benefits they're only on because the cost of living outstripped wages about 25 years ago needing the introduction of tax credits (which was a stupid Labour idea just so people don't think I just target the Conservatives all the time). 

This is a massive thing because UK revenues will plummet and UK borrowing will escalate. This means even less than zero investment in infrastructure; no money for social care, none for the NHS - which, incidentally, the Tories are attempting to destroy, not sell it off. They have no interest in selling it off, they want to ruin it so something like the NHS can never be done again. The government will also borrow loads of money - now with interest rates going up rather than two years ago when they were almost non-existent - and all in the hope that it stimulates growth and allows trickle down economics to work. Incidentally, trickle down economics is about as effective as communism, just to put it into some context with people who seem to think that even a mildly socialist government is going to do all the things the Daily Mail tell us you should be scared of.

I think we need to put this into some context. Truss has been told she has 2 years as PM. It's her job to absolutely fuck the country up so that when Labour are elected in 2024 they'll face an unprecedented awful position with the country massively in debt, with all its services on its knees and no money available to sort out the mess. This is a calculated move by the Tories to lose the next General Election so that they can win it back when Labour either fail to fix the problems or actually fix them. It will be then that the Tories and their cohorts will start to remind us again that they're the party of fiscal responsibility.

We are witnessing with tax cuts for the richest, caps on bonuses lifted and the poor penalised yet again just what Truss's Tories priorities are - make as much as we can until we can't make anything else. They are strip-mining what's left of UK PLC and will leave us in a position like Greece was a decade ago, except without the EU acting as a safety net.

The Tories started to fuck with us in the coalition. Austerity was an ideological choice and nothing to do with common sense. Then they fucked with us again by convincing us we needed to be out of the EU - this was again based on ideology and not common sense. Now, the third and final megafuck is allowing anyone making lots of money to make loads more while penalising the poorest. This is an endgame; there won't be much of a country left in 2024 to govern. This is disaster capitalism playing out before our eyes to our own country. 

Where do you start?

Liz Truss has one hell of a job and that's before we take into consideration she's basically a pound shop Thatcher with the personality of a house brick and as thick as pig shit and that's not me being horrible. It's like the Tory grandees have looked at the state of the country and gone, 'there's fuck all we can do about this, we're going to have to let the Labour party back in so they can sort the mess out.' Sunak might have had a go at tackling the problem, but it wouldn't have been conservativism as they want it and he would probably fail because most sensible people will know the truth when they see it.

I recount a story from about 1972; a memory of mine that for some strange reason has stuck with me more than a lot of other things for 50 years. My mum used to work in a fruit and veg shop in a shopping precinct in Daventry, we'd been decimalised for over a year and there was an inflation problem for a few years - it was running around 8%. The price of a pound of potatoes rose from 2p a lb to 5p a lb, a very hefty % increase. My mum, serving two older ladies in the shop, replied to one of the women who said the price would go down soon enough with, 'Once the price rises it almost never returns. Prices go up they rarely come down.' She wasn't wrong and it's this analogy that worries the shit out of me.

The first thing I struggle with is why freezing energy bills should cost the government - therefore us - £100bn? Shouldn't the energy companies, who regularly get bailed out by the government, just not make as much profit for a few years? The second thing is now that Gazprom have switched off the Russian gas supply, although the UK only takes 4.3% of its gas from them (the rest comes from Norway and our own gas), the effect on Europe will have knock-ons that will give our energy firms a license to make more money at our expense. We wouldn't be paying more if it was nationalised.

But let's not get bogged down with just the potentially catastrophic energy bills crisis. Truss also inherits a recession, a trade war, a supply chain problem, mounting strikes, an NHS still on its knees, the threat of another Covid winter, a cost of living crisis that could plunge more than a third of the population into survival mode and all the excellent bi-products that fuck up economies brought on by all of those things - more unemployment, more poverty, less tax being paid, more benefits, people actually dying of lack of food or heat in 2022. Frankly, I knew Brexit was going to be one royal shit show of a clusterfuck but it's surpassing even my worst forecasts and this is pretty much down to Brexit - not Covid, not the Ukraine, not anyone else's fault but our own, because had we still been in Europe we would have been in a much stronger position and we wouldn't be as badly off as we are, because regardless of what the Daily Mail might want you to believe, it's tough in the EU but not half as tough as it is in the UK at the moment.

