Another Reason Why the BBC is Shit

The fact that BBC News now has about 30% outside content suggests the channel is desperate to stay on air with all the cuts being aimed at them. The weird thing about this is BBC News has, at least for the last eight or nine years, been a mouthpiece for the Tory government. Scrutiny has been in short supply of the Tories, the focus has been on anyone but them. So you'd imagine the BBC, in the knowledge that there's a good chance their evil overlords will be ousted from power next year, would be more 'inclined' to be a little more circumspect of the government and not appear to be gaslighting the country for them, still.

I know that theories abound about the BBC and how their impartiality, especially towards the Conservatives, has never been more absent, but one wonders if the actual standard of journalism has been reduced to a level that the average intelligent person will switch off?

This morning on the offensive Nicky Campbell radio phone in - now televised on the news channel for two hours a day to cut costs - one of the many arseholes they invite on to spout bullshit made the comment: 'I completely support the teachers, nurses and other public sector workers desperate for a wage rise, BUT surely there's a more effective way of getting what they want rather than going on strike and effecting the lives of the people who support them?' This is a passive aggressive form of attack, something the right wing has become very good at. It used to be called whataboutery, but now it's more subtle. 

I wanted to be on that show, I wanted to have Twitter open in front of me or my mobile to text the programme. I wanted to say, "If striking doesn't work, what do you suggest they do? Writing a strongly worded letter to the Health Secretary? Stop caring about their patients? How does the caller think a pay issue will be resolved unless the people wanting a pay rise roll over and show their employers' their bellies and hope that's enough?" What an absolute fucking wanker and what a shower of cunts the BBC are for even allowing this idiot onto the show; but what should we expect? Yesterday, Jonty from Chichester phoned up to tell the listening public, in his posh voice, that nurses were greedy, already paid enough and need to stop being greedy! This was like when they invited Nigel Lawson on to argue the case for why climate change is a myth...

I love the way the BBC has managed to make people we were cheering for three years ago into villains now. Every time there's a strike, it never focuses on the needs of those on strike, but always attaches itself to the selfish wants and needs of the individual. "This strike is affecting my life and I don't like it!" Well tough shit, it's ruining the lives of the people who want more money, but don't you worry about them, until you need to have your life saved.

Electable at What Cost?

Disclaimer: I have not voted Labour for five and a half years and haven't been a member of the party for six years. I did vote for them at virtually every other election.

Did you know there's this thing called the Forde Report, commissioned by Labour leader Keir Starmer investigating the antisemitism allegations levelled at Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party at the time. You might not have heard of this report because once it was released it got buried, by the Labour Party. The reason? It proved categorically that the allegations against the former Labour leader and the rife antisemitism were a load of hogwash and that there was ONE example of it, originating from an old tweet made by a Corbyn supporting councillor in Merseyside. Considering there are still Tories who would throw their support behind any of the previous PMs we've had, one lone dodgy bloke does not make a political party rife with racism and corruption.

To put some perspective on it, there were 36 recorded examples of Tory Islamophobia in the same period of time, suggesting that it's okay for Tories to criticise Muslims but it's not okay to criticise the right-wing Israeli government and its systematic eradication of the Palestinians? I mean, we know the world isn't a fair place, but that's a bit crazy isn't it?

Anyhow, one of the news channels I usually throw scorn towards, Al Jazeera, released a series of films called The Labour Files, which broke down and investigated the entire incident from the election of Corbyn as Labour leader to the invention of allegations, which originated inside the Labour Party and until the removal of Corbyn, which it basically claims was a centre-right coup. It named all the newspapers as being culpable in the persecution of Corbyn, but focused it's attention at The Guardian, which it accused of adding imaginary meat to the bones of a non-existent story. The Guardian currently moderates or blocks any comments that mention the Labour Files.

These documentaries also go as far to suggest that the right wing of the Labour party deliberately sabotaged their own party's election chances to get rid of Corbyn from the party and that these MPs and party workers were responsible for everything that has happened since 2017. I find it quite crazy that in 2017 when Theresa May looked like she was trying to lose that election that members of Corbyn's party were leaking lies to the press or deliberately starting arguments about non-existent issues. I can't believe these people sacrificed us because they didn't like this old bloke with a beard and an allotment. Everything said about Corbyn for years was a lie; it was a scam and an organised destruction of a decent man.

Incidentally, Starmer has announced that Jeremy Corbyn will not be standing at the next election as a Labour candidate - an election liability, apparently - and the Constitutional Labour Party (CLP) - the mob who basically did Corbyn in - are now considerably more dangerous than Corbyn could ever have been because they are forcing the party to the right, just not as right wing as the Tories. Starmer continues to drive Labour down this centre-right path in an attempt to win floating Tory voters at a time when all he needs to be is competent to win the next General Election - it makes no sense.

