Smiles 2

panda v pumpkin https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1716517669106753

lion massage https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=563848293099237&set=gm.508530018877505&idorvanity=342779168785925

bob and tom https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=3479814515657247

peek-a-boo ! https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1870424248906625242

yes very good - WHAT !!! https://www.facebook.com/reel/954237983266667



and after the big dinner... https://www.facebook.com/reel/605013425517780

Smiles

what scares a bear? https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1313585209856459

colour matching https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1256916652242855

lovely smiles! https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122173497098250162&set=a.122129484122250162

dog nanny https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1100235631503345

dog takes man for walk https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=609207961619567

skywatch https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1869994393924489511

playful pandas https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1869990985381323199

snowdog https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1869990618274857297

knockout Balkan jazz https://ashaftofsunlight.blogspot.com/2010/10/romany-wedding-jazz-number.html

A furious swarm of WASPIs - PMQs 18th December 2024

The loudest buzz this week was about WASPIs - Women Against State Pension Inequality.

In 1995 the then Conservative Government raised women’s State Pension Age (SPA) by five years to equalise it with men’s - and in 2011 the Con/LibDem coalition accelerated the phasing-in. In July this year the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) guilty of maladministration in not promptly and adequately informing those affected, and recommended compensation - which Labour yesterday refused.

Four people raised this issue in today’s PMQs.

The first was the leader of the Opposition. Kemi Badenoch is not trained in law, and it shows: she has not the knack of merciless forensic drilling that allows no escape for the victim. Once again she asked a portmanteau question, in this case combining WASPIs with those who have applied for pension credit since the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Starmer gladly grabbed the latter alternative, boasting of his retention of the State Pension ‘triple lock’ and scoring off Kemi by noting that her Shadow Chancellor recently called it ‘unsustainable.’ It was a hit aimed at the weak coordination of her Cabinet. also instanced when her Shadow Science Minister contradicted her on NIC policy.

How much longer can Badenoch retain her grip on the perfidious Conservative rump in Parliament? She identifies as Yoruba, but that could easily mean ‘taxi’s here, Kemi!’

The next to tackle the PM on WASPIs was Plaid Cymru’s Ben Lake and Sir Keir finally gave a detailed response. He admitted that the DWP’s failures under Labour in the mid-Noughties was ‘unacceptable’ but paired that with George Osborne’s ‘equally unacceptable’ speeding up the SPA-matching process - which the ‘Austerity Chancellor’ infamously told global investors ‘probably saved more money than anything else we’ve [the Conservative administration] done.’

Starmer added that the country cannot afford the compo because of ‘the state of our economy’ and gave us one of his Killer Factoids: ‘the evidence shows that 90% of those impacted knew about the changes.’

A legally-trained Killer-Driller might ask more about the evidence, and whether the other ten per cent should not be made whole. Similarly the PM’s claim - repeated today - about the IHT threshold for farmers being £3 million, and the other one about £5 billion to be invested in farming (er, over two years, and spent on what, exactly?) both need meticulous unpacking.

This approach is vital in puncturing Labour’s dreamworld, the one in which they force us to live. For in other, non-PMQ Parliamentary hearings the Foreign Office has been squirming over the Chagos Islands giveaway, which reportedly the new Mauritian PM has rejected, and sketchwriter Quentin Letts has had sport with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s body language during interrogation by Claire Coutinho.

A third questioner on WASPI was Ian Byrne, one of the seven Labour rebels who had the whip withdrawn for supporting an end to the two child benefit cap. A stuttering Starmer repeated points he had made earlier to Ben Lake.

Nor was the PM off the hook even then. ‘Mother of the House’ Diane Abbott reminded him ‘we did promise [the WASPI women] that we would give them justice.’ Indeed not merely ‘we’ but ‘he’: in 2021 Starmer helped two WASPI campaigners hold a sign supporting ‘fair and fast compensation’ and in 2022 he told BBC Radio Merseyside that it was ‘a real injustice’ and ‘we need to do something about it.’ So when Abbott asked ‘does the Prime Minister really understand how let down they feel today?’ all he could do was to reply ‘I do understand the concern.’

As Letts notes, thanks to the electoral landslide there are numerous Labour backbenchers with no hope of ministerial office and facing defeat in their constituencies next time round and who may begin gossiping about their ‘inept, absent Prime Minister.’

Perhaps Starmer and Badenoch make a pair of wobbly bookends.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

A room full of elephants - PMQs 11th December 2024

Watching the PM and Kemi Badenoch go at each other over immigration today an independent observer might be inclined to conclude despairingly ‘they’re as bad as each other.’ And so of course they are, what with the faux Conservatives having looked at Blair ‘The Master’ and decided that was the model to follow from 2010 onwards.

Yet for all his radical talk of fixing problems at their foundation Starmer is reluctant to tackle them at that level. Instead his approach is semi-reactive, for example reaching agreements with European partners to catch and prosecute people-smugglers - Yvette Cooper made a ministerial statement about this straight after PMQs. Kemi noted that this issue was not even one of Sir Keir’s priorities in his new ‘Plan For Change.’ Yet other countries are dealing with the problem more directly - Sweden, for one.

By the way, again it seems that Starmer’s SpAds have a tin ear for propaganda: in his 28 November migration speech he said ‘mark my words – this government will turn the page,’ using a Kamala slogan just after she rode it into the biggest electoral failure in recent US political history.

Also in passing, there is another aspect that is not receiving much attention: net emigration by British nationals; 787,000 in the decade to 2021. These are likely to be people with marketable skills and initiative. Is there a 1960s-style ‘brain drain’ in progress? How will that impact our prospects for growth?

Immigration is merely one Jumbo in the room. The biggest one, the Mama Tembo, is energy.

Labour’s Noah Law soothed his boss’s nerves after the spat with the Opposition leader by pitching an easy question on how Starmer could ‘help Britain become a clean energy superpower.’

Here is a quiz for Ed Miliband: place the following adjectives for Britain’s energy policy in order of importance - ‘cheap, plentiful, reliable, clean.’ Anyone in his right mind - like India, China, the USA, Russia - has to put ‘clean’ at Number Four. Fortunately with nuclear reactors and an abandonment of Net Zero all may be achievable, as Reform’s Nigel Farage told Question Time last week.

It will be needed so we can earn a living in the world. GDP is a hopeless yardstick of national prosperity, since all it does is measure economic activity. Spend money like a sailor on shore leave and it will go up; but if you do it by increasing the population of dependant low-skilled and unemployed people the GDP per capita will decline.

What counts is energy use per capita. There has to be enough to house, feed and clothe everyone with more left over to produce goods and services for them but also for export, to keep our international trade in some sort of balance. How, with the most expensive electricity in the world, are our industries supposed to compete? What happens if they can’t? We import half our food as it is; how shall we pay for it? Is that not a sustainability question too, you Greens?

Which brings us back to another neglected pachyderm: farming. When Jerome Mayhew (Con) spoke of farms being lost and irreplaceable the PM responded as usual, with an undetailed claim about the IHT threshold for the ‘ordinary family case’ being £3 million. He also boasted that Labour will be investing £5 billion in farming over two years - the expected revenue from the new IHT rules is only 20% of that, so why do it? Why bring the tractors out in York over it?

Look more closely into that five billion pounds and see that little of it is to do with making our farmers produce more food for us. A lot is to do with Greenery, but not the kind we can eat. No wonder Mayhew called Sir Keir ‘duplicitous.’ Meanwhile, as well as the soaring costs of fertiliser and fuel for their machinery, Ed Davey noted that farmers have been undercut by the last administration’s Oz/NZ trade deals.

