I reposted here the Tweets I published during Rachel Reeves' Labour conference speech yesterday.
These are those I wrote during the interminably long speech from Starmer today.
As was the case yesterday, please read from the bottom up.
And I should add, I lost 150 Twitter followers for saying these things, which I really do not care about:
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Hmmm beating benefit fraud. I’ve taken a good look at this.
In 2023 Benefit Fraud was 2.93bn, that does not include the errors made by the DWP.
In 2023 Local Government Fraud was £8.8bn
So there is three times more fraud (nearly) in Local Government than Benefit Fraud.
One too often see’s benefit fraudsters splashed all over the front of local newspapers. It is rare to see a local government officer suffer the same fate.
I’d say it was willful blindness by Sir Keir not to chase local government officers.
All data published by Crowe UK, Peters & Peters and the University of Portsmouth.
Source – https://www.crowe.com/uk/insights/annual-fraud-indicator
Tax gap is at least £40bn
Of all the fraud issues the government faces this one is not the priority if resources really are scarce
A 40bn tax gap, that’s big.
However, Public sector fraud losses are estimated to be £50.2 billion, so between them a saving of £90bn, but unfortunately with Starmer at the helm, there is little to no hope of either being reduced significantly.
What about HS2 where the contractors were hired on a design and build contract and paid on cost plus contract (I think it was 4%). This means the contractors could skimp on every thing, while basically being paid anything they wanted. To compound the cost over run the government doubled the length of the contracts, (including inflation) potentially doubling the cost.
Now HS2 will start in Old Oak Comman with platforms only capable for one third of the trains, only 4 platforms against 11 at Euston. Unless the northern extension is built (it has been canceled) there will be no capacity for trains north of Birmingham because of the 2 track section instead of continuous 4 track. Finally the eastern leg (now canceled) was required to get a reasonable business case.
I note that on the same web page, the site you refer to quotes private sector fraud at £157.8 billion – a whopping 72% of all fraud recorded in a total of £219 billion for the country as a whole?
Isn’t that figure also worthy of note? So what is Sir Stymied doing about that then given the state of companies house? He’s picking on the poor end of the ‘fraud market’ – how brave of him.
In benefits, there is fraud, customer error, official error which points to poor claim design. Those benefits that are more universal suffer less to no fraud. The benefits system – like perhaps our tax system – is so contorted by rules, that the rules themselves create as much opportunity to exploit and defraud as they attempt to stamp out?
Housing benefit fraud is well known among private landlords – there are lots of cases of that every year and reported in the news. As for claimants, some observers find it only natural for them to claim as much as they can because they are in dire straights. Contrast that with the possible motivation for the private sector fraud – and also tax fraud.
As for local authority fraud, recruitment and retention is at an all time low, work loads high. Where you have financial controls things move much slower; in other areas it is too loose but both are addled by low wages, declining budgets.
Vigilance costs money Bryan. And the Tories took a lot of it away and Laboured it seems will not be putting it back which to me is a complete ignoring of the diagnosis of the impending death of public services.
BTW – the figures on the site are estimated. Yeah right. Estimated means ‘ exploitable’ to me.
How DARE Little Keef Stalin blame Corbyn? At least Corbyn offered some real answers and hope, where allSir Useless Woodentop offers is blather and despair!
Sorry, I know I shouldn’t laugh and I didn’t watch it, I can’t stand his adenoidal voice and the nothingness of his speeches, but your account of it is hilarious.
Thanks for your report. Much appreciated.
Thank you for sitting through the Starmer speech so no one else had to!
I was lucky, I missed the Starmer speech today (saved by the bell!); just caught the windy candy-floss coda, full of ponderous rhetorical flourishes, helped by an over-hyped (or overpaid?) audience that must have been listening to someone else on headphones. But Richard, thirty one Tweets about a man busy saying nothing? Really? That is like cutting up treacle into thin slices (another soft, over-sweet, syrupy tooth-rotting confection); with a fork.
The tweetering effort is praiseworthy, but the point of it all eludes me.
People read them. Good enough for me….
That was my second joke (the first was on holidays), that fell on stony ground. However bad Labour is, or lugubrious so many readers here are about Labour, I refuse to lose my sense of humpur (however lame!). Maybe that is because I am not invested in Labour voter, and expect nothing.
Sorry…..
“And I should add, I lost 150 Twitter followers for saying these things”
Good riddance and you did not even have to use industrial strength trollicide.
@JSW
“The tweetering effort is praiseworthy, but the point of it all eludes me.”
