Updated below Dear West Country Voices, I have, like many others, just watched Prime Minister’s Questions.Wow! What a farce. Brian Rix (apologies to younger readers) would be turning in his grave. So our PM just happened across a ‘work gathering” in his garden, failed to notice bottles of booze and food laid out and assumed it […]
The dismissal of (eg) John Major’s comments, on the grounds that he is a remainer, is one more reminder of how the shadow of the Brexit vote still casts a shadow over our politics. It hardly needs saying that there are many reasons to be concerned about the Johnson government. They have been obvious for […]
What kind of a country do we live in when, having stripped people of their freedom of movement, the Government sets further arbitrary deadlines that have the potential to devastate the lives of those most directly affected? It’s not just EU nationals affected by these deadlines – it’s UK nationals too. Right now, if UK […]
As you may already be aware, we have been reporting on the abysmal treatment of the clinically (extremely) vulnerable (CEV/CV), especially since so-called ‘Freedom Day’. Now Johnson has declared a premature end to Covid mitigations in what is clearly a political move to shore up his rapidly-vanishing support. There is no basis for such a […]
Well, we all knew Murdoch was the most powerful man in UK politics, so maybe it’s no wonder that Jacob Rees-Mogg has turned to readers of the Sun in a desperate bid to scrape together a few rules and regulations that they have been told get up their noses. I fear he will be inundated […]
Dear Sheryll Finally, Brexit has created a job: quite a pointless and poisoned chalice of a job, Brexit Opportunities minister, due to the fact that there are clearly no benefits, but a job nonetheless. I am sure that will warm the hearts of all of those previously employed people who are on the breadline since […]
On 9 February 2022, the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts published its latest report into the impact of Brexit and the consequent changes to the EU/UK border. It made grim reading. On the same day Johnson, scrabbling around for diversions from #partygate, reorganised the deckchairs on the Torytanic and moved the minister for […]
Dear Conor Burns, Yesterday I was shocked by the footage of Keir Starmer and David Lammy mobbed by hostile far-right thugs quoting Boris Johnson’s Jimmy Savile smears from Hansard — and that’s saying something, because yesterday was also the day I was told my beloved father only has weeks to live and asked to sign […]
Starstruck? It’s not often that I derive inspiration from the front page of the Daily Star, but there we have it: this front page synthesised and articulated my feelings about the sheer bare-faced exploitation which has all too often characterised so much of the ‘economic activity’ surrounding the management of the coronavirus pandemic in the […]
This same letter could be sent to the majority of Conservative MPs in our region who have failed to condemn Johnson’s appalling lie. Ed Dear Sheryll The shocking and disgusting attacks on the leader of the opposition by far right extremists today are the direct result of the widely debunked fake news that our so-called […]
It was 30 years ago today – 7 February 1992 – that the Treaty of the European Union was signed by 12 EU member states in the Dutch city of Maastricht. The treaty was fully debated and democratically passed by our Parliament in Westminster – as were all the treaties of the EEC/EU during our […]
In a recent edition of Conservative Home, my MP argued that now was not the time for a contest for leadership of the Conservative party, given the various, current national and international crises. “In the last Conservative leadership election, I did not vote for Boris Johnson. He subsequently sacked me from the Cabinet as he […]
I originally posted this rather long thread on Twitter. If you think it too long to read, the summary is that reversing QE could be the recipe for an absolute economic disaster. All the debt issues by the government to pay for Covid – about £450 billion of it – was in effect bought by the […]
In a desperate attempt to divert attention from the mess in Downing Street, the government recently announced a flurry of ill-considered ’new’ policies. One was a proposal to develop a cadre of “elite sixth forms” which would “ensure talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds have access to the highest standard of education this country offers.” I […]
In the early 2000s, I was strolling over a zebra crossing near Highbury Corner, in London, on my way home from work when I was almost hit by a bicycle. I immediately recognised the rider: it was Boris Johnson, and he was chatting away on his mobile phone while cycling right at me. Furiously I […]