Starmer was also confronted with the usual queue of begging bowls for good causes and ticklish issues of diplomacy - post-Assad Syria, picking sides in Gaza, arming against Russia, freeing a Brit long imprisoned in Dubai. Somehow we have to stay out of more of the wars that have nearly eviscerated us since 1914 and keep the home fires burning.

We are in crisis. If Labour goes on playing at Johnny Head-In-Air, indulging itself in back-to-Eden crazes, fantasising about punching above our weight on the global stage and thinking other countries will always meet our needs because all we require is international law and fiat money, we are headed for a fall.

If the elephants don’t trample us first.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

An infinite number of flunkeys

A month after the petition to call a fresh General Election, the Government has issued an official response. It appears to have been written by an infinite number of monkeys.

“This Government was elected on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election… The Government was elected by the British people on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election… On entering office, a £22 billion black hole was identified in the nation’s finances… The Government will continue to deliver the manifesto of change that it was elected on.”

We have a whole sentence repeated, a black hole entering office and a last line that should read ‘on which it was elected’ rather than ending in a preposition.

Who wrote this drivel? More to the point, who approved it? Perhaps it escaped the notice of the current Cabinet Secretary Simon Case because he is sadly unwell and it was not yet technically under the purview of his successor Sir Christopher Wormald, due to take over soon. Or maybe it is a touchstone exemplifying the mediocre quality of staff that Dominic Cummings sees throughout government and bureaucracy.

My wife suggests it was given to ChatGPT to write. Or possibly some half-educated researcher - a Chap-GPT? - was tasked with it; if so, the Cabinet Office needs to recruit a subeditor from Fleet Street, for the carelessness of the prose seems to betray a panicky haste - not so much spin as a ‘flat spin.’

We turn now from the grammar to the content, a by-the-yard wallpaper of political assertions, offcuts of which are served weekly in PMQs. The petition claims that Labour has gone back on its promises; paste this question into your AI chatbot and judge for yourself: ‘What pledges in the Labour 2024 manifesto have been abandoned in practice since the General Election?’

Presumably when the Government refers to a ‘manifesto of change’ it does not mean a number of retrospective changes to the manifesto itself. Also the claim to have a ‘mandate’ is leading with the chin, since only one-fifth of the electorate legitimised Starmer’s victory and many of them must now be experiencing ‘buyer’s remorse.’

It would be far better for our masters to take down this nonsense and reconcile themselves with having allowed the debate scheduled for 6 January; which will of course ‘change’ nothing.

Yet something should change. As Sarah Olney noted in her ten-minute-rule speech advocating the Single Transferable Vote, only 96 out of 650 MPs won a majority of their constituents’ votes in July’s General Election. How, on such a slender basis, can Labour repeat Blair’s claim to be the ‘political wing of the British people’?

Naturally Starmer will dismiss the 6 January Westminster Hall debate as merely ‘noises off’, taking the legalistic view that he won by the rules and waving his lottery ticket of validation.

His thinking is limited. Rules, like the Sabbath, are made for man, not the other way round. They are downstream of power, which in turn flows from the collective identity of the populace. Our customs precede our statutes.

For decades that commonality, a willingness to live and let live learned the hard way through centuries of blood and strife, has been under attack from multiple ideologies. Our governments have tried to shore up our unity with an ersatz culture of abstract rights and principles as though there is a Platonic world more real than this one. Lawyers may live in it, but we don’t.

Democratic control is minimal: our representatives ignore us and please themselves once elected. We may throw out a rascally government yet our ability to choose its successor is warped by the oddities of the constituency system. Starmer rejected Ed Davey’s call for proportional representation, but then why expect the cat to bell itself?

A Prime Minister with a large Parliamentary majority has five years to wield a monarch’s arbitrary power. Sir Keir is on plan to inflict huge damage to the country and only a disaster - likely one of his making - can save us. For who can otherwise stop our ‘red-green’ General?

Despite our young - less than a century old - democracy the State apparatus he has inherited can enforce its fantasies with spies, police and propaganda. It has limitless numbers of servants - flunky monkeys - to do it, thanks to their taking and spending half our earnings. Chattering and screaming, they will destroy the machine.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster



************************************************

The Cabinet Office statement in full (in case it does get taken down):
“Government responded


This response was given on 6 December 2024


This Government was elected on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election. Our full focus is on fixing the foundations, rebuilding Britain, and restoring public confidence in government.

The Prime Minister can call a general election at a time of their choosing by requesting a dissolution of Parliament from the Sovereign within the five-year life of a Parliament. The Government was elected by the British people on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election.

This Government is fixing the foundations and delivering change with investment and reform to deliver growth, with more jobs, more money in people’s pockets, to rebuild Britain and get the NHS back on its feet. This will be built on the strong foundations of a stable economy, national security and secure borders as we put politics back in the service of working people.

On entering office, a £22 billion black hole was identified in the nation’s finances. We inherited unprecedented challenges, with crumbling public services and crippled public finances, but will deliver a decade of national renewal through our five missions: economic growth, fixing the NHS, safer streets, making Britain a clean energy super-power and opportunity for all. This is what was promised and is what we are delivering.

The Government’s first Budget freed up tens of billions of pounds to invest in Britain’s future while locking in stability, preventing devastating austerity in our public services and protecting working people’s payslips.

Mission-led government rejects the sticking-plaster solutions of the past and unites public and private sectors, national, devolved and local government, business and unions, and the whole of civil society in a shared purpose. The Government will continue to deliver the manifesto of change that it was elected on.

Cabinet Office”

Fixing the foundations - PMQs 4th December 2024

One of the PM’s stock phrases is ‘fixing the foundations.’ Is he the one to do it?

‘Starmer is already in a flat spin from which he will not recover,’ Dominic Cummings said last week (47:46). ‘He has no idea how to do the job… He will just thrash around failing.’

That might not have been obvious from today’s PMQs. The PM appeared to be more animated in his responses; perhaps he had had a little coaching from the increasingly Gollum-resembling Blair who also warned him straight after July’s election that he would have to do something about immigration (what an irony, Tony!)

He was helped by Kemi Badenoch’s repeating her unfortunate habit of asking a two-part question, this time combining the latter issue with another go at his appointment of convicted fraudster Louise Haigh as (now ex-) Transport Secretary. It allowed Sir Keir to focus on his recent remigration achievements: 9,400 repatriated (mostly voluntary, but including 600 Brazilians suddenly rounded up and flown out - the ruthlessness so displayed might backfire.)

Tomorrow, Starmer is to unveil ‘missions and milestones’, reminiscent of Blair’s five-pledge card in 1997. However net migration will merely be ‘mentioned’ in a document, without a ‘numerical target.’ Will the relaunch rescue Sir Keir?

For a while, perhaps, given the Tory Opposition that did so disastrously when in power. Cummings says they too ‘will not recover… The machine is broken.’

Is the Conservative rump left in Parliament the right rump? Not if Dame Andrea Jenkyns’ defection to Reform is anything to go by; when Starmer crossed the floor to speak to Farage last Friday, was he signalling a gloat at the Tories?

But immigration is one of those foundations that need fixing, and not just for fiscal reasons. The implications for our politics and social relations are far-reaching.

Another fundamental weakness is the electoral system that has given Labour such wildly disproportionate representation in Westminster. The notorious petition started a fortnight ago asking for a fresh GE will be debated in Westminster Hall on 6 January, and has already prompted the formation of an all-party Parliamentary group on fair voting; yesterday (Lib Dem) Sarah Olney’s Ten-Minute Rule Bill urging the introduction of Single Transferable Voting was passed, despite Conservative opposition.