Now this isn't designed as a hatchet job against Labour; far from it. The last thing I want is for people to think I've been an enabler to another Tory government, but I'm not sure the Labour Party are very nice people at the moment. Wes Streeting, their Health spokesperson is more for privatisation than any Tory has ever openly said; Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, has some ideas that Thatcher would have applauded and opinions on the economy, Europe, immigrants and other things that would have some of us frothing at the mouth if it came from a Tory's mouth. 

Labour's CLP believed the only way the party would be electable again was if it swung slightly right of Tony Blair and they completely ignored the fact that in 2017 more people voted for a left wing Labour leader than anybody had ever voted before. Corbyn might have lost, but his policies still resounded with people, especially the young - he probably lost because the press had already character assassinated him; had someone young and exciting gone to the polls with his policies I'm betting we wouldn't be having this conversation now. 

There are a lot of unhealthy links between top people in Starmer's Shadow Cabinet and regimes around the world we don't necessarily want to be seen aligning with and too many of their opinions seem to agree with the government rather than oppose them. I know a lot of people are saying they're saying this that and the other to win votes, when they get in they'll be far more radical and to these people I say the Tories don't do that; they don't promise one thing and deliver the diametric opposite; even if they don't fulfil any of their election pledges it's usually because of profitability or being ignored, Even if the Tories can get away with lying, the right wing media will never let you forget it if Labour did it. It doesn't matter how good they might prove to be they'll never be forgiven; it would be on every Tory election campaign leaflet for 100 years.

Reeves has said there isn't enough money to do anything really radical and it could be that instead of changing things, Labour could get into power and just hope that it coincides with an economic recovery, because the more to the right they shift the less likely they're going to actually do anything or enable something from being built, which means the decaying country in front of you will continue to decay, but at a faster rate. I must share this with you, I heard this the other day and figured it just about sums up this country in a nutshell at the moment: it would cost £14bn to fix all of the UK's roads, but the amount of time it would take would man the cost would eventually be £17bn. However, if the UK was to completely resurface every single road with more than 20% erosion and decay it would only cost £22bn. I know that's £5bn more, but the £17bn 'repairs' cost would become £22bn by the time the 'repairs' finished because there would then be the new repairs to repair. The cost would increase every year - a painting of the Forth Bridge scenario - however, spend the £22bn on resurfacing 80% of the road network, the annual repair costs nationally are in the millions not the billions for at least ten years. 

If people are worried about the UK borrowing money, if that money is used to repair the country, build new schools and hospitals and drag it back to where it should be, ending years of Tory corruption, then that is money well borrowed because it will generate jobs, it will be ploughed back into the economy and the country will prosper again. Fuck your tax breaks and contracts and inflation-busting interest rate rises; create a country that needs people to work in it and if that means extending 1 to 5 year visas to Europeans or Africans or even Asylum Seekers to help do that work and pay more into local communities and wow... suddenly you have happy thriving societies where dislike and xenophobia are a small minority not the overriding majority. This is the message Labour needs to be sending out to every one.

The last seven years have effectively ended the idea of hung parliaments and rainbow alliances; with the exception of the SNP - who are an entirely different blog if I understood enough about them - no one really looks like they can offer any real opposition nationally. The Libdems are basically where the Liberal Party was in the 1970s and the United Kingdom will never elect Green MPs unless it's in places like Brighton; so we're a two party nation and one party is now like the Tory party and the other is like the BNP. What a fucking choice?

Interest-ing (for some)

I like to think I know more than others about politics and how it works. I mean, I've spent enough time reading, writing and ranting about it, so sometimes I'm genuinely confused. I'm none the wiser when it comes to the subject of interest rates and how raising them prevents inflation. I think this is because we've had eleven consecutive interest rate hikes and I've not seen the price of a tin of beans drop; tomatoes and peppers are still going up in price and the cost of a refill pouch of Kenco decaf 'koffy' increased 75p in one week, which is about a 20% increase.

The Bank of England has just put it's rate up again and the explanation for it was this: "This means people have less money to spend on the economy, subsequently causing inflation to drop". There are other reasons given, such as bringing down prices of imports and discouraging people from borrowing, but the obvious fact staring most of us already have less to spend and this is coupled with high interest rates meaning only people with savings are making more money and the prices of food continue to go up - as the latest 10.4% inflation figures clearly proved. Raising the interest rate increases the profits of people with savings and forces more and more people into having to make difficult decisions. These rises have not stopped inflation because these interest hikes benefit the companies already profiteering from it. It's like giving all the energy companies control of their own watchdog, said watchdog will always err towards the shareholders than you or I (a bit like in real life). The bottom line is big business doesn't give a shit if you live, die or starve and freeze because someone will take your place and require the services/food they provide and they'll find a way to pay the bills.

