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

FRIDAY MUSIC: Knacker’s Yard, by JD

Hailing from Victoria, British Columbia (Coast Salish Territories), Knacker’s Yard has been arranging and performing traditional Irish, Scottish, English, Australian, and original music since 2013.

The band pays tribute to, and takes inspiration from, legendary predecessors such as The Dubliners, Pogues, Planxty, The Battering Ram, The Clancy Brothers, The Chieftains, and The Wolfe Tones.
https://knackersyard.net/home/

Knacker's Yard - Farewell To Nova Scotia (The New West Session)

Knacker's Yard - Dirty Old Town (The New West Session)

Knacker's Yard - Finnegan's Wake

Knacker's Yard - The Merry Ploughboy (Irish Rebel Song)

Knacker's Yard - Sixpenny Money/Banish Misfortune/Whelan's Frolics

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

WEEKENDER: The E-waste trail, by JD

This link to Al Jazeera is still working although the video/film has disappeared (as has Al Jazeera TV):

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2014/09/e-waste-trail-2014924132443417118.html

In 2014 I saw a post about Austin Sevens (vintage autos) from James Higham (on his now defunct Wordpress version of Nourishing Obscurity) that reminded me. They are still going strong after all these years - unlike modern computers etc.

There was a feature on Al Jazeera about the problem of 'e-waste' which is old computers and phones being exported to the third world and dumped on rubbish tips. Somebody in Ghana decided to collect things which had identifiable stamps on them. He found stuff from Leeds Council and other councils plus things stamped with the names of government departments. He was then seen presenting the things to a Councillor in Leeds and got the usual buck passing; third party contractor takes away old stuff or it was donated to charities etc.

But my mind works in different ways. I could see the names Compaq and HP etc and I thought why does he not go to those manufacturers and ask why, unlike the Austin Seven, their products cannot be adapted or designed to have a much longer life. I thought first of all about modern record players most of which can play any record made in the past 100 years or so. They will still play the old 78s. Music centres usually allow for cassette tapes and CDs as well.

So why does Microsoft update their systems in a way which has rendered obsolete my two digital cameras as well as my scanner? They were only cheap cameras but they would still work if I had access to the old Windows XP or Vista or whatever it was. Why this built in obsolescence? Presumably to sell the new stuff which means throwing away the old stuff which, of course, ends up on rubbish tips in Ghana where people scavenge for salvageable parts.

Built-in obsolescence is a sales gimmick invented by the American automobile industry in the Fifties. A new model every year but the newness was only skin deep, it was the styling which was changed but the same old mechanicals remained unchanged. The new car performed exactly like the old car, it used the same petrol, the accelerator and brake pedals were in the same place as in the old car, the steering and suspension were as vague and sloppy as they ever were.

The new 'techie' obsolescence unfortunately is much more revolutionary. It seems that the 'hardware/software' (i.e. the equivalent of the mechanicals in the car) is what has been changed (improved?) and any techie devices designed for the existing hardware/software becomes useless immediately and we have to buy a new version on what feels like a weekly basis.

And what happens to the old ones? They are dumped in landfill sites in Africa or India.

What a mad cycle.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Brian Eno, by JD

Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, also mononymously known as Eno, is an English musician, songwriter, record producer and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to ambient music and electronica, and for producing, recording, and writing works in rock and pop music. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He joined the glam rock group Roxy Music as its synthesiser player in 1971 and recorded two albums with them before departing in 1973.

https://www.brian-eno.net/about/#

stiff

Another Green World (theme music for BBC's Arena)

Brian Eno & Roger Eno - By This River (Live at The Acropolis)

Spinning Away

Brian Eno "Ring Of Fire"

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

FRIDAY MUSIC: Carolina Chocolate Drops

"The Carolina Chocolate drops were an innovative black string band founded in 2006. The original members — Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson, with assists from Sule Greg Wilson — spent a lot of time with the revered string band elder Joe Thompson, an 86-year-old fiddler from Mebane, North Carolina. His music formed the core of their original setlist, but blues, jug-band numbers, originals, novelty songs, ballands and other kinds of Americana rounded out their repertoire. They won the last official Folk Music GRAMMY in 2010 for their Nonesuch Release, Genuine Negro Jig. Justin Robinson was the first to depart, followed by Dom Flemons; Malcome Parson, Hubby Jenkins and Rowen Corbett came on board for the rest of the CCD tenure. The group is no longer together but they have inspired a new generation of musicians of color to pick up the banjo, bones, and fiddle."

http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Chocolate_Drops

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Country Girl [Official Video]

Carolina Chocolate Drops "When the World's On Fire"

Carolina Chocolate Drops - No Man's Momma - Newport Folk Festival 2011

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Genuine Negro Jig [HD]

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Hit 'Em Up style [HD]

Carolina Chocolate Drops ft. Rhiannon Giddens "Jackson," Grey Fox 2013