But when Ed Davey now asked for a full debate Starmer replied ‘Proportional representation is not our policy and we will not be making time for it. I will just gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that he did not do too badly under the system as it is.’

As indeed did Labour, and Sarah Olney’s Conservative debating opponent Lewis Cocking, who held his Broxbourne seat in the GE with only 36.8% of the vote.

So much for power to the people.

A third foundation is our economy, the draught horse that has to pull so much. A great deal of this PMQs session was taken up with worthy causes that require funding:

The North Devon hospital with only 6 ICU beds serving 165,000 people; ‘our prisons bursting’ (said Sir Keir); 1,500 South Wales homes needing festive food hampers (sung for by MP Carolyn Harris); NHS waiting lists; access to GPs; financial support for GP practices; guarding against unacceptable behaviour in the workplace; tackling violence against women and girls; bringing historic buildings back into use; compensation for victims of the contaminated blood scandal; financial redress for WASPI women who saw their retirement date pushed back with inadequate warning; index-linking frozen pensions for British émigrés; heating for pensioners; infrastructure for Middlewich; money for special educational needs and disabilities; staving off Post Office closures; the renationalisation and revival of railways.

How is all this and more to be paid for?

As Kemi said, ‘Last week, the Prime Minister failed to repeat the Chancellor’s pledge of no more borrowing and no more taxes… He cannot even repeat the pledges he made just a few weeks ago. None of [this Cabinet] has ever run a business. Why will the Prime Minister not listen to businesses who are saying his Budget is catastrophic?’

This invited Starmer’s usual counterattack on the Conservative’s economic record and shilly-shallying on policy; can they ever live it down?

Nevertheless, it is one thing to win points in the Debating Chamber; another to build a thriving economy on closing industries and New Age energy. Technically Labour has until 2029 to sort out how the country will make ends meet; in reality we may not have so long.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

Petitions and grievances - PMQs 27th November 2024

It may be a record: the Leader of the Opposition inviting the Prime Minister to resign after less than six months in office.

Kemi Badenoch referred to a petition started last Wednesday that she said was asking him to go (Out-On-His-Ear Keir?) At the time of writing it has 2.8 million signatures (easily outstripping the Green Party’s GE vote) and on Monday Parliament responded by setting up a new all-party group for ‘fair elections’ that more than 100 MPs have joined so far - over half of them Labour.

The PM replied that July’s General Election had been a petition (really it was more like an eviction order.) ‘The Mongoose’ missed a trick: the 4 July petitioners didn’t get what they asked for and got a lot they didn’t want.

Kemi raised the issue of employer’s NIC again - but Starmer countered that she and her shadow Science Minister had been contradicting each other as to whether they would reverse it. Fair comment; ‘Get that man’s number, sergeant!’

Quoting the head of McVitie’s doubts about the case for investment in the UK, Badenoch could not resist some biscuit jokes, stonily ignored by the PM. Part of his technique in handling the ‘tribal shouting match’ of Westminster is to dampen the mood like a Seventies movie’s downer ending.

Challenged to repeat the Chancellor’s pledge to the CBI not to borrow or tax more, Starmer demurred and resorted to his stock litany: ‘fixing the foundations [used twice]… £22 billion black hole… not hit the payslips of working people.’

Speaking of work, there were the 1,100 car jobs to be lost at Vauxhall in Luton, thanks in part to the commitment to ban new petrol vehicles by 2030. When Sir Keir reminded Badenoch that the EV mandates had been set by the Tories she replied that they had changed the date to make it easier for people. (We could have hoped for more ‘clear blue water’; perhaps this is another case of too much cross-party consensus.) Luton was also raised by Labour’s Rachel Hopkins; the PM responded with vague comments about ‘working with’ and ‘support’ and said there would be a statement later that day.

Ed Davey’s concern about the removal of winter fuel payments was similarly fended off by reference to Labour’s commitment to ‘clean energy’ and its potential to cut pensioner’s bills. So much depends on that bet, does it not? Let’s hope that the dark hypnotic gaze of Ed Miliband has not misled us.

Another of Davey’s queries, hooked on a tragic constituent’s story, was about underfunded end of life care (the ‘Doctor Death’ Bill will be debated again tomorrow) and the impact of the NIC hike on hospices; Sir Keir sort-of answered it by general reference to a ten-year plan for the NHS.

Like Kemi, the SNP’s Stephen Flynn attempted humour, linking the BBC’s scam awareness week with Labour’s energy bills, business taxes and pensioner robbery. This attracted the PM’s usual counterattack on the SNP’s performance and when his friend Frank McNally later raised the issue of Scotland’s clinical waste disposal Starmer was glad to say that that nation’s government now had powers, money and no excuses left. Such a joy, devolution; no wonder he looks forward to feet-up-Friday.

Enter the special interest people. Reform’s Rupert Lowe wanted stats on ‘foreign nationals receiving Universal Credit’; the PM promised them ‘as soon as I have an update.’

Imran Hussain (Independent) asked for a definition of Islamophobia and a commitment to root it out; Starmer widened his answer to include antisemitism. Labour’s Tahir Ali asked for protection against desecration of ‘all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions’; Sir Keir said Labour was ‘committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division.’ Long-term, he faces a delicate balancing act.

We revisited the question of farmers and the changes to Agricultural Property Relief. Civil servants had belatedly done a little more homework so that Starmer was able to say that the threshold for paying Inheritance Tax on farms was £3 million in the case of ‘parents passing to a child.’ This is a complex matter and even the Lib Dems’ explainer does not quite do it justice. (E.g. one parent or two? How far, if at all, would the Residence Nil-Rate Band apply? More paperwork for Farmer and Mrs Giles after they’ve filled out forms for MAFF, DEFRA etc.)

While expressing gratitude for the Government’s setting matters right for mineworkers and their pension scheme, Ian Lavery (Labour) raked over the forty-year-old coals of policing the miners’ protests at Orgreave. Watch this space: it could be a fruitful source of stored-up political bitterness to aim at the Opposition.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

Where's the Wally? - Deputy PMQs 20th November 2024

Sir Keir - perhaps we should call him other things beginning with K e.g ‘Knockabout,’ the scornful term he used of PMQs last week - was not at the Dispatch Box today. He was returning from the G20 Summit in Rio, far more congenial than the rowdy Commons. Clad in black, ‘Agent K’ schmoozed the PRC’s premier Xi Jinping and at a press conference avoided criticising the jailing of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protestors; perhaps they were ‘far right thugs.’ Best not to rock the sampan, especially when the incoming US administration may stick an oar into the Chagos Islands handover to China’s friend Mauritius.

Taking his place was Angela Rayner, the toughie redhead, and deputising for Kemi Badenoch as per convention was Alex Burghart, the Conservatives’ Shadow NI Minister.

Once again, the cockpit of the Chamber is less satisfactory when both sides agree. Angie’s opening remarks included a reference to ‘Putin’s barbaric war in Ukraine. We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.’ Even now few mainstream journalists other than Peter Hitchens are prepared to give the history and context to that conflict. It is one that has become especially ominous now that President Biden has (perhaps consciously) authorised Zelensky’s use of long-range missiles against Russia, and the latter has changed its nuclear doctrine to include Ukraine’s backers. Burghart seconded Rayner, as did Daisy Cooper (Lib Dem).

Graham Stuart (Con) aimed a shot at Rachel Reeves’ claim to have worked as an economist, but misfired. Perfunctory research reveals that like Nigel Lawson Reeves got her Oxford degree in PPE and further, her MSc at the LSE was in economics. What matters is not the Chancellor’s over-egged CV (since amended) but her policies, and Angie countered with ‘in the last four months our Chancellor has shown more competence than the last four Chancellors that were appointed by his Government.’ Now that claim really does need unpacking.

