They're saying nobody feels safe and everything's gone to shit - true - but then heaping the blame onto immigrants and transpeople. Classic far right diversion tactics.
How conveniently they forget they were in power for 14 years 🤷♂️ and they contributed heavily to break Britain! I wish people remember this when voting in next election 🤞
The Tory government that trashed so much of value in this country was cruel, greedy and lacking any shred of care or responsibility for the people they were elected to serve. It's hard to imagine any of them adding popularity to Reform. Let's hope.
I may be cynical in my old age, but I see a Farage game plan (strategy) going on here. Neither he, nor his henchmen, have Cabinet or government experience, but all these Tory has-beens do. He’s creating his own cabinet with the same people who ruined the UK in the previous, disastrous, 14 years. The danger is, if elected and appointed, they’ll be dancing to the Farage tune. What’s obvious to me is that it’s not the Reform policy they understand, or believe in, it’s their personal desire to be back on the gravy train and the kudos it brings.
Part of the reason why everything is broken is that any party who really wants to fix things would have to raise taxes, and voters won't vote for tax rises. Even when the alternatives - such as having to pay for private health care because the NHS is so broken, or for tutors for their kids, or even ridiculously high student loans - cost WAY more than the taxes they'd have to pay to get state services good enough that they don't see any reason to pay for these things.
For years I have been describing this as a giant game of Jenga, one block at a time gets pulled away and at first it doesn't make a huge difference. We then reach a point of dangerous collapse. I despair at what it will take for government to realise that they need to put the blocks back.
Fantastic article that aptly proves that ‘hypocrisy is the Vaseline of political intercourse’. The problem we have here, and in the US, is the average voter is wilfully ignorant and refuses to take responsibility for their part in all this mess. As someone wrote about 100 years ago ‘never underestimate the stupidity of the electorate’. I thus sadly predict Reform will make astounding gains at the next election.
Since 1988 and Thatcher’s Next Steps programme which launched like Helen of Troy a thousand vessels (in this case quangos) successive governments have tinkered with the administrative functions of the State with no unifying principles. The incomprehensible Tory 2015 NHS reform (or deform) being a prime example. They have then pressure-hosed the private sector into the cracks. This now means the State can’t restructure the State because of outsourcing, devolved responsibility and skills loss.
The collective administrative state is beyond the comprehension or control of our political masters, who actively created this mess.
And then they call it the Blob.
Throw in the persistent lack of economic strategy (industrial policy?) and the way in which long term political consensus building is repellent to everyone elected.
All I see is shrinking national pie and increasingly vicious fights over who can partake. Of which remigration is the most extreme, albeit drifting worryingly towards the Overton Window.
It doesn’t feel broken to me. It’s all still there, in place. It’s just not funded. It just needs funding properly, managing sensibly and responsibly for the benefit of the people whose home this is and re nationalisation in the case of utilities and transport. It’s not broken.
Very well put, depressing and true. Braverman was and probably still is vile. As someone said yesterday she’s failed to make it to the top of the Cons and is now looking to be a big fish in another slurry pit.
I can’t imagine how the country is going to run if Reform gets in..incompetents and gas bags.
However, I’m already in trouble for hindering the upcoming revolution by supporting ZP who by definition must be part of the problem.
Older people than me have said, well I’ll be dead soon so I won’t live to see it. I suspect these last years will be worse than the last 20.
Yes Great Britain is both not great, and broken. It’s not got here overnight. Imho, as I think yours is too, these are facts.
Some of the individual pieces we may fully / partially not sufficiently agree with but holistically our country is broken. Our politics too I think.
I’m not yet at the position where I’d say our society is broken tho. There are still many, many “normal good folk” out there (& some knobs.
Solving such large challenges is never going to be easy.
Where to start? Now we can bicker about the current leadership and rile against reform (hmm should be a slogan 😂) or we can help those currently in power by guiding them with solutions we want to see (maybe that’s a theme for future issues of this column) (I don’t mean… better public services, I mean we want to try xyz which we think will give us better public services).
Regardless of whether today’s right wing MPs are Tories or Reform, they’re both trying to act like an opposition that was absolved of any past mistakes that confined them to the dustbin.
You can’t honestly and successfully scrutinise the current government without including the caveat of acknowledging that they’re trying to fix problems you created. Going from Government to opposition is a shit sandwich, but you’ve got to eat it.
I am always amazed that they have the balls to break the very structure of this country and the many communities and then say we will fix it by introducing policies that are identical to the policies that did the damage. What’s more how many fucking idiots who support these grifting imbeciles.