Come sit next to me and I will supply pithy, snarky, & entertaining Yank commentary.
I find the whole sub-standard speech wildly entertaining just like a local theatre company trying to do a Saturday Night Live skit with untalented posh students from the local public fee-paying school in aid of a charity trying to raise funds to help people fix their unsightly garden fences which affect the look of the village.
I admit I had a co-author this afternoon
About 1 in 3 of the tweets are based on comments by Jacqueline
@Richard
I tip my hat to Jacqueline. She is an excellent co-author.
I hope she is on the payroll.
She is
“Britain belongs to you” – shades of “Tomorrow belongs to me” from Cabaret.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDuHXTG3uyY
You get the reference
You beat me to it, Ms Wallace!
Does no-one else remember the Spitting Image broadcast immeidately after the polls closed in a Thatcher era election. The entire cabinet in lederhosen singing tomorrow belongs to me, ending with Thatcher’s puppet in the camera at the end TO ME.
Just brilliant. I can see it now, but I cannot remember the election year.
Found it. 1987 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=641722396368930
“a Britain that belongs to us whilst speaking in a suit that belongs to someone else” – priceless.
Thank you
Some of the tweets are comedy gold.
I had to do something to pass the time
“I heard the “sausages” at he time but thought it too silly to comment”
I really want to hear the silly story about the “sausages”.
I will hereby and in public admit I am a Yank with warped sense of humor.
He meant to say hostages and said sausages
Heaven knows why
Freudian slip because he so used to telling porkies.
More seriously it is the only thing that will be remembered about this speech, as it is one of the most un-inspiring speeches ever given and shows if proof were needed what a poor politician Starmer is.
1066 & All That. “Errata”. For `sausages` read `hostages`. Obviously Starmer`s seminal history of Britain.
Keir wants the sausages back.
At last!
A policy I agree with.
Was he talking about Israel?
The sausages bit, and in the context of what is effectively a conflict that is mincing innocent women and children, had me more embarrassed than when Kinnock fell in the water.
Truly an awful slip.
Umm, I doubt that any of your erudite readers and commentators watch Good Omens on PrimeTV, but just in case… I’ve always thought the Archangel Gabriel there is the spitting image of Starmer. And has similar views – he’s particularly hard hearted about the demon (ex-angel) Crowley (friend of the Angel Azirophale)…
But my favourite shots of Gabriel are in series 2 when he’s walking through London stark naked, just carrying a large(ish) box in front of him so he’s at least mainly decent.
I will take your word for it…
Sorry – not my type of thing
I guess I have a warped sense of humour… But the actor who plays Gabriel does have an uncanny resemblance to Starmer. This picture doesn’t capture it well, but best I can find in a quick search.
https://goodomens.fandom.com/wiki/Gabriel
It’s John Hamm, who previously starred in Mad Men. I didn’t watch that but enjoyed Good Omens (not nearly as much as the book, however). I confess I found Season 2 disappointing. Neil Gaiman’s fall from grace may be doing us a favour.
@Inga Marie Horwood
Mad Men is worth watching. It is NYC in the 1960s.
You can binge watch a season (UK series) in a weekend. There are 7 season or in the UK 7 series.
WARNING! It is a highly addictive TV show.
Honesty, fairness and truthfulness is the natural currency of families and ultimately of all durable enterprises. I am at a loss to know why neoliberalism carries any weight, it is *so* unconvincing.
If its adherents stood on solid ground, they would not need to hurt protesters (as they have at the Labour party conference).
I applaud your commitment and integrity, Richard, and you have attracted similar people as regular contributors. You published ‘The Courageous State’ in 2011. Courageous government is needed now more than ever. Might this be a good time to remind us of some of its most significant points?
Your post headed ‘Will Reeves reform HM Revenue & Customs?’ led some of us to grieve that our press is dominated by ‘offshore billionaires’. Andy Crow commented ‘It will be a brave politician that takes on the Murdoch empire. Or one with nothing to lose.’ It seems to me that Corbynism has been shunned because the press has been so condemnatory – that there are not enough votes in it *at this time*.
I doubt it needs revisiting, but as a first book it was ok
Thanks
Obviously not watched or heard but have looked through the tweets.
How can any genuine Labour members sit through that and not see the path to destruction? It’s not even that rosy? Not Red, Not even Pink just …Brown (as in shorts). Three observations.
See that direct appeal to the red/brown bridging issue? The dog whistle racism/nationalism. That’s the road to overt fascism.