The only real way of solving this problem is to throw money at it. That would solve the problem - short term - until the next round of price rises hit; until the shareholders, desperate to continue doing fuck all for their millions, want even more. Capitalism is broken; that's clear to see. It is just a version of slavery that every week discards to pretence that it isn't just a form of slavery. What makes capitalism work in the eyes of the unwealthy and right wing is the fact that you can make it in this system, you can become a proper consumer. The thing is we were always told it was through hard work and commitment, but it's usually through having a lot of money - maybe someone else's - to start with.

I am seeing something of a backlash against shareholders, CEOs and profits made by companies essentially there to supply us with things we shouldn't be forced into poverty to have. People I know as conservatives (small c deliberate) posting and reposting memes playing the whataboutists at their own game, but using targets that have a proper tangibility in the world. It's okay using whataboutery in hypothetical scenarios (but... Jeremy Corbyn, is a perfect example), the problem is it starts to look desperate when someone defends the very rich getting richer. Which, of course, is what Liz Truss has already done by suggesting, yet again, that tax cuts to the richest benefit the whole of society. It hasn't since it was first suggested and there's no reason to suggest it will now.

Despite a lifetime of leftist leanings and I love it when people try to suggest social democracy and socialism are two disparate ideologies and should never be entwined because both have one word at the core of their existence - fairness. Back in the 1990s when I had my small business, my landlord, who ran the local Chinese takeaway, Mr Chan, once said to me, 'I don't want the world to be anything other than a fairer place.' and you know, I think, deep down, that is what most normal people want. They don't want to have to worry about basic essentials, they want a few luxuries, a holiday and a safe roof over their heads, maybe a few quid in the bank for rainy days or those emergencies we all know are going to happen. Didn't a lot of us used to have that? A lot more than we have now? 

How is that progress?

How is fighting to save our personal dignity a positive thing a quarter of the way through the 21st century?

How can we allow people to profit from things that should be available to every person for as little as humanly possible?

How does allowing any utility service to be run by private companies going to benefit anyone other than the people making money?

These are bleeding obvious questions some people have been shouting into the abyss about for 40 years, but we've allowed greed to supersede every other thing and we're heading for a genuine Us and Them scenario. When the voice of consumer realism Martin Lewis says he fears there might be civil unrest in the winter you want to think he's overreacting but I bet part of you thinks, 'yep, he could be right.'

You could argue, quite reasonably, that we're being gaslighted by the media in the same way our NHS doctors tend to err on the side of caution when giving a prognosis, possibly in the hope that if it doesn't get as bad as everyone says it will then at least we can still heat our gruel by candle light, even if the candle has been made from rendered rat fat. 

I said in the last blog I wrote somewhere that I'm actually quite scared of what the next few years holds. I cannot believe the UK could possibly slide into some kind of dystopian reality that many of the myriad of gammons out there in internet land have dismissed out of hand as scaremongering and project fear, but imagine what is going to be in Truss's in-tray? This is a woman with a slightly maniacal grin and the natural rhythm of a badly constructed android who has announced herself as the next Iron Lady and will lead Britain forward with the richest at the front. No one in their right mind would want to have to try and clear up a mess that has only just started. This isn't even a situation yet, this is a looming darkness on the horizon almost designed to put us into a dark ages mindset, perhaps to steel us for the grimness to come, but it's going to come.

Of course, this could all be a ruse. A double negative that ends up with the Tories calling a general election because the bounce from their measures means they can continue their good work for another 5 years. Yet, this does have a mid-1990s feel about it, like we're winding down on the Tories for bit and we'd rather vote for a one-eyed Jack Russell called Rusty than any of them, ever again. I don't think this hapless bunch of morons have had much idea what they've been doing for the last 5 years, at least and I think the future is scaring the shit out of them, while Boris is eyeing up the 2030 General Election as his chance to regain his throne, maybe as a born-again Blairite? I don't think they know how to stop the country from going bankrupt, because all of the money we should be getting is being syphoned off by all the people who bought UK PLC and not into British bank accounts. 