Like her boss, Rayner is fond of repetition: she said thrice that the previous Government had ‘spent the reserves three times over.’ But when she contrasted the (currently modest) inflation now building in the economy with the 11 per cent under the Conservatives Burghart quickly reminded her of Ukraine and Covid, (measures on both of which matters Labour had been strongly supportive.)

Reeves’ inheritance tax raid on farmers was a live issue. The Lib Dem’s Daisy Cooper cited a constituent’s family who, if forced to sell land to meet the charge, would find their food production economically unviable. Replying to a Midlands MP on the same problem, Rayner repeated Starmer’s claim that ‘the vast majority of farms will not pay any inheritance tax’; yet Burghart had earlier quoted the NFU’s estimate that ‘75% of all commercial farms will fall above the threshold.’ Yesterday Badenoch got a great cheer when she told the farmers’ rally in London that Conservatives would cancel that tax at the first opportunity.

What was John McTernan thinking when he said Britain didn’t need small farmers and would treat them as Thatcher had treated the miners if they protested? Even Sir K had to dissociate himself from that. And what was on ‘posh wellies’ Steve Reed’s mind when he told the Parliamentary environment committee that farmers should consult their tax advisers if the IHT caused them difficulty? What if all farmers sold up and emigrated to somewhere warmer and more sane?

And then there is the ongoing row about the rise in employers’ NIC. Speakers for the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru both raised the implications for care workers, who (it was said last week) might not get compensation for the increased cost; as indeed could be the case for other Local Authority contracted-out services.

The bigger picture with the NIC debacle is that the Government has to some extent tried to give back with one hand what it has taken with the other, using additional funding in the case of LAs and the NHS; and by increasing the Employer’s Allowance (a discount of up to £10,500) for small businesses.

But parish and town councils will not qualify for compensation at all and expect the additional cost to them will be £10 million. The voluntary and charity sector, also struggling, estimates that without similar compensation or exemption the NIC hike will cost it £1.4 billion and impact services. GPs estimate it will cost them £260 million (the poor underpaid and overworked things - seen one recently? Tell Big Chief I-Spy!)

On the whole the public sector and micro businesses will be cushioned.

Not so, medium and large private enterprises - compare Scenarios 4 and 5 in this explainer. They face a significant extra burden, in an economic climate that is already difficult.

But they also have the resources and now an additional motivation to accelerate the trend towards replacing people with machines. AI, robots and automated checkouts don’t get sick or sue their employers. Taxing employment may have more success in reducing it than with harmful indulgences like alcohol and tobacco. A Labour Government claiming to represent the interests of ‘working people’ may see fewer of them and more claiming benefits instead.

Rather than changing the borrowing rules and going for broke, the Government should consider retrenching - on vanity projects like HS2, on foreign aid and foreign war, on expensive new-Eden energy ideas that make our industry increasingly uncompetitive, on ‘restoring our role as a climate leader on the world stage’… We have to cut our coat according to the cloth.

Unless the West succeeds in provoking Russia into nuclear retaliation, in which case pensioners need not fear freezing to death. Shame about the polar bears, though.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

Slither and strike - PMQs 13th November 2024

Sir Keir’s counterattacks on the Opposition are a standard Prime Ministerial way to respond to questions, but his evasions and stock ‘we’re fixing the mess’ routine are becoming irritating. There is only so long he will be able to divert attention to the lamentable performance of the previous Government. Soon his side will have to cope with some difficult hatchlings from what is now their brood.

There were three in his opening remarks. One was his reference to Monday’s Armistice Day event in Paris where he and President Macron reaffirmed their ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine. There’s a troublesome item for Starmer to discuss in our special relationship with America, for President-Elect Trump’s son has taunted Zelensky about losing his ‘allowance’ under the incoming US administration.

Another was COP29 on Tuesday, where Starmer raised the UK’s CO2 emission reduction target to 81% down from 1990 levels by 2035. He told the Commons his focus was on ‘British energy security’ although it looks like the dash towards national dysfunctionality and poverty has just thereby accelerated.

A third was Islamophobia Awareness Month. Ayoub Khan, one of five pro-Palestinian independent MPs in the House, later used this hook to press the PM on his definition of ‘genocide’ in relation to casualties in Gaza. Sir Keir reminded him of October 2023 and said he was ‘well aware’ of the definition, which is why he had never used that term. British foreign policy - not just Labour’s - faces a growing challenge from Muslims who take an internationalist angle; in 2017 Pew Research estimated followers of Islam here will soar to 17 per cent of the population by 2050.

The questioning began with revisiting the Chancellor’s hike in employers’ National Insurance Contributions. Christine Jardine (LibDem) highlighted the impact on GP services. Starmer spoke of extra money for the NHS and social care and carers’ allowances, and was grateful for the next question, a sitter from his side inviting him to attack the Opposition’s ‘damaging’ policies on maternity pay and the minimum wage and its ‘dangerous’ backing for fracking. Sir Keir said here was the Opposition leader’s chance to explain why she opposed Labour’s beneficence.

Kemi Badenoch came out swinging: ‘The Prime Minister can plant as many questions as he likes with his Back Benchers, but at the end of the day I am the one he has to face at the Dispatch Box.’

But yet again she offered him an escape route by a question that both commented on the extra costs of his COP commitment and asked whether he would ‘confirm that he will keep the cap on council tax?’ Naturally the PM bolted towards the first (‘lower bills, energy independence and the jobs of the future’) and left the key point unaddressed. He will always slither out, Mrs Badenoch - if you let him.

Nevertheless Kemi pressed him on the latter, asking how much extra local authorities would have to raise to adjust for NIC rises and cover the social care gap in the Budget? The PM replied to this ‘knockabout’ by repeating his earlier stated figure of £600 million more for social care - had Badenoch not been listening? Yes, she had, and it was the Government that had not been listening to ‘the Labour-run Local Government Association;’ ‘It is clear that the Government have not thought through the impact of the Budget, and this is the problem with having a copy-and-paste Chancellor. Did they not realise that care homes, GP surgeries, children’s nurseries, hospices and even charities have to pay employers’ NI?’ Starmer struck back with his standard ‘we’ve-done-more-than-your-lot-did’ but clearly a point had been scored.

Then came the usual: badly damaged economy, £22 billion black hole, fixing the mess… ‘Nothing to offer but platitudes,’ commented the Mongoose. The hissing is failing to deter.

Ed Davey, too, asked for ‘more reassurance’ on the impact of NIC on GPs. The PM repeated what he had said to Jardine earlier: ‘We will ensure that GP practices have the resources that they need’ without clarifying the funding gap issues.

Brendan O’Hara again raised the Winter Fuel Allowance, reminding the PM how he had sympathised with pensioners two years ago, but Sir Keir struck back against the SNP’s own economic record.

Lincoln Jopp (Con) thought he’d caught Starmer on Sue Gray and the special envoy job: ‘Will he finally admit that it was an invented job on taxpayers’ money for one of his cronies?’ ‘It wasn’t,’ came the reply - short, and short of explanation.

Once more we see the need for Opposition speakers to polish their snake hooks.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

No More Bromance - PMQs 6th November 2024

Emily Maitlis loved last week’s PMQs: ‘Just imagine if PMQs was like this every week. Conciliatory. Helpful. By [sic] partisan. Passionate and compassionate.’

