Why are the masses so easily duped by political shysters and crooks?

 

“Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.”

 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The vast majority of people are susceptible to group think and that includes the educated. They're like 'Panurge's sheep'. That's why they follow political shysters and demagogues like Hitler, Mussolini, Trump and Farage. Many are also easily led and often act in a way that may be contrary to their own interest.

Do people ever stop and think that what we call a Liberal representative democracy, is just a delusion and a snare. Aren't general elections, just about rotating and switching political elites. Does anything really change? The Rumanians have a saying that "Only fools exult, when governments change."

The Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, believed that the multitudes, were there to be violated, just like a woman. but Il Duce, was still very popular with many Italians. Many Italians followed him with a slavish devotion.

We can see this herd instinct ingrained in the English way of thinking and their sayings. The English will say "sing along with Joe"; "swim with the tide." "Don't stick your head above the parapet." It's an attitude that's guaranteed to lead to us all into having a jackboot stomped in our faces.

Many English people revere Winston Churchill, but he didn't seem to have had a very high opinion of the intelligence of many English people. He famously said that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Some ancient Greeks in Athens, thought much the same way. They thought democracy was the rule by the uneducated and the mob.

The Fabian, Beatrice Webb, thought that democracy was just the multiplication of ignorant opinions. Like Voltaire, she seemed to be in favour of an enlightened despotism or rule by technocrats and bureaucrats. She was totally enthralled by Joseph Stalin and his fraudulent Soviet regime. The writer, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, said that Stalin took a turd and dressed it up as a Carmel. He built a society on a mountain of Russian corpses.

The German people democratically elected a man into power who abolished democracy altogether, trade unions, political parties, and the free press, and installed a Nazi dictatorship.

The 'elitist' went as far as to suggest that people should be subjected to an intelligence test before they are given the vote or to stand for Parliament. What do you think?

The arrest of journalist Sarah Wilkinson

 

Sarah Wilkinson

Sarah Wilkinson is one of two journalists who have recently been arrested for posting material about the war in Gaza. The other journalist is Richard Medhurst. Both of them were charged under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and arrested by counter-terrorism officers for "allegedly expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization."

Both of them deny doing so and say they have been targeted by the British police for reporting on Israel's war in Gaza in an attempt to silence critical voices and restrict reporting. Medhurst was arrested on a plane while Sarah Wilkinson was arrested at home by a large group of police officers and taken to a police station. Sarah says that her house was ransacked and property and money confiscated.  She alleges that the police wouldn't show her a search warrant and scattered her mother's ashes that were in the loft. She alleges that she was initially denied access to a solicitor and access to her medication for Crohn's disease.

Sarah also alleges that at the police station she was asked to provide personal details of her Palestinian contacts and their locations. She says that she refused to do so because she suspected that these details would be passed to the Israeli’s

At the police station, she claims that the police asked her why she thought the Palestinians were better than white people. She told the police this was a deliberately racist question. She alleges that items that were confiscated from her home, including her passport, were not listed by the police who she says, also hid property in her home. Sarah said that her bail conditions are so restrictive that she's effectively living under house arrest.  Is this further evidence of how Britain is creeping its way into a police state? 

Rayner goes partying in Ibiza as Starmer warns of tough times ahead.

 

Angela Rayner raving in Ibiza

Starmer-oids squalid Labour government have just robbed around 10 million pensioners of their winter fuel allowance and Angela Rayner, the Labour Deputy Prime Minister, has just gone to Ibiza to celebrate.

Her holiday companion, fellow chav, Denise van Outen, has just posted a video of Angie at a rave dancing at 4.00 a.m. in the morning in front of cheering crowds at the night club Hi Ibiza. I wonder if Angie was wearing her infamous Star Wars shoes.

The Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer-oid, has just made a speech warning British people of the tough and painful times that lie ahead. But Angie was having none of it. She was in a jubilant party mood has she danced and sang along to Gotye's hit song, Somebody That I Used to Know, with a glass of vodka in her hand.

Entry tickets to Hi Ibiza cost £84 and five beverages will set you back £80. A bottle of water will cost you £11. For Angela Rayner, the former care worker and single parent brought up in poverty in a council house in Stockport, life is now La Dolce Vita.

Starmer's approval rating at lowest on record amid cronyism scandal.

 

'Big Brother' - Comrade Starmer-oid

Labour's approval rating under Sir Keir Starmer-oid, has fallen 20 percentage points in just four weeks - the lowest on record. The Daily Telegraph seems to think this is because people perceive Labour has corrupt and full of cronyism.

Politically, the decision to end the winter fuel allowance for around 10m pensioners, was arrant stupidity. It's an action that you'd expect from the politically clueless and a vile scumbag. I wouldn't be surprised to see Labour do a U-turn on this or see a shift in their position. When Labour was in opposition, they were urging the Tories to retain the winter fuel allowance. The excuse that the country can't afford it, hardly bears scrutiny. They've just given developing countries £11.6bn in foreign aid to help them cope with climate change. Many MPs also claim expenses from the British taxpayer for their own energy costs, despite receiving an annual salary of £91,346 plus expenses. 