We're almost at a stage where we need a Clement Atlee styled leader with a vision to change the UK into a better place for everybody. I don't see that person sitting on any opposition bench. I don't think people like that are welcomed into parliament because they tend to be hard work for the entitled and privileged. 

Masochists

Was a large swathe of the population given some kind of bizarre drug when they were born that made them want to take it up the arse whenever possible and go back for more? I know that's a bizarre analogy of something, probably closest to describing the proportion of the British public, who aren't wealthy, who vote conservative because that's what they do and ... but Labour...

Brexiteers seemed to and still desire a return to the 1970s, as they rewrite history to suggest these were the halcyon days of this former empire. Well, if it hasn't escaped your attention, we've been hurtling back to the 1970s in spectacular fashion since 2010 and suffering all the bits about it that nostalgiacs want us to not remember. With hindsight, the 1970s had a few things going for it that people hanker for - a sense of community and belonging, safer streets, amenities that exist and potatoes at 3p a lb. Energy problems, strikes, rampant inflation, recession - all the things the Brextremists want you to forget.

We've had an example this year of what another summer of 1976 amplified by climate change will do to this country if we have more than 5 days of extreme heat. 1976 at something like 32 days where the temperature was 30 degrees or more. Imagine the whole of July and half of August in 40 degree heat?

Yeah, we not responsible for climate change - solely - but when you have a government who have literally slashed subsidies and grants for clean, free energy in favour of lining the pockets of fossil fuel users, you have to start wondering if these people have your children's interests at heart?

We're now having an unprecedented energy crisis, which isn't solely the fault of Brexit, but our exit from the EU has certainly made it considerably more expensive for Brits than it was likely to be anyhow, especially given most of our energy companies and suppliers are owned by EU countries - not businesses, but the actual countries. France own one of our biggest energy suppliers, their own energy is nationalised, so they're quids in and their population are paying a lot less for their energy and are still being asked to cut back to keep costs down for the poorest. In our country, we have to cut back any way because some of us want to be able to eat while we shiver rather than starve and shiver at the same time - although the vibrations might keep you warm...

Thatcher's Tories were responsible for selling off all of our assets and nearly 50 years later can anyone reading this blog say they feel it's been a benefit? Especially when our government is essentially on holiday and letting the country burn while they argue over which fascist is going to steer us to our next disaster. We've seen a lot of straight talking by union people and consumer experts about the state of the country and what an absolute disaster it's hurtling towards, countered [naturally] with gaslighting the population into accepting that the coming tough times are just going to be tough and you're going to have to cope the best you can. 

Not once have I heard anyone ask any politician - why are the energy companies allowed to make so much profit for their shareholders while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet? Isn't this simply licensed profiteering? Privatisation might have been a great idea to someone in the 1980s, but I think most of the population can see quite clearly that the only countries in the world where energy prices are massive are the ones with privatised energy suppliers and you have to be really stupid not to understand that we're the people lining the pockets of these extremely rich people.

Seriously, I've been writing this particular blog for over 10 years and I've commented on some crazy, scary and downright ludicrous things that have happened on the political landscape, but I don't think I've ever felt like the fight had gone from people, but I think this is going to cripple the nation, it's going to plunge almost everyone we know into a situation where Cameron's Big Society finally happens, because the only way we're going to save lives this winter is to open our doors to people who won't want help but will need it. It's going to end up being what little is left of community spirit to keep each other going, while our politicians - whatever variety - swan around Westminster telling us they're doing everything they can, which we really need to understand has and always will be nothing.

Unfortunately, I live in a place where they'd probably still vote a Tory MP in even if Liz Truss annexed Scotland and put Glasgow under Martial Law, but there's a good chance the rest of Scotland might kick them out for good. Those who oppose independence on purely economic grounds are going to struggle condoning being part of a union that is sinking faster than the Titanic. Frankly, I don't think we could do worse than our Westminster overlords, in many ways we're already better.

If this country has a future, it needs to relegate the Tories to the position the LibDems are in; a generation of being the minority party for the rich racists and profiteers would help everybody, including the deluded. 