A great summation of how I felt hearing this news.👏👏
The press barons have tried to break Britain by their constant splash of doomerism being the fault of;
Immigrants
Unions
Public sector workers
Teachers
Doctors
Nurses
Labour councils
“People that look different to what I do”
Benefits claimants
Etc, etc
🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
That sections of the press regurgitate this waffle by those involved in causing the damage, without holding their feet to the flames shows who controls who.
RW press continually knocking public services, be it NHS, Education, Railworkers, has delivered what they wanted…they did it with the car industry, mining, PRINTING…break up unions and unionism.
The services have been whittled down to the bone continually, what was achieved post war has been decimated, (Local Authority services (libraries, parks, open spaces, social care), education, infrastructure (roads, rail), utilities (water, energy).
Post 2010 political decisions have left a trail of destruction visible from the Hubble telescope.
Poor politics by poor politicians egged on and bankrolled by press barons with zero accountability🤮
The politics of now has got to separate from the press barons, as the press barons have disassociated themselves from trade unions🤬
“The beneficiary from this distance isn’t the media, and it certainly isn’t the public: it is people in positions of power, who manage to co-opt a system designed to hold them to account into another layer insulating them from scrutiny.“
Goes back to Thatcher and middlemen. Profits for the middlemen, taken out of the circulating system not to be seen again.
New Labour kept thatchism going, obviously the tories continued and it seems this Labour government are happy to continue thatcherism.
Water privatisation continuing is the obvious.
A new type of job has grown from thatcherism and it's on the tv literally every day. People buying houses to do up and then sell on for a profit or add to a portfolio they rent out. Those that rent out have middlemen as well, managing agents.
This type of job never existed before Thatcher, certainly not as a profession to aspire to.
This has created a society where money and profit is king. Everyone under 50 has never known different.
Money now means you're more worthy than someone who has less. You can buy access, for instance, to concerts or sporting events. You can't just turn up at a football game cos you felt like it and pay at the gate.
Money means privilege now.
The city of London has become a privilege place. Almost every new building cannot be accused without authorisation and if you are a contractor you have to use the rear or staff entrance.
In the 90s I could walk into almost every buildings front door, I was doing work for, say why I was there and crack on.
They're saying nobody feels safe and everything's gone to shit - true - but then heaping the blame onto immigrants and transpeople. Classic far right diversion tactics.
How conveniently they forget they were in power for 14 years 🤷♂️ and they contributed heavily to break Britain! I wish people remember this when voting in next election 🤞
The Tory government that trashed so much of value in this country was cruel, greedy and lacking any shred of care or responsibility for the people they were elected to serve. It's hard to imagine any of them adding popularity to Reform. Let's hope.
I may be cynical in my old age, but I see a Farage game plan (strategy) going on here. Neither he, nor his henchmen, have Cabinet or government experience, but all these Tory has-beens do. He’s creating his own cabinet with the same people who ruined the UK in the previous, disastrous, 14 years. The danger is, if elected and appointed, they’ll be dancing to the Farage tune. What’s obvious to me is that it’s not the Reform policy they understand, or believe in, it’s their personal desire to be back on the gravy train and the kudos it brings.
Part of the reason why everything is broken is that any party who really wants to fix things would have to raise taxes, and voters won't vote for tax rises. Even when the alternatives - such as having to pay for private health care because the NHS is so broken, or for tutors for their kids, or even ridiculously high student loans - cost WAY more than the taxes they'd have to pay to get state services good enough that they don't see any reason to pay for these things.
For years I have been describing this as a giant game of Jenga, one block at a time gets pulled away and at first it doesn't make a huge difference. We then reach a point of dangerous collapse. I despair at what it will take for government to realise that they need to put the blocks back.
Fantastic article that aptly proves that ‘hypocrisy is the Vaseline of political intercourse’. The problem we have here, and in the US, is the average voter is wilfully ignorant and refuses to take responsibility for their part in all this mess. As someone wrote about 100 years ago ‘never underestimate the stupidity of the electorate’. I thus sadly predict Reform will make astounding gains at the next election.
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Reform are resurrecting 1984 & we need to be very careful we don’t start living it.
Since 1988 and Thatcher’s Next Steps programme which launched like Helen of Troy a thousand vessels (in this case quangos) successive governments have tinkered with the administrative functions of the State with no unifying principles. The incomprehensible Tory 2015 NHS reform (or deform) being a prime example. They have then pressure-hosed the private sector into the cracks. This now means the State can’t restructure the State because of outsourcing, devolved responsibility and skills loss.
The collective administrative state is beyond the comprehension or control of our political masters, who actively created this mess.
And then they call it the Blob.
Throw in the persistent lack of economic strategy (industrial policy?) and the way in which long term political consensus building is repellent to everyone elected.
All I see is shrinking national pie and increasingly vicious fights over who can partake. Of which remigration is the most extreme, albeit drifting worryingly towards the Overton Window.