Labour have said that they're not the party for people on state benefits and will be tougher than the Tories, when it comes to cutting the welfare bill. They say they're the political party for hard-working families and people in work. They believe that in society, there are the deserving and undeserving. Labour's Chancellor, Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves, who means-tested the winter fuel allowance, thinks that many people on state benefits are feckless sturdy beggars, who shirk their duty and responsibility to work. What she doesn't say, is that around 40% of people who claim Universal Credit, are people in work, who claim the state benefit because their wages are so low. This also includes many people who work in the DWP's Jobcentres.

So, if you haven't got a job and are a pensioner, disabled or unemployed, Labour couldn't care less about you. It will only take one British pensioner to die of hypothermia or starvation and Starmer-oid and his squalid Labour government will be toast. We're already reading stories about pensioners who can't afford to heat their homes and have to make a difficult choice between heating and eating. 

Starmer's Police State.

 

It's monkey madness under Labour. Sheer lunacy! Why should any of us be surprised that Starmer and his government's net public approval ratings, are plummeting.

Increasingly, people are being arrested in Starmer's police state for comments they've made on social media or for even sharing a Tweet or post on Facebook. The police are that busy surfing the net looking for thought crime and thought criminals, that they've no time to investigate a burglary.

Within the last couple of weeks, two journalists, Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Medhurst, have been arrested for online comments they made in relation to the war in Gaza. They had their electronic devices confiscated. It's believed that they were arrested under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Labour now wants something called 'misogyny' (hatred of women), to be treated as an act of terrorism. What about 'misandry'? I remember women who used to wear SCUM badges - Society to Cut Up Men. Should that be treated as an act of terrorism?

Comrade Starmer-oid now wants to impose a ban on people smoking outside pubs and other public spaces. He also seems to be in favour of increasing the use of facial recognition technology so that we can be tracked and traced and constantly spied upon. This authoritarian, former Trotskyist, just loves imposing bans. I'm expecting that he'll impose a lock-down to deal with Monkey Pox. 

Jack London & Oswald Mosley -- be wary of those who claim to be socialists.

 

Oswald Mosley

The American novelist, Jack London, died at the age of 40. He was an alcoholic who basically drunk himself to death. He wrote about heavy drinking in his autobiographical novel John Barleycorn.

London was influenced very much by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche who believed that civilization was born from barbarism - the strong eliminating the weak. He was also a virulent racist. Jack London said: "I am first of all a white man, and only then a socialist." He believed that every other ethnic group should be subjugated or exterminated. He wrote: "The history of civilization is a history of wandering - a wandering sword in hand, of strong breeds, clearing away and hewing down the weak and less fit...The dominant races are robbing and slaying in every corner of the globe."

Jack London is probably best known for two books that he wrote - 'The Call of the Wild' and 'White Fang'. Yet, two other novels that he wrote, are in my opinion very prescient and relevant today. His dystopian novel called 'The Iron Heel' chronicles the rise of a plutocratic oligarchic tyranny in the United States (Project 2025, that Donald Trump claims to have never heard of), and 'Martin Eden', a novel which in part, is an attack on the masquerade of celebrity that helps enslave the public.

Many people today are enthralled by the spectacle of celebrity lifestyles and live their lives vicariously through the soaps and the lives of celebrities like the Kardashians and the Beckham's. Years ago, it would've been Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

In the early 1930s, before he formed the black shirt British Union of Fascists (BUF), Oswald Mosley and his glamorous wife Lady Cynthia, the daughter of Lord Curzon the former Viceroy of India, were considered two great English celebrities. Mosley had left the Labour Party and had formed the New Party. The fashionable couple visited Ashton-under-Lyne in 1931, to support the New Party candidate, Allan Young, who was standing in a by-election in Ashton, following the death of the town's Labour MP, Albert Bellamy.

In his book on Oswald Mosley, Robert Skidelsky, says that Mosley and his wife Lady Cynthia, visited local tripe shops in the area to try and whip up working-class support for the New Party. Skidelsky says that local mill girls wanted to touch Lady Cynthia's pearl necklace and were fascinated by her clothing. At a public meeting held at the Ashton Palais de Dance, on Gas Street, a heckler asked Mosley, if it was true that he'd left the Labour Party because they wouldn't make him Viceroy of India. Mosley said that it was utter nonsense and that riding elephants made him sea sick.

The New Party didn't win that election in Ashton in April 1931, but they split the vote and the Conservative candidate, John Broadbent, became the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne. They say that Mosley was lucky that he didn't get lynched that night because people were so furious and denounced him as a traitor. The Marxist, John Stachey, who was also a member of the New Party, said that British Fascism was born that night in Ashton-under-Lyne. Mosley is reputed to have told Strachey, "That is the crowd that has prevented anyone doing anything in England since the (First World) war." Mosley and Jack London had a lot in common when it comes to a belief in white supremacy and dominant races. 