A Short Post About Why You Should Never Trust the Media

Several months ago, The Guardian essentially destroyed the career of actor/director Noel Clarke. This was not based on something he did, but was based on allegations made against him. For weeks, it seemed, that newspaper was slowly, methodically, eroding away any good will Clarke had and very soon he was a pariah who had lost his BAFTA and was finished in film and television. The Guardian led this destruction of his career and it was fuelled by outrage on social media.

I raged against this while it was going on because it was nothing more than another example of Mob Rule, this time led by the press rather than a mob. Noel Clarke was (and now is) innocent until proven guilty, NOT the other way around. But that isn't what our press do now - they can excuse anything Boris and his mob of self-serving wankers do - partygate, Lordships for dodgy Russians, fucking up the country so the rich get richer - while utterly attempting - and succeeding - to destroy celebrities and ordinary people. People need to wake up and realise that the Press are telling you what to think, they're not reporting on the news, they're making their own agenda to deflect normal people from scrutinising what they should be looking at.

It's happened again. The Guardian, again, is leading with the defenestration of Will Smith, suggesting in a very long piece in the paper, that was quickly taken down, that Smith's career should be finished - not asking a question, but making a definitive statement.

It doesn't matter what side of the should he/shouldn't he fence you sit on regarding Will Smith's mildly violent defence of his wife from public humiliation masquerading as a joke, it isn't for the court of public opinion to decide and that should not be persuaded by newspapers that have absolutely no moral compass of their own.

Personally, this reminds me of when Tiger Woods had an affair and Nike and the US media pressganged him into making a public apology. I was apoplectic at Woods - one of my sporting heroes - because in my never humble opinion, where he puts his penis is between him, his wife and whoever he was fucking and had nothing to do with anyone else. I so wanted him, at his press conference, to say, 'You know what, if Nike want to withdraw my sponsorship they can go fuck themselves, I don't need their money. What I do with my dick is my business and no one else's; so why don't all you worthless jism stains of journalists go fuck off and put your own houses in order before you get on some imaginary high horse and demand apologies from people who owe you fuck all!'

But he didn't and now Will Smith has publicly apologised to the arsehole who made a cruel joke about Smith's wife's alopecia. If it had been me I would have looked at my bank balance, realised that I didn't need to work again and told them all to go fuck themselves and if they didn't they'd get slapped as well. As for Chris Rock, a man so painfully unfunny, he should reciprocate by apologising for making a joke about something ALL women dread the idea of; something both mentally and physically draining that arsehole male pigs have no understanding of.

In fact, people need to start ignoring the British press, because the British press does not have the average man's interests at heart. They want to stir up malcontent, cause divisions and influence public opinion because they think it sells newspapers and, maybe in some perverse way, they think they're doing some good. As someone who once called himself a journalist, the press are worthless cunts who deserve as much respect as bird shit and the sooner people realised this and stop pandering to them, the better. However, a lot of this is driven by righteous people on platforms like Twitter and Instagram; we can't escape the influence social media now has on the actual media, but maybe it's time we started scrutinising the scrutineers? Maybe it's time to stop bowing to dangerous individuals on social media who will destroy lives without recourse, because they - an individual - thinks a life should be destroyed, or they don't agree with how public opinion or, more importantly, the law disagrees with them.

We need to start thinking for ourselves, because people who don't think for themselves are sheep, mindless worthless sheep with no redeeming qualities.

Shambolic

There was a moment, yesterday, watching the television news, where a journalist was in the west Midlands - Wolverhampton to be precise - asking Tory voters about this latest scandal to embroil the government. The moment was when all three interviewed started their replies to the obvious question with, 'I don't think Boris has done a bad job' or 'I'm not really that bothered about the parties...' and 'It's a shame...'

No. It's shameful. You have to be some cold, uncaring individual to think that it wasn't.

The problem with trying to have an argument with someone over COVID isn't too dissimilar to one on Brexit, people, as I often repeat myself, have their beliefs and few change them. We've had 150,000 deaths from the virus, except we haven't, because a lot of people think this is an inflated figure, possibly to suppress us with fear or to control us. Apart from the fact that we're pretty much controlled anyhow and it was a lot cheaper to do without a global pandemic, just makes ideas like this sound silly. Why lie? No... that's the problem isn't it? We all know that Boris lies now. Even his supporters. So why believe it's 150,000? Why not believe then that every other country in the world is also prefabricating its death tolls, therefore suggesting that our own 3rd largest per capita on the planet might only be 8th or 9th or 90th?