The same goes for making poor even poorer so that they have to struggle to have basic security and welfare, multiple jobs, zero hours etc
That is ancient as Aristotle:
“The tyrant keeps his people poor, who will be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.”
Finally see that GB Energy? In Aberdeen!
Is that connected to the pandering to the global neoliberal agenda that appears to have been the main reason about not just BrexShit but a hard one – unfettered access and deregulated Tax Free Port Zones?
I’m overcome with a sense of 1906 dejà vu.
Remember what happened then. Campbell-Bannerman swept the Liberals back into power, with a 129 seat majority, after being out of power for 14 years, from 1892.
To get the People’s Budget through Parliament, Asquith went to the country twice in 1910 – ending up with TWO seats more than the Tories in February, and ONE seat more than the Tories in December.
The Liberal Party never won any subsequent election, and was gradually replaced by the Labour Party
I suspect the same fate awaits Starmer’s misbegotten Nu-Nu-Labour/Faux-Labour Party, especially if the 55%+/- Progressive vote Richard has referred to gets its act together and is ready to pounce on Nu-Nu-Labour.
Richard knows that I think Starmer unlikely to see in his 1st anniversary of becoming PM, as as his faction (clique. Even cult) panic over his plunging credibility (he’s already sunk below Sunak in the credibility stakes), as the British electorate sinks into a strange stasis, composed of a mixture of narcolepsy and rage.
The narcolepsy? Starmer’s speech is an example, as was Reeves’.
The rage? The young man who protested about the Gaza Genocide has apparently been charged with a criminal offence? What offence, for goodness sake? That of a serf being rude to his social superiors?
I await developments with some interest.
I will be watching too, Andrew
And it seems that tackling benefit fraud = reintroducing the Tory Bill to allow the DWP to inspect your bank account ! It is beyond doubt that we are now living 1984.
Thanks for your tweeted account. I could not have beared watching him. The odd thing is the followers you lost. When the emperor is so obviously walking about stark bollock naked, it’s hard to believe some people still see clothes. You run into them on BlueSky (I’m off Twitter). They can get quite agitated. People prefer a safe fictional world than the world in front of them. In the case of a charismatic psychopath like Trump, it makes some sort of sense. But Starmer? I have found his followers to be quite unpleasant. They only care that he won.
Anyway, thanks for an entertaining thread. It made me laugh.
Thanks
I am doing BlueSky a bit now
Why did they leave? They can’t stand anyone criticising the brand, and it is a brand they believe in.
I shall look forward to you publicising any online fundraiser for the young man now charged with a criminal offence for his very brief interjections at the Labour conference, Richard.
I hope he secures some top pro bono representation.
I also hope the Labour leadership will discourage the pursuance of this case, and show some moral compass.
If I see one
@tony
Was not the Starmer person the human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board???
Did not the Starmer person practice law predominantly in criminal-defense work, specializing in human rights???
Are there two different Starmer persons out there???
What am I missing that my Yank brain cannot comprehend?
What you’re missing, BayTampaBay, is the observation by one of the few decent (well, “real” actually) journalists still operating, Peter Oborne – a Tory, but an old-fashioned one, as used to exist in my youth (I’m 79, approaching 80).
Here’s his expert filleting of Starmer (or Little Keef Stalin, as I often call him)
https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2023/september/25/exposed-keir-starmer-liar-murdochs-man-candidate-mi5-peter-oborne
I love the way Peter Oborne calls Keef ‘Schtarmer’!
That is a classic run of Tweets.
I deliberately missed Starmer’s speech and this was the best way for me to have his dangerous verbal diarrhoea answered succinctly without having to endure it!
Thank you.
You’re welcome
I find myself agreeing
with Richard and the mile Enders.
But have decided to shut my trap re the orwellian overtones and will give them til say Xmas to see if they can start nationalising private monopolies, funding local government and sorting out the wide issues around mental health provision in this country that impacts across many social and economic fronts.
I’d like to see higher ed funded for instance.
We need to be quiet on foreign policy for the time being
Re engage with European market
It’s all so bleeding obvious imo
I think Richard is gutted and annoyed by Labour but I think Richard it’s too early. Xmas for me. Some of the ministers are mince am I the only one to think so? Eg Phillipson the sponger
Did Sir Kier mention what is father’s occupation was?
That was a key line in his pre-election speaches
Thankfully, we were spared that
There were other anecdotes of no value
I would suggest Starmer looks in the mirror very soon. Even then I fear his reflection will demand too much integrity for any purposeful reflections…………..