It doesn’t feel broken to me. It’s all still there, in place. It’s just not funded. It just needs funding properly, managing sensibly and responsibly for the benefit of the people whose home this is and re nationalisation in the case of utilities and transport. It’s not broken.
Very well put, depressing and true. Braverman was and probably still is vile. As someone said yesterday she’s failed to make it to the top of the Cons and is now looking to be a big fish in another slurry pit.
I can’t imagine how the country is going to run if Reform gets in..incompetents and gas bags.
However, I’m already in trouble for hindering the upcoming revolution by supporting ZP who by definition must be part of the problem.
Older people than me have said, well I’ll be dead soon so I won’t live to see it. I suspect these last years will be worse than the last 20.
Happy days.
Yes Great Britain is both not great, and broken. It’s not got here overnight. Imho, as I think yours is too, these are facts.
Some of the individual pieces we may fully / partially not sufficiently agree with but holistically our country is broken. Our politics too I think.
I’m not yet at the position where I’d say our society is broken tho. There are still many, many “normal good folk” out there (& some knobs.
Solving such large challenges is never going to be easy.
Where to start? Now we can bicker about the current leadership and rile against reform (hmm should be a slogan 😂) or we can help those currently in power by guiding them with solutions we want to see (maybe that’s a theme for future issues of this column) (I don’t mean… better public services, I mean we want to try xyz which we think will give us better public services).
Where to start?
Regardless of whether today’s right wing MPs are Tories or Reform, they’re both trying to act like an opposition that was absolved of any past mistakes that confined them to the dustbin.
You can’t honestly and successfully scrutinise the current government without including the caveat of acknowledging that they’re trying to fix problems you created. Going from Government to opposition is a shit sandwich, but you’ve got to eat it.
I am always amazed that they have the balls to break the very structure of this country and the many communities and then say we will fix it by introducing policies that are identical to the policies that did the damage. What’s more how many fucking idiots who support these grifting imbeciles.
A great summation of how I felt hearing this news.👏👏
The press barons have tried to break Britain by their constant splash of doomerism being the fault of;
Immigrants
Unions
Public sector workers
Teachers
Doctors
Nurses
Labour councils
“People that look different to what I do”
Benefits claimants
Etc, etc
🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
That sections of the press regurgitate this waffle by those involved in causing the damage, without holding their feet to the flames shows who controls who.
RW press continually knocking public services, be it NHS, Education, Railworkers, has delivered what they wanted…they did it with the car industry, mining, PRINTING…break up unions and unionism.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/12/teacher-strikes-rightwing-secret-strategy-revealed
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/what-to-do-now-union-bashing-is-back-in-fashion
Eddie shah, who broke the closed shop 🤔 (no longer publishing)
Rupert Murdoch working closely with the Thatcher government, set out to smash the print unions in 1986 🤔 (news group)
https://www.workersliberty.org/index.php/story/2011/07/20/when-murdoch-smashed-unions?language_content_entity=und
The services have been whittled down to the bone continually, what was achieved post war has been decimated, (Local Authority services (libraries, parks, open spaces, social care), education, infrastructure (roads, rail), utilities (water, energy).
Post 2010 political decisions have left a trail of destruction visible from the Hubble telescope.
Poor politics by poor politicians egged on and bankrolled by press barons with zero accountability🤮
The politics of now has got to separate from the press barons, as the press barons have disassociated themselves from trade unions🤬
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/26/scrap-parliamentary-lobby-westminster-journalists
“The beneficiary from this distance isn’t the media, and it certainly isn’t the public: it is people in positions of power, who manage to co-opt a system designed to hold them to account into another layer insulating them from scrutiny.“
Goes back to Thatcher and middlemen. Profits for the middlemen, taken out of the circulating system not to be seen again.
New Labour kept thatchism going, obviously the tories continued and it seems this Labour government are happy to continue thatcherism.
Water privatisation continuing is the obvious.
A new type of job has grown from thatcherism and it's on the tv literally every day. People buying houses to do up and then sell on for a profit or add to a portfolio they rent out. Those that rent out have middlemen as well, managing agents.
This type of job never existed before Thatcher, certainly not as a profession to aspire to.
This has created a society where money and profit is king. Everyone under 50 has never known different.
Money now means you're more worthy than someone who has less. You can buy access, for instance, to concerts or sporting events. You can't just turn up at a football game cos you felt like it and pay at the gate.
Money means privilege now.
The city of London has become a privilege place. Almost every new building cannot be accused without authorisation and if you are a contractor you have to use the rear or staff entrance.
In the 90s I could walk into almost every buildings front door, I was doing work for, say why I was there and crack on.
Rambled on to long now.