You see, this is the problem. People have so many divided and diverse beliefs about COVID that a race began before it peaked to try and return to normal and accept that a lot of people will die before it becomes a flu-threat level problem - endemic. Most capitalists don't care about human life if it gets in the way of profit and their shills follow suit, many of who are politicians able to enable. So, when you have people who view the virus as, say, an opportunity or a means to an end, you're always going to put people at risk.

But let's imagine some of the doubters are correct and we haven't really had 150,000 COVID deaths, it's probably closer to 20,000, not much worse than the flu [it is] and this has all been a waste of time. Does that make 20,000 deaths okay then? And if it does, how can you possibly justify that and think of yourself as a human being?

Few people with enough brain cells are now denying the existence of the virus, so by accepting it exists I presume they accept that it can kill people - any people and not in a selective way? Even if the risk to individuals is small, is it worth taking that risk, for the sake of other people's lives? You know, the risk of mixing with people who might be asymptomatic.

The problem is, when you have to impose rules on the people for their own protection and to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed, because you've underfunded it for a decade, you don't take that decision lightly, nor do you do it without the knowledge that it will have some effect on the population, one that is especially used to its freedoms. 

You know outlandish conspiracy theories? Like the moon landings or the flat earth? You know how in over 50 years not one single person who worked on the Apollo missions, at NASA, at all the other companies connected, not one of them has come forward and said, 'The moon landings were fake, they were filmed by Stanley Kubrick at Shepperton Studios.' It doesn't matter how much 'proof' you want to believe, the fact no one connected to the project, not even someone on their death bed has even hinted at it, should make you realise that it's stupid not to believe it.

I use this as an example because unless Dominic Cummings' team - as clever as they allegedly were - and Boris's lackeys - as stupid as we've witnessed - knew that all of these parties would eventually become public knowledge and didn't give a shit about it, or they believed that every single person who attended every single party; every single police officer working at Downing Street and every single civil servant there would have kept their mouth shut for fear of losing their job and I can't believe anyone would be that conceited (and yes, I know, but conceitedness doesn't equate to stupidity) to believe they thought they could get away with it (unless they didn't care)... 

Yes, maybe this was just one of the many bits of info Cummings took with him to fuck Boris up in the future, in a true Machiavellian way, but it doesn't excuse the fact that after all that money was frittered away on mates' dodgy PPE or spreadsheet track and trace systems, or that some of the government's ideas of kickstarting the economy also kickstarted the second wave of COVID, or those deaths, whether it's a fraction of 150,000 or maybe more; after all those people who lost so much, loved ones, parents, siblings, children, friends, who died alone with just the comfort of strangers - all these things happened and your government was quaffing wine and cheese and probably knocking someone up in a cupboard. The people who lost businesses, jobs, money and their minds and just about every single community in the entire UK has been affected by the last two years and the Conservatives thought they could regularly party and no one would know, or care, because, you know, these political people work really hard (obviously much harder than doctors, nurses, health care professionals, shop workers, etc).

So when people say they feel sorry for Boris, have they considered that he really doesn't deserve any sympathy. He loves that you love him, that's what narcissists are like, but he can't really see that he's done anything wrong and that's what sociopaths are like. Yet people seem to think he's a decent chap, like they thought Farage was (and still is) a decent chap. The fault, I'm afraid lies with us. Maybe not the people who didn't vote for him, but those that did. For the second time in five years the British public cast a vote that would have dire consequences on their future. We only have ourselves to blame and if I've learned one thing in the last ten years, the British [English] haven't finished with the self-flagellation route, just yet.

This isn't really about Boris, because he's just the totem that the rest of the Tories follow. This has to be about all Tories, whether they're politicians, councillors, activists or just voters. It's time to stop pointing fingers, using whataboutery (like the Daily Mail has this morning trying to justify all of No10's parties because they have a photo of Obi Wan Keir drinking a glass of wine at a social event in April 2021) and trying to prove to people that they care about anyone other than themselves. The Tories have proved year on year that they look after the rich and the privileged and they gaslight you into thinking all the problems in the country are caused by those with the least amount of influence, and you buy it, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.