Your correspondent was thinking more on the lines of ‘get a room.’ It may have suited Sir Keir to face Walter the Softy but cross-party collusion has often been the bane of good politics, whether re Brexit or destructive Covid lockdowns. The Commons and especially PMQs should be a bear garden.

La Maitlis herself was not all sweetness and light this morning as Trump became President-Elect: she had to be told off on Channel 4 for swearing about him. Remember the tears of the righteous in 2016? Wait for Rachel Maddow’s reactions on MSNBC (there’s something about her to Make America Grate Again) and all the other tremendously well-paid Care Bears.

Yet the US may now have avoided the ramp to nuclear war and a transformation (by mass illegal migration and fast-track citizenship in a handful of swing States) into a permanent one-party government. The garbage can - and just did.

Over here, we face ‘four more years’ of radical incompetence, unless it gets so bad that the IMF returns, and then we shall all be sorry. Meantime Team Tory has a new captain and the initial signs are that she is a good bowler; the question is whether her side will ever bat again.

The PM opened by congratulating Donald Trump first and then ‘my fourth Tory leader in four and a half years’; Mrs Badenoch thanked him for his ‘almost warm’ welcome and promised to take a different approach by being ‘a more constructive Opposition’ than the last one. Tighten the shin pads! Did the PM and Foreign Secretary take the opportunity of their last meeting with DJT to apologise for Lammy’s derogatory remarks and ‘scatological references’ - some of which she quoted - about him? If not, would Starmer do so now on his colleague’s behalf? Sir Keir swished the air, saying the House was united on national security and Ukraine which was ‘far more important than party politics.’

Kemi noted he had not distanced himself from the Foreign Secretary’s remarks, and expected Trump ‘will soon be calling to thank him for sending all of those north London Labour activists to campaign for his opponent.’ Since most of the Cabinet had signed a motion to ban Trump from addressing Parliament, would the Prime Minister ‘show that he and his Government can be more than student politicians’ by asking Mr Speaker to extend the invitation instead? Starmer replied that Badenoch was ‘giving a masterclass on student politics’ but again he failed to answer the question; which Kemi noted, saying ‘he just reads the lines the officials have prepared for him.’

Perhaps it is a matter of having too much body armour (those 400 Labour myrmidons) but Sir Keir has a habit of chesting away deliveries rather than attempting to score. Again and again he counters with semi-irrelevant boilerplate blether: ‘economy, security, conflict’; ‘fixing the foundations’; ‘stability’; ‘black hole’; the last lot’s ‘mess’; ‘schools, hospitals, homes.’ He is becoming a ‘doubleplusgood duckspeaker’, a Shogun of slogan.

That, or he hurls the ball back. Mary Glindon (Lab) quoted Kemi as saying the outrage about Covid-time Downing Street partying was ‘overblown’ and Starmer shared his honourable friend’s disapproval - without adverting to ‘Beergate’ or his own role in promoting lockdowns. Sir Keir also sided with Torcuil Crichton (Scottish Labour) in challenging the SNP to use its powers and the additional funding now in place to improve public services in Scotland.

There were some easy underhand tosses: the need to support children’s special needs and youngsters’ mental health, the benefits of the minimum wage increase, fighting misogyny in Ireland and the economic abuse of women’s credit, developing infrastructure, cleaning rivers and so on.

And there were hands across the aisle as George Freeman (Con., Mid Norfolk) urged the use of pension funds to invest in innovative businesses; welcomed by the PM as already being addressed by Labour’s British Growth Partnership.

An issue on which we might wish for less consensus was raised by Ed Davey: the House’s unity on Ukraine. This may be a hot one when Trump pushes for peace there.

On a currently contentious matter, at last we got some clarification on the impact of taxation on small family farms: ‘the vast, vast majority of farms will not be affected’ - a shame this could not have been established earlier - followed, of course, by boilerplate about the NHS, schools and homes.

Coming back to the Leader of the Opposition: Badenoch’s inquisitorial approach is promising, but she needs to spend more time in the nets to practise shots under Starmer’s Stonewall Jackson defence.

A slightly edited version of this appeared first on Wolves of Westminster

Stop smashing the system!

We need to be clear: the aim of the Blair-Brown-Starmer constitutional changes is to take power away not from Westminster, but from us.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 put the Crown under parliamentary control, counterbalancing it with a Protestant male bourgeoisie. In the centuries since then, we have seen a Glorious Evolution into a secular non-sexist democracy, with religious and ceremonial trappings.

At long last, we the people who are subject to the law are at the same time the citizens who make the law, through our representatives. Since 1928, all adults have had an equal voice in national self-government.

It is our country. This is what ideologues want to smash.

After Hitler invaded Russia, a London publican said to Claud Cockburn (p. 226):

“I can see it coming, Claud. The Communists are going to take over the country when this little lot’s finished with. And I don’t say they shouldn’t. I don’t say you don’t have common human justice on your side, Claud. All I ask of you is just one thing.”

“What’s that, Harry?”

“All I ask, Claud, is when you and your pals take over and make that great revolution, that you’ll just leave me my King, my constitution and my country.”

He had tears in his eyes, and it was hard not to be able to offer him a binding guarantee.

The power of Parliament is awesome. If sufficiently explicit, an Act passed by both Houses and receiving Royal Assent overrides any other law, treaty or authority anywhere. That is absolute sovereignty. The Crown in Parliament is not bound by any principle or aim other than the expression of the people’s will in pursuit of the nation’s interests.

Its unpredictability and complete liberty is what political zealots cannot stand; they wish to replace a purely procedural system with some programme and administrative arrangement that embodies their philosophy, and then our debates can be at an end.

Nor is it only the Left that undermines us. We have been betrayed on all sides by Quislings enriching themselves by colluding with multinational corporations and supranational organisations trending towards centralised global control. If they succeed, we shall find that absolute power, as Baron Acton said, corrupts absolutely, and that “RULERS”, as Coleridge said, “are as bad as they dare to be”.

How quickly politicians will shake off the common people who give them legitimacy! A touchstone for this misbehaviour is the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s arrogant dismissal of democracy when she said she would stand with Ukraine “no matter what my German voters think“. It is especially ironic that she was not voted into the Bundestag personally, but simply through leading the Green Party under Germany’s proportional representation setup.

Our own system is still imperfect, and has flaws that can be exploited by the ruthless to turn it into a self-destroying machine. When in 1780 John Dunning moved that “the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished”, it was not anticipated that the office of the Prime Minister might become a tyranny, using the monarch’s Royal Prerogative; yet (for example) almost the first act of Blair’s New Labour Government was to politicise the Civil Service in a Privy Council meeting. The comprehensive damage to our constitution had been planned in advance like a bank raid.

In 1789, Thomas Jefferson mooted a periodic constitutional convention so that the living citizens of the United States could re-determine how they governed themselves. If we British value our freedom, then we must find some way to do the same; it cannot be left to a crypto-Communist cabal ruling us on the basis of a freakish electoral result that has already lost a significant portion of its tiny minority of supporters after less than four months.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster.

Jumping Fences - PMQs 30th October 2024

The Left proves it is progressive by being transgressive. Customs are for breaching, rules for breaking. How else is one to smash the system?

So it was that the Lord Chancellor turned her back on the King after delivering his Speech; that the PM removed Mrs T’s portrait from Number 10 and Rachel Reeves followed suit in Number 11 - replacing Nigel Lawson’s with one of the early British Communist Ellen Wilkinson (no Che Guevara poster?)