This week Johnson created a lasting link between Starmer and Jimmy Savile. There’ll be people with no interest in politics whose inner voice, at the next election, will remind them of it. They won’t recall the detail but it will be enough to put them off voting Labour. Even the most fulsome apology from Johnson […]
This is a clear and powerful summary of the ‘levelling down’ of democracy in the proposed Elections Bill from Make Votes Matter, reproduced with their kind permission: What is the Elections Bill and what does it mean for our country? The Elections Bill was introduced to Parliament by the government back in July 2021, and […]
STOP PRESS! See end of article for a shocking revelation, courtesy of Martin Lewis! This duplicitious, damaging and increasingly desperate government are past masters of the gaslighting technique….manipulating us so that we begin to doubt our own sanity, begin to doubt what is truth and what fiction, begin to doubt the evidence of our eyes […]
Matt Hicks, a senior nurse, shares his personal views. There’s a lot of social media chatter about mandatory vaccines, especially in the light of the government’s U-turn on the Covid-19 vaccine for healthcare workers. My original position up until recently was that mandatory vaccines had always been accepted as being a legal requirement in healthcare and […]
Genocide is not a thing of the past. Jon Danzig’s powerful and intensely personal account is a wake-up call for us all. After the Second World War, during which many millions were systematically, industrially, gruesomely murdered in the worst genocidal crime against humanity, the earnest, global, unison cry was, ‘Never again’. Those two words summed […]
You might remember my articles from last year, when I explained why people don’t want to work as lorry drivers anymore. I came with several reasons why Britain suffers from a driver shortage. Surely now, when we have established that the economy does needs truckers, companies would be doing everything to attract them, right? Surely […]
The two-year anniversary of Brexit day on 31 January, coupled with Johnson’s lamentable popularity ratings (not so much sinking as drowning), have prompted Number 10 to unleash a flurry of misleading pro-Brexit propaganda. The aim appears to be to rally Brexit supporters with images of the Union Jack linked to positive words like “freedom” and […]
George Orwell would have understood the government’s abuse of the English language all too well. Tom Scott draws the parallels. In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell observes: “The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another […] […]
Today we watched a desperate and despicable display of faux contrition, empty excuses and insultingly evasive answers from Johnson. Sue Gray’s ‘update’ made it crystal clear that rules have been broken which means that Johnson has repeatedly lied to the House and to us. Twelve of the sixteen parties are now under criminal investigation. Twelve. […]
Reason, sweet reason! How we – or some of us, at least – long for you in the age of Brexit, Trumpism and other mass delusions. As in our time, so in Dante’s. At the end of my first tasting note we left Dante confused and terrified, alone in the “dark wood” of his erring […]
Yes, it’s called the Big Garden Birdwatch, but you don’t have to have a garden to join in, so please do! Nearly everyone can take part if they want to: in a park, on a walk somewhere – especially a place where there are trees and hedges, or in a supermarket car park: anywhere there […]
The public has been shocked by the revelation that Liz Truss’s recent trip to Australia is estimated to have cost the UK taxpayer £500,000 for the charter of a private jet alone. That’s the equivalent to the amount of money Rishi Sunak now wishes to save the Treasury by scrapping the paltry allowance of £6 […]
“If you’re cold, take one. If you can help, leave one” TakeOneLeaveOne (TOLO), helping homeless people and those need to keep warm in winter, marks its fourth anniversary with launches in London, Leeds, Manchester & Brighton & a plan to put warm clothes on every high street Over the past 4 years, TOLO rails have […]
“We witnessed an attempted coup this week. A prime minister, who has very obviously broken the law on many occasions and who holds the people of this country in contempt, sought to stay in power aided and abetted by his party and the police.” Richard Murphy sets out the case for radical reform. The charge […]
This is going to be a no-holds-barred piece…and it needs to be, because something appalling is happening that, frankly, tops all the very many appalling things that have and are still happening under Boris Johnson’s reign of horror. Covid is killing and harming kids. Lots of them. It’s not mild. It’s not benign. It’s not […]