How is this even remotely helping? The Bank of England lackey Andrew Bailey has urged retailers to curb their profits and stop putting prices up - in other words 'give more back to your customers and less to your shareholders', which we all know has as much chance of happening as Boris Johnson being kicked out of the Tory party. Prices of food, fuel and therefore everything connected will continue to rise leaving the UK in a perilous position by the time next autumn rolls around.

Yet the Tories have reduced the 30 point deficit in the polls to less than 10 points suggesting what we're headed for next year is a hung parliament - which must make depressing reading for the 'I'll roll over if you tickle my belly' leader of the opposition. Surely the British people deserve a brighter future? At the moment they have a choice between a Tory party that has somehow convinced people it's not really as shitty or nasty as people thought, or the Labour party, who had their chances of power scuppered by their right wing in 2017, are now bemused as to why the left wing of the party is trying to scupper the next one. This is a party that is so right wing now they approve of what Israel is doing more than many Israelis.

Surely it's time people started to want their politicians to work for the people and not just their mates and surely it's time to be able to sack our local MPs if they are not seen doing a minimum amount of work for their constituencies or are claiming too much in expenses while stymieing the chances of the disenfranchised. We need a new politics at a time when people are becoming resigned to living in a world that is continually butt-fucking them. It has to stop because we're going to be here in 12 months, when the price of that decaf will be £6 for a refill (instead of the £3.25 it had been for years) and there will still be fresh food shortages in the winter because we're still going to be last in queue of EU suppliers, even if we are paying much more. We'll look at the price of petrol and think £1.50 a litre is cheap, the same way in a few years we'll think £2.00 is cheap and filling the car up will become a luxury for some people.

I get the argument from right wingers; there is no other way; people won't pay for the people who won't work, people don't want high taxes - but think about this for just one second; we used to have councils that did everything, low prices, high employment and a lot of things were state owned. In 2023, because of capitalism at its most rampant and uncaring, we have almost a quarter of the country in need of some kind of handout and it's all to do with rising prices and costs and profits. Your rates pay for fewer things every year and if the rich are going to remain very rich then someone's got to pay for it and that someone is us. Yeah, it's always been like this isn't an argument, it's barely an excuse and no, actually, it hasn't always been like this; yes we have rich people and poor people, but we didn't have so many poor people to the point where a company's profit is more important than the welfare of its workers (and therefore it's users/customers).

If you were told by the government that we'd have to share our waterways with a lot of the stuff that comes out of bottoms and pay for the privilege, so that the shareholders of the privatised water industry can buy a bigger and more vulgar yacht to moor in the Bahamas, I'm sure you'd find a lot of people opposed to that and when you find out that the companies that own the water companies have made it increasingly difficult for the government to impose any rules or sanctions on them and have actually been pumping bottom product straight into our seas and rivers do you still feel really confident and happy about privatisation in the 21st century?

Take the rail strikes; yes 50% of the industrial action was about pay, but much of the other 50% was about safeguarding, protection of jobs and customers and rail workers' bosses were not allowed to discuss certain aspects of what was being asked for because the government was pushing for the changes more than the companies that 'own' the railways. That included disposing of almost all staff outside of the train drivers - reducing the service, putting people at risk and allowing trains and stations to become empty and automated, cold and unhelpful. You don't hear about that, you just get told about the evil strikers making people better off than themselves angry at being inconvenienced, even if that patently wasn't the case this time around.

It might have always been like this but I think when you hear bemused Tories and Brexit nuts droning on about how much better the past was, I actually think what they want is for the UK to return to a time where their memories have simply polarised aspects and forgotten other, less wondrous, things. People want councils that fix the central heating, pick up bins, sweep the streets, discourage litterers, they want the police to keep the streets safe and clear of undesirables, who would only exist in small groups and could be targeted by community workers, who like everyone else is an arm of one organisation, not one of 50 private companies trying to think of the cheapest way of helping someone.

A time when people seemed happy and summers were proper long is what people yearn for this and yet are unaware of the fact that it's their own fault we're even further away from what they want because we've bought into all the capitalist bullshit fed to us by whatever political overlords sit in parliament. And it's all the fault of the generation who literally never had it so good; the generation that ensured no one ever had it as good as them again.

Tory Britain Season Finale

I remember declaring in these pages back in 2016 that world events are becoming like an Aaron Sorkin [West Wing] drama that simply wouldn't have been commissioned because it was too far fetched. Everything from Brexit to Trump to the political craziness that followed and to Covid 19 and Boris Johnson - the news has felt more like a wondrously surreal soap opera at times and social media has divided the country even more with lots of people standing round with I Told You So T-shirts on and those furious sunlit uplands believers who are further away from them now than they were in 2015 trying to justify all the shit that's happening and all sounding increasingly bewildered and... well, frankly, stupid.