Parliament must be disrespected, too. Speaker Hoyle had to roast Reeves a couple of days ago for her ‘extreme discourtesy’ in leaking Budget details in advance to American reporters; and after PMQs today the Deputy Speaker reminded ministers and the Treasury bench that such infractions were a discourtesy to the Speaker and the House and went against the Ministerial Code. Did their faces look bovvered?

Now, off to the races with the PM. We are early in the steeplechasing season and this session was a lesson in how not to set up fences.

Rishi Sunak’s were easy ones, more for Thelwell ponies than mighty steeds. His stepping down from leadership was an opportunity for the PM to wish him a ‘joyful’ Diwali (was he thinking of Kamala?) and to thank him for his service. There was a flick of the hoof as the PM said that, seeing how fast the Conservatives went through leaders, he might possibly be facing Sunak again sometime.

Sunak’s response to Starmer’s congratulations on being the first British Asian PM was to self-identify as a Yorkshireman and hope that Sir Keir would support cricket in schools - the latter agreed, of course. The pair also concurred on the importance of AI for the economy, and of support for Ukraine and NATO. Rishi’s wish to keep Stormont going was a gift to his oppo, who reflected on his own work in Northern Ireland.

This last was a high hedge that the final questioner, Mark Francois, could have used to make Sir Keir come a cropper. In 2023 Starmer committed himself in Opposition to repeal the Northern Ireland ‘Legacy Bill’ that gave British servicemen immunity from prosecution for alleged war crimes, and as PM reaffirmed it in July 2024 over Guinness with the Irish Taoiseach. There was a more carefully qualified statement a few days later, saying ‘it would be irresponsible to repeal the Act in its entirety without anything to replace it’ but giving various citations of the ECHR to show its conflicts with the Act’s amnesty. It is a most serious matter, threatening ex-servicemen in the autumn of their lives with the prospect of endless investigations.

But Francois fluffed his chance, in two ways. Here is his question: ‘Why, Sir, are you throwing these veterans to the wolves to pander to Sinn Fein?’ Despite over twenty years in Parliament he had addressed the PM in the first person rather than through the Chair, which caused the Speaker to remind him that Hoyle was not ‘you.’ This bought a few moments for Starmer to frame a short and ambiguous response: ‘I’m not.’ Not amending, or alternatively repealing and replacing the Act? Not doing it to satisfy Sinn Fein, some of whose fugitive supporters may themselves have received ‘comfort letters’ that indemnified them against prosecution for their own crimes? Over the safety barrier and away rode Sir Keir, free and clear.

Another imperfectly erected obstacle was the work of Lincoln Jopp, who has only been an MP since 4 July. He made a tyro’s mistake of raising three issues at once: the army of Labour MPs interfering with the US Presidential election, the ceding of the Chagos Islands, and the Foreign Secretary’s unsatisfactory performance at the recent Commonwealth Heads of State conference. Did the PM have full confidence in Lammy? ‘I was going to say he was an upgrade on his predecessor,’ came the reply, charging straight through the gap in the shrubbery. What a shame: either of the first two could have been challenging, if framed correctly.

Similarly, Rachael Maskell asked whether Starmer would set up a pensioner poverty task force, but because she had also mentioned child poverty the PM expressed his concern about that alone. Carla Rayner (Green) came a little closer to tripping him, deploring Israel’s hampering aid to Gaza and banning UNWRA, but when she used the word ‘genocide’ Sir Keir expressed his worry and concern yet said he had never described Israel’s actions with that term; a skilful swerve.

The Opposition benches need to study the example of the late Tam Dalyell, whose undodgeable queries used to instil ‘fear and Lothian’ in ministers.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

Jabber Wacky: Mercy Killing Fever

You wait ages for a euthanasia Bill and then three come along at once.

First was the 'Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill'introduced on 27 March 2024 by Liam McArthur MSP (Lib Dem). There is no specific limit to the sufferer's expected remaining life: 'a person is terminally ill if they have an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover and that can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death.' The Bill does not define the term 'premature' but the World Health Organisation seems to be working with age 70 as a marker, outside Africa.

Next was (Labour) Lord Falconer's 'Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill', drawn second of 25 Private Members' Bills (PMB) in the House of Lords and given its first reading on 26 July. It's not clear how many slips were in the red box though the administrator says typically it might have 'say, 100 or so entries in it.' So, a 1 in 4 chance of being pulled out.

Falconer's Bill is narrowly worded and covers cases where the patient is predicted to die within six months. It was to have received its second reading on 15 November but he withdrew it in favour of (Labour) Kim Leadbeater MP's Bill, introduced 16 October, to 'allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life.'

Leadbeater's text hasn't yet been published but will be debated on 29 November. Hers was drawn first of the 20 in the Commons PMB ballot (another lucky shot!) but she has been vague about the death prognosis: '6 months, 12 months.'

All three Bills are only for 'adults', which in England and Wales means 18 years old and over, but in Scotland people have full legal capacity at 16. In Belgium and the Netherlands children have already been mercy-killed but for now at least, the British attitude is, to adapt an old saying, 'euthanasia is wasted on the young.' Doubtless we'll catch up with more progressive nations in due course.

All three are predicated on using medically prescribed lethal drugs. The Scottish Health Secretary has said that McArthur's Bill is 'ultra vires' in this respect for the Scottish Government. On the other hand Holyrood's presiding officer has said that she is confident the Bill is indeed within Scotland's powers; and McArthur is 'very confident' that the UK and Scottish governments would work together to ensure it becomes law if backed by MSPs.' Where there's a will…

Despite Dignity In Death's enthusiasm and Dame Esther Rantzen's celebrity endorsement, euthanasia opens up a can of coffin worms. Jack King's book on the subject shows that the medical procedure is not guaranteed to be either swift or painless. If the only consideration is the patient's experience rather than a potentially misleading show for witnesses, a near-instantaneous and absolutely certain method would be a bolt gun to the head, as used to kill cattle.

Also, there is the question of authorisation. Lord Falconer's Bill (section 3 para 4 subsection c) says the patient must show they have 'a clear and settled intention to end their own life which has been reached voluntarily, on an informed basis and without undue influence.' Set a good brief to work on those adjectives, especially what counts as 'undue' influence. Already the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that a right to die may easily become, in the patient's mind, a 'duty to die.'

And how well 'informed' will the patient have been on pain management, palliative care, hospices? Is there an undeclared official intention to starve these alternatives of funds and make death by doctor the quick 'n' easy solution, a big money-saver for the NHS and Treasury?

Ironically the Right are accused of loving wealth too much, yet some on the Left - like George Bernard Shaw in this 1931 speech - measure the value of individuals in brutally economic terms and are prepared to cull those who have become a burden. Is their real emphasis less on mercy and more on killing?

Published earlier on the Bruges Group blog

Angie rides out – PMQs 23rd October 2024

Angela Rayner fielded the questions today. Facing her for the Opposition was Sir Oliver Dowden, on his last PMQs stint before the new Tory leader takes over. The two gingers were gracious to each other; Rayner said she’d miss him and did the heart sign with her hands.

Although the session was testing as usual, Angie carried her burden lightly, without that sense of embattlement exuded by her boss. It’s a neuro thing: she’s tough, but she’s a normie.

The opening exchanges were on familiar lines, with Labour relying on Starmerite counterattacks, evasions and non-sequiturs. Dowden asked what Labour’s definition of ‘working people’ was; Rayner said it was the people the Tories had failed for fourteen years. Five million small businesses affected? Labour would sort out the mess they had inherited. Wasn’t raising employer NI a job tax and a £5 billion hit to the economy? The new employment bill would raise living standards.

