I joined a trend this weekend. Demotivated by heat, I did not spend a great deal of. time following the news. Apparently this is a growing trend, fuelled by Brexit. People cannot bring themselves to hear the latest politically created fiasco, and turn off instead. It's hard to blame them. When politicians behave as they are the idea that the news is about reality is hard to comprehend.
Detailed analysis of anything Jeremy Hunt or Boris Johnson say is pretty much pointless: it is apparent both say anything expedient with little consideration as to consequence. So Boris Johnson is apparently a convert to borrowing to pay for investment because he appreciates his earlier comments on tax do not stack up (something I pretty much predicted last week). The weight we should attach to such comments should, however, be apparent from his ability to gaffe, continually. Over the weekend he said England already had a national parliament. Apparently it is Westminster. As a result it does not need another one. His ability to alienate voters in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland continues, unabated.
Jeremy Hunt is no better. He is now taking his turn at alienating business, saying that those that will go bust because of No Deal Brexit will pay a price worth paying. Tell that to their employees, owners and those who have invested decades of effort to see it all go to waste for, well what exactly? No one can still say what it is worth paying for. It's certainly not economic gain. And nor is is democratic progress. And there will be nothing happening on migration we cannot already do. So what are these people to be sacrificed by Hunt for? Who knows?
And yet this is not unreal. The possibility of No Deal, long deferred, remains not just on the table, but highly likely. The air of collective denial about the possibility - possibly precisely because Hunt and Johnson are talking about it so people feel it has to be untrue, like everything else that they talk about - is palpable but inappropriate. No deal can and will happen unless action is taken to stop it and I see no sign of that as yet.
Instead we live in the most politically destructive limbo I have ever known. I was at a social gathering yesterday. A simple rule was agreed: it was suggested no one discuss politics because there was no point in doing so, because nothing was known and no one knew how to solve anything. I think that a little extreme, and yet for most people it is a tenable suggestion. When blatant lies have become the daily offering of leading politicians there is little point in debate. And so it ceases.
And there is a point in mentioning this. That closing down of discussion may be exactly what all this is about. And if so, it's succeeding.
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I can only agree.
Apparently Boris wants to give us public sector workers a rise!! So kind. What a man of the people?!
A pay rise is just the start of it – I want my contractual terms of employment reverted back to that was negotiated with my union and I want £17K I have lost since 2010 – 2018 in take home pay paid back to me Boris. I want compensation.
Also, lets talk about the reversion back to a final salary pension scheme I signed up for and not the ‘average final salary’ scheme they concocted a while back that both Labour and the Tories seem to think is fair whilst the Government pumps billions into or excuses tax billions on the more ‘efficient’ private pension sector provision just to make them stack up (yeah right)!!
The fact that the public sector pay statement comes from none other that that used car salesman persona turned politician Matt Hancock tells you all you need to know about the truth about that one.
And Hunt – I mean he’s supposed to be the cleverer one! It is not acceptable by any stretch of the imagination to lose trade and lose beneficial economic activity and output for a No Deal.
This is ‘Lemming Politics’ – that’s all you can say about BREXIT and the No Dealers.
But I mean this Government kills people. From the underfunding of the NHS and Adult Social Care (thank you Jeremy) to what I heard on Radio 4 yesterday about how the Tory Government had messed about with and undermined the Building Regulations that led to the Grenfell fire in its deregulation mania when coming into office.
I’ll say it again and this time mention declining life expectancy – the modern Tory party kills people. How it endures on the face of the evidence must be tackled.
PSR, I could not agree with you more. I am beginning to think that Hunt is viewed as clever because of who he is being compared with. And none of them appear to have the smarts to light up a 10 watt bulb. This bulb used to be the default hallway lighting in US tenement buildings. To say that this was inadequate would be an understatement. And to say that the present Tory party is inadequate barely covers the depth of their inadequacy, or malignancy.