A few months ago they had become beyond farcical. It's like the scriptwriters, with a desperate need to beat all the events of previous seasons, had gone utterly mad and decided that the Tory party needed to properly explode/implode - again - but this time so catastrophically it would give them wiggle room to set things up for a all-new, all-different new season of Britain. Short of the alien invasion (which I have twice before suggested is on the cards), we've long been in a situation where we are actually the laughing stock of much of the rest of the world. I'm expecting the Rwandan government to start offering advice within the week, followed by North Korea and the Andaman Islands...

About four months ago, I wrote this: There is no way to get a General Election. That's the frightening thing about the current situation. Only Liz Truss has that power and I think - conspiracy theories aside - she's barking mad and is more akin to Game of Thrones politics than British democracy and she's no longer in charge - literally and metaphorically. Plus, a General Election would be so disastrous for the Tories they could be reduced to no longer being the opposition - it really is that bad. 300+ MPs are not going to want to give up their jobs for a matter of principle, so we're stuck with them for as long as another two years plus. 

In the last three months, Sunak's government hasn't really done much to address the laundry list of problems the UK has at the moment; he's set a few targets, which even right wing newspapers have suggested would happen if we had a corpse in charge, in the hope that the gullible public will forget about the massive corruption and general piss taking that has been going on for best part of the last eight years. Part of me thinks that they tried to throw the 2017 election; actually physically gave up about half way through it because they knew we were fucked, but they didn't lose and have been stuck with this massive fubar with no idea how to fix it so have been milking it for whatever they can. The Tories don't care about Britain or you, they care about themselves and will do it all again in 12 years time when you get fed up with having extra balloons with your capitalism.

I remember lots of events in the last 50 years where I've asked floating voters to remember when the Tories did this, that or the other - to remember the NHS or COVID or PPE or Windrush or Grenfell or HS2 or Levelling up or tax evasion or fridges or [insert umpteen more embarrassing fuck ups here], but often time is a healer in the worst kind of ways and people think that they deserve another chance. They don't. They basically prove that around a third of the population are masochists. We put the pain they inflict out of our minds because, you know, it's politics. But this time I think we're witnessing the bottom falling out of the Tories. I think even Tories are fed up with them. This current mob are not Conservatives, not how I remember them and I remember nasty Tories from the Thatcher era. No, this lot are Libertarian neo-Fascists and that is a massive danger to anyone in this country who isn't wealthy.

What we're witnessing is strip mining of the economy by MPs and their cohorts because they're not going to be able to do it very soon. They're in a win-win situation; they're fucking up the UK so much that whoever gets in power is royally screwed economically and if some miracle happened they retained power somehow they could literally continue treating the country like their very own Baby Daddy.

Sleaze and corruption is coming out of Westminster like a running sore; it's like they have spent the last few years normalising it; making the general public relatively immune to the ridiculous and at times farcical goings on. 'Oh it's just politicians; you know what they're like, ennit?' What is incredible is they've almost stopped trying to defend themselves, now it's all about saying 'Yeah, we're bad but can you imagine what that lot are going to be like in power, doing all that woke stuff and spending money on people who aren't YOU!'

The media still try to set the agenda by attempting to dictate to the people just who the enemy is, unfortunately, the media has forgotten that the general public who they depend on is actually the enemy. Apparently at much as 78% of the country defend the strikes; most people accept they're a pain in the arse but support the people doing it. The unions have swapped bluff, bluster and shouting with co-ordinated responses; calm, cool and calculated and have not risen to the bait. 

I still see people - I presume they're real people - who would rather remind us all of that great hypothetical of how it would be much worse under a [insert political party that isn't right wing here] government and you have to wonder what rock these people are living under. Have none of them looked outside? Do they never go shopping? It must take a special kind of person who will swallow every sentence a government speaks and truly believes that it's everyone else's fault.

The problem I have is I'm not sure a Labour government will be much better. For starters there will literally be no money and to dispel a myth - did you know that every outgoing chancellor leaves a note to the incoming one saying all the money is gone; it's a joke; a bit of banter between the old and the new; like the letter an outgoing president leaves the incoming one. David Cameron chose to weaponize it and we are where we're at all because of that overblown bit of political rhetoric. Do not forget when you think about the last four PMs trying to think who the worst one was, don't forget Cameron, because it really is all his fault. 

Cameron and Osborne have changed the way politics is done in the UK; they exploited every single loophole they could and opened the door to ultra right wing politics becoming normal within a faction of the Tory party. They might have been neo-liberals themselves, but in their greed they allowed a nastier ideology to foment and by pandering to the incredibly minimalist anti-EU side of their party they doomed us. The Labour Party now seem to think their path to power lies in pandering to the shrinking amount of anti-EU people left in the country and by telling people they might have to be the ones who privatise the NHS. The future of British politics has never looked less appealing.  

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.