Angie agreed on the value of our relationship with the Commonwealth and the efforts of the King and the late Queen; perhaps there was a deeper significance in the combination of her red hair, white jacket and blue dress? Then she laid into the Conservatives’ past failures and the ‘chaos’ they had left behind. This was old-fashioned Saturday TV wrestling: nothing personal, Oliver. Ding ding!

It was the later rounds that presented more challenges, holds that might be harder to break.

As Kim Leadbeater’s gestating euthanasia Bill slouches towards its November debate, Rachael Maskell raised the issue of palliative care for the terminally ill. Would the deputy PM consider a commission? Rayner praised carers and said discussions had begun – another deflection avoiding expensive commitments. Later, Kim Johnson asked whether hospices should have to rely less on charity; again, this was important, but a matter for further discussion.

Daisy Cooper highlighted the need for more care workers in the coming NHS winter crisis of patients who cannot be discharged without a care plan, and the effect of increased employer NI on the budgets of 18,000 small care providers. As in previous PMQs, the answer combined the aspiration to grow the economy with a reluctance to anticipate the Chancellor’s Budget, due next week.

Monica Harding told us 1,800 Surrey children with special needs (e.g. autism) had no provision; the reply was sympathy and, again, to await the Budget.

As Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has so many circles to square – as does the PM!

Mike Tapp (Labour, Dover) spoke of migrants’ deaths in the Channel; the stock answer was the inherited asylum chaos, the new Border Security Command and the need to target the people smugglers. Unmentioned was the derogation or withdrawal from the ECHR that one of the Tory leadership candidates is touting.

Related, perhaps, was Sir Edward Leigh’s request for an assurance that RAF Scampton could be sold off without being covered with new housing. Odd how a radical government evades certain radical solutions, bearing in mind that our recent population increase is more than entirely due to net immigration, the low wage end of which – as the OBR decided last month – harms our GDP per capita.

Land management also featured in questions from:

• Helen Morgan (inundation of Shropshire farms. Answer: ‘14 years’, etc., plans to improve flood defences);
• Blake Stephenson (risk of building on flood plains. Answer: commitment to build 1.5 million new homes, need for better infrastructure);
• Sir John Hayes (Grade 1 and 2 farmland threatened by giant pylons and solar panels – food and energy production in conflict. Answer: both important and “we will get Britain building again”.)

Rayner remained confident – bullish – but Labour is beginning to look like the proverbial chameleon placed on a tartan cloth.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

Warning bells – PMQs 16th October 2024

The Starmernaut continues to roll over the Opposition. Sir Keir is hardly trying: he repeated his “14 years” reference to the Tories’ failures at least three times in this session, though when he wheeled out the old ‘22 billion black hole’ shtick, there was a general groan from the benches opposite.

Parliament may soon tire of his arrogance and habit of resorting to counter-attack, instead of reasoning. When Rishi Sunak spoke of China’s influence at British universities and deplored the Education Secretary’s block on last year’s Freedom of Speech Act, Starmer simply swatted it away as “political point-scoring”; even the BBC roused itself to highlight that one on X.

This came after Sunak’s remarks on China’s “intimidatory” military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, which Starmer agreed were “not conducive to peace and stability”. Neither speaker mentioned Britain’s surrender of the strategically-positioned Chagos Islands to China-matey Mauritius, a decision reportedly taken in response to pressure (why?) from the Biden administration. The United Nations maritime court in Hamburg had ruled in favour of Mauritius’ claim in 2021, but as we know, a sovereign British Parliament, unlike most governments around the world, has the power to override international law. The PM seems to think this a good moment to cede such a significant asset, just when China is flexing its muscles.

Sunak turned to another area of conflict, asking the PM to sanction Chinese businesses and individuals supplying Russia with resources in the latter’s battle with Ukraine. Readers will recall that, last month, Starmer consulted Washington (again) for permission to help Ukraine fire rockets into the Russian motherland. The answer was no; at least, not until after the Presidential election. What might Kamala say?

In this context, it is interesting to note how Russia has also become a serviceable bogeyman for the Director-General of MI5, according to whom the Russians have been planning mayhem on Britain’s streets, though he then admitted that most of the agency’s work is still occupied with “Islamist extremism, followed by extreme right-wing terrorism”. Coincidentally or not, the ‘Novichok poisoning’ enquiry into the death of Salisbury resident Dawn Sturgess has just opened; former diplomat Craig Murray has scornfully reviewed the official claims made around that affair. Perhaps all this connects with the impending governmental Spending Review.

Lancastrian MP Cat Smith (Labour) opened her question with a reference to the new Bill to abolish hereditary members of the House of Lords. Sir Keir seized upon this triumphantly (perhaps when Giggle is Prez, one may have to say ‘joyously’), but of all the calamities he seems intent on provoking, the destruction of our tripartite self-government may be the worst.

Law is downstream from power, and at the moment the British people – as a whole – have the power, however imperfectly the commoners are represented. Some have suggested that the republican noises made in Australia are merely an overture to the planned abolition of our monarchy. There will still be a national leader, and ACL Blair wanted to be it; the Royal Yacht was scrapped, but at least Gordon Brown was able to cancel the plans for ‘Blair Force One’.

In 1980, the otherwise great parliamentarian Tony Benn proposed the outright abolition of the House of Lords, which would tear away the second leg of the three-legged stool; is this not where Starmer’s 400-strong MP contingent are heading, cutting away at the Upper House like Lear’s elder daughters stripping his entourage?

Then we shall be left with a single-party machine, its whims unrestrained; a tyranny of the majority, with a great Chairman directing the nation.

Hear those warning bells.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

Assisted Dying: Kill Bill

Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill was submitted for its first reading within a few days (26 July) of the General Election. The Bill says it is to

‘Allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards, to be assisted to end their own life; and for connected purposes.’

If passed it will for the first time here legalise the deliberate killing of innocent adults. The ‘safeguards’ are vital.

Yet as a Private Member’s Bill this complex issue would conventionally receive only five hours’ debate on its second reading. Asking for more time Sir David Davis said at PMQs on 9 October:

‘If we get this wrong first time, the consequences are too terrible to contemplate. In 1967, the Government of the day gave time to allow David Steel’s Abortion Bill to go through.

But did the Abortion Bill ‘get it right’? At the time it was anticipated that the number of permitted abortions would be in the region of 10,000 - 12,000 per year. Yet in 2022 the actual figure for England and Wales was 20 times the upper prediction, even though the population had increased by less than one-third over that time. Over 10 million unborn children have been killed in Great Britain since 1967. In effect, and with few exceptions, we have abortion on demand, so easy is it to satisfy the vaguely-worded legal stipulations.

Let’s see the safeguards built into Lord Falconer’s Bill (linked above, first line):

• The patient must be over 18, sane, expected to die within six months from a terminal and irreversible illness. Mental illness and disability are excluded as reasons to terminate.
• 
  
• They must clearly understand what they are doing and their decision must be ‘settled’ and have been reached ‘without undue influence, coercion or duress.’
• 
  
• They must sign a declaration to that effect, witnessed by someone who is not a relation, has not been involved in their care, and has nothing to gain from the subject’s death; and countersigned by two doctors, the medical attendant plus another, who not connected to each other and neither of whom stands to gain from the procedure. The doctors must be able to communicate with the patient, if necessary via an interpreter.
• 
  
• The patient’s Declaration must affirm that ‘the Attending Doctor and Independent Doctor… have each fully informed [them] about [the patient’s] diagnosis and prognosis and the treatments available to [them], including pain control and palliative care.’ The countersigners must also affirm that they have discussed hospice care with the patient.
• 
  
• The patient must have the right to change their mind at any stage up to the last moment, not necessarily in writing.

Put like that, who could possibly object?