As we always said, Boris and the Brexit campaign leaders had no concept of the monsters they were awaking in British politics. Now both major parties face a Brexit party that they have no idea how to deal with. Farage is becoming the British Trump, with simplistic emotional appeal based around indignation that Brexit has not been delivered. As a result he took 35% of the vote in the European Elections, far more than either of the major parties. If you are not already scared about what is happening to Britain just look at the start of this rally, complete with WW2 air-raid sirens.
https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1145422913916551170
This is what has the Conservative party in meltdown. The only way they can stop the tsunami of Tory votes draining away to Farage, is by delivering on Brexit promises which were a complete lie from the start. This is a hell of their own making, but we are all stuck living in it.
To break this impasse we must move to a confirmatory referendum on Brexit, with Labour really campaigning to remain this time. Whilst this strategy has risks, a lot has changed in the last three years. For one thing almost no-one is now talking about immigration, which was the Trump card for the leave campaign in 2016, so the heat has gone out of this issue. Secondly even the BBC seems to be waking up to the bullshit that was spun around Brexit, with some recent challenges to Boris and Hunt suggesting that their “no-deal will be fine” bubble is finally bursting. However this gets resolved the main parties need to bring it to conclusion quickly. The longer we maintain the fiction that Brexit can be a success for Britain, the more support for Farage will grow as voters follow a simple logic – if Brexit is going to be so great for the UK, why aren’t we just getting on with it?
I am sorry to report that, in trying to access your twitter link, I was informed that the page does not exist.
I find it best to totally ignore the Conservative leadership campaign. For a start it’s not very inspiring to take a side in a “which is the least smelly turd” competition. Secondly of course, none of what is said is for my consumption.
Whichever of them wins, the brown stuff will hit the fan come the Autumn. I only hope this happens in a way that allows the country to extricate itself from this mess.
The Tories are not a spent force. They will endure.
Boris or Hunt will crash the country and may indeed pay the consequences but only if HM Opposition get their act together.
But there is one seriously nasty and dark politician who is still lurking in the back ground awaiting his chance, his turn and whose potency cannot be under estimated.
His name is George Osbourne. You might remember him?
He needs to be watched – I kid you not. He is the ‘Damien’ of the Tory party and the economic equivalent of Caligula. A more evil and calculating human being in politics you could not imagine.
I’m telling you – watch him.
It’s your last line that worries me the most. I’m partly guilty – have stopped watching or listening to the “news” for some time now. Net result – the six mad people in the corner of the room have won.
Welcome to the world of “News” in Scotland, both TV and print. It’s an unending diet of “SNP Bad”, “SNP Very Bad”, “UK Politics, especially Brexit; Lovely, Lovely, Lovely”, “Murder”, if no current murder available, “An Old Murder Re-examined”, “Football”, “More Football”, “Cuddly Animal Story”, “More SNP Badder Than Ever”, “The Weather”, and “Goodnight, by the way SNP/Independence Bad”.
How they have the nerve to take their salaries and still be able to sleep at night is anybody’s guess. The media are not the defenders of democracy, they are its enemies.
The only discussion worth any time and energy now is about how to get rid of the Tories and their destruction machine.
Anything the two clowns pretending to know what they’re doing are saying is worthless posturing politicking. Waste of precious time.
How do we get back to reality is what I want to know.
And after we do, how do we stop buffoons and frauds coming anywhere close to destructive politics ever again.
Had an instructive short twitter conversation with former ITN newsreader Alistair Stewart last night.
He was discussing the billions upon billions pledged by the Tory leadership contenders with an ITV News political correspondent, in particular how this compares with “fiscal headroom”, national debt and the intervention of Philip Hammond, the chancellor.
Ok, I poked my nose in. I declared national debt is not scary – making the point that we own the debt and it’s denominated in sterling. Stewart’s response took me aback a little even allowing for understandable abruptness due to me sticking my oar in. Even accused this thinking of causing the 2008 crash! Got the “taxpayers’ paying for interest line”, which I tried to point out was likely to be going into his pension. But to no avail. My post was “dumb” and I knew nothing about sovereign debt or capital markets.
If this is the level of understanding of someone as smart as Stewart, with the access to broadcasters that he has, then no wonder we’re screwed.
They are literally clueless