And surely that is the point. If you wish to break a taboo, bore a very small and well-defined hole in it. The bigger augers and crowbars can come later. Then, as with abortion, the trickle of assisted-suicide cases may become a flood, as has been happening in other countries.

Look again at the stipulations and see how one or more might be modified or abandoned in time and in practice, perhaps in the light of legal precedent. For example, the High Court recently allowed a husband to inherit his late wife’s estate after he had helped his wife to die.

As to method, the Bill assumes that the patient will end their life using one or more drugs but past experience shows that a medicated death is not always swift and painless.

We can easily sympathise with the desire of some people to shorten their suffering. As we have seen, precautions are included in the Bill that protect the patient from pressure by people with ulterior motives, so it would seem that it is solely a matter of individual free choice.

But society in general may also have an interest. Caring for a terminally ill person may cost the NHS tens of thousands of pounds one way and another. Also, many pensioners are living, often alone, in dwellings that are bigger than they need, objectively speaking. So it must be tempting to suggest that not only the sick but the old and poor are simply a burden to the rest of us. As Ebenezer Scrooge says, ‘If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’

But it is not only the miserly rich that adopt that attitude. Here is George Bernard Shaw, famous writer and socialist, speaking in 1931:

‘I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioners and say every 5 years or every 7 years, just put them there, and say, sir or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence; if you’re not pulling your weight in the social boat; if you are not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.’

How rational; as was the Eugenics Society’s plan to sterilise those unfit for parenthood. That would quickly rebalance the national finances, would it not?

Once you believe that life is not sacred, we are off down that path. It is only a matter of time.

Reposted from the Bruges Group Blog

Labour's private schooling tax holds back the working class

The Labour Party has its Oxbridge officer class but the other ranks have to be kept in check or they - its power base - may wander off.

As with the cynical saying about drug companies (‘a patient cured is a customer lost’), a voter who aspires to the middle class is a mutineer to socialism. The ladder is, or was, education.

So in 1965 grammar schools were in Tony Crosland’s sights: ‘If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking Grammar School in England. And Wales. And Northern Ireland.’

His government Circular 10/65 succeeded in kicking away 1,200 ladders; there are now only some 230 left in England and Northern Ireland.

Does it matter, given the switch to comprehensive schools?

Yes, it does. My late friend was at a grammar school in Cardiff when the changeover occurred. Some of the merging secondary modern crowd attempted to bully the swot; unfortunately for them he was physically strong and merciless, so they learned to leave him alone.

Unless a comprehensive headteacher is ruthless, this instinct of the herd to pick on outliers and achievers will prevail. Thank goodness for Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela School, which gets outstanding results by dominating and stretching its non-selective intake - and has received much bitter criticism on Twitter for her pains. She had previously been ousted from the academy at which she taught for daring to tell the Conservative Party Conference and the world about the uselessness of much of our education system. How dare she succeed!

Now, unless your child is in the Michaela’s Wimbledon catchment area, or that of a wealthy suburb where riff-raff are excluded by house prices, what do you do, if you can just about manage it?

You go private.

The coming VAT tax slap on private schools will not deter the richest. They can afford it, and if riled too much may send their sprogs to some finishing school on the Continent.

No, the people this will hit will be the aspirant working class.

I taught - tried to teach - for half a term at an out of control comprehensive. One of my colleagues was a black woman whose salary was spent on private education for her three young children; she was not having them held down by indisciplined schooling. The cook, as it were, knew better than to eat at the restaurant where she worked. But would she be able to afford another 20% in fees?

As so often, Labour’s jealousy and malevolence, disguised as seeming to want the best for all, will have its worst effect on the people for whom the Party was formed.

And with any (bad) luck, it will help to keep its voting base corralled.

Reposted from the Bruges Group Blog

Why hasn't the UK Parliament used its limitless power to halt immigration?

Parliament can do ANYTHING.

Since 1688 the monarchy has been brought into Parliament; and since the nineteenth and twentieth century Reform Acts all the common people have gained admittance through their representatives, so that the two Houses of Westminster now embody the British nation as a whole.

This is ‘power to the people’, absolute and unhindered.

As a layman I did not understand the full extent of Parliament’s might until I heard Sir Bill Cash on Monday. He explained that unlike Germany and the Netherlands, our Constitution does not acknowledge the supremacy of international law. If we wish to override it all we have to do is pass an Act that says so in terms; a key phrase is ‘notwithstanding [name of law, convention, treaty].’

Sir Bill said that the Supreme Court has already upheld this approach in case law. If the wording is sufficiently clear and explicit then no judge can oppose it.

So for example to stop the ‘boat people’ completely we could make a law permanently barring anyone from claiming asylum if they have arrived without prior agreement. It is not necessary for us to withdraw from the ECHR as a whole; we could just expressly override it in this instance. That would stop the faux-refugee-smuggling in its tracks (even though that is a mere flea-bite compared to the general, permitted inrush.)

So why didn’t the last Government do it? Did they fear the mass media’s slurs; or were they simply incompetent and ill-advised?

Did their civil servants not know of this legal power? Or did they know, but kept the knowledge to themselves? Sir Bill says that they are often not civil and not servants, and moots a Civil Service Reform Act to bring them back into line.

Or does the sabotage come from courts and the Government’s legal advisers? In the 2011 debate on the European Union Bill, Cash remarked:


The courts, on a range of matters, have accumulated greater and greater influence, and, indeed, action, in relation to their judgments on Acts of Parliament. I refer not merely to interpretation or construction of the words but the underlying judicial activism, sometimes of a quasi-political nature.

‘Freedom is frightening’ was the title of an LP by Stomu Yamash'ta in 1973, the year in which we began to drift into the nets of the European project. Freedom needs watchdogs to prevent such gradual encroachments on our scary, amazing liberty; in the 2011 debate Sir Bill was proposing the insertion of these words:

‘The sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament in relation to EU law is hereby reaffirmed.’

We need markers like that to stop Lilliputian entanglement by conceited and subversive lawyers who think they know what is good for us, or at least for themselves. Law is downstream of power, and that power should flow not from barristers’ chambers but the debating chambers of Westminster.

According to Wikipedia Sir Bill ‘has been described by Kenneth Clarke as the most "Eurosceptic" Member of Parliament.’ That was a nice bit of spinning from the corporatist Right; a better term would be ‘democratic.’

But the corporatist Left hates Parliamentary sovereignty, too. The Brown/Starmer scheme aims to devolve power away from Westminster to cities and regions, and we know from Scotland, London and other places where that leads.

Parliament’s defenders are neither Right nor Left. See the community on this subject between someone like Sir Bill and Left orators such as Dennis Skinner, George Galloway and the late Tony Benn. Opposition to Brexit is opposition to the people, from those who would like to say, as the egregiously arrogant German Annalena Baerbock did, ‘no matter what my voters think.’

The full sovereignty we have is a two-edged sword. For good or ill, we have to endure what the current administration plans for us, legitimised by a freakish electoral result. What is done can be undone later, though the interim cost and damage may be enormous.

Meantime we need to reform the seat of our commonly held power. The weak element in our national trinity is the representation of the common people. How do we discipline or even dismiss early those MPs who feel free to ignore the wishes and best interests of their constituents? What system of voting would better reflect the electoral support in a constituency, and how could that proposed system be defended from powerful, self-interested joint PR attacks on it by both major parties as we saw in the 2011 referendum on the Alternative Vote?

After the Labour interregnum we look forward to the restoration and refurbishment of ‘1688 and all that’ so that ‘democracy does not come to a .’

Reposted from Bruges Group Blog