 

Trump talks of a 'bloodbath' and no more elections if he loses the Presidential election.

 

Donald Trump

Donald Trump is an ignorant, lying, vulgar, bullying, slob. It's amazing that millions of blue-collar Americans see this unhinged billionaire property developer as the great hope of the American worker. Trump didn't get rich by looking after the interests of American workers.

In March, Trump told a campaign rally in Vandalia, Ohio, "There will be a bloodbath and no more elections if I Iose." He's also told Christian supporters that they won't have to vote again if they elect him to the presidency.

John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, has said that Trump "hasn't got the brains" to run a dictatorship, despite his admiration for such rulers. He has also said that "Trump is unfit to be president." Bolton warned: "If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse."

 No doubt, some will dismiss Bolton's comments, as those of a disgruntled former employee who Trump sacked, but Bolton doesn't write Donald Trump's speeches. What Trump says at his campaign rallies sounds like dangerous talk to me.

Russia & The Idiot.

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky

What seems to have inspired Dostoevsky to write his novel 'The Idiot', is Leonardo da Vinci's mural 'The Last Supper'.

Prince Myshkin, is a Christ-like character, who suffers from epilepsy as did Dostoevsky. The prince is unable to tell lies and is totally without guile or cunning and people try to take advantage of him. General Yepanchin's youngest daughter, Aglaya, falls in love with the prince, but finishes up eloping with a Polish count who later abandons her. She'd told Myshkin that most of what she knew about life had been derived from reading the novels of Paul de Kock, a famous French novelist.

They say that 19th century Tsarist Russian society, had a veneer of French culture, underpinned by Prussian militarism and Oriental despotism. Many of the French nobility and gentry would have spoken French. When The Idiot was published in serial form between 1868-69, over 80% of the Russian population would have been illiterate peasants. Although Russian serfdom had been abolished in1861, life for much of the Russian peasantry remained the same. They used to say that if you scratched a Russian, you'd always find a peasant underneath.

Yet, for both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the Russian peasant seemed to embody some kind of virtue, ideal, and inner wisdom. Dostoevsky wrote about 'The Peasant Marey' which is based on a childhood experience and he writes about the peasantry, in his book, 'The House of the Dead. In Tolstoy's novel, 'War and Peace', Platon Karataev, epitomises the archetypal good Russian peasant.

Dostoevsky's father, a doctor with a drink problem, is believed to have been killed by his own peasants because he was sexually abusing one of the peasant girls. They say they crushed his testicles between two house bricks. The family kept quiet about the circumstances of his death because they needed the peasants. Tolstoy also went with peasant girls, but he managed to retain his testicles.

Starmer’s net public approval falls 24 points in one month

 

Last week, I spoke to a retired pensioner who I know, who voted for Labour on 4  July. A keen traditional Labour loyalist, he said he was the first in his local polling booth on the day of the general election to vote for Labour.

Labour have now repaid his loyalty and support by taking his winter fuel allowance off him. Was he foolish to place so much trust in a Labour Party led by Sir Kier Starmer-oid?

In her novel, 'Felix Holt the Radical', George Eliot, says this: "And If a working man thinks that a vote can do for him what it was never intended to do, then he's foolish to that amount. And the way to get rid of folly, is to get rid of vain expectations."

Today, a vote for either Labour or Tory, is like voting for Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The Rumanians have a saying: "Only fools exult when governments change." In Britain, whoever you vote for, the capitalist always gets in.  

Musk accuses Humza Yousaf of racism.

 

Humza Yousaf

Scotland's former First Minister, Humza Yousaf, of the Scottish National Party (SNP), has said that he's Scottish to his very roots. Nevertheless, following the recent riots, he also said that he and his family don't feel safe living in Britain because of racism and that they may have to move elsewhere.

He was recently accused of racism by Elon Musk, when he said that most of the senior public positions in Scotland in the judicial, legal, health and policing system, are "filled almost exclusively by people who are white."

By focusing on race and skin colour, Humza Yousaf, omits an important fact about the significance that social-class plays in British society. The vast majority of Scottish white people are not going to get these senior public positions either, because they are not part of a white social elite, that is based on social class, money, education, and family connections.

We know that only around 7% of the British population attend public schools, but we also know that those who do, are disproportionately represented in some of the top jobs in British society, including the law, journalism and the First Division civil service. How many editors of the Guardian newspaper went to comprehensive schools?

Even under an SNP government, Scotland is hardly an egalitarian society, but neither is the rest of Britain. Currently, some 432 private landowners own 50% of the private land in rural Scotland and many of these are not Scottish.

Carer gets 15-months jail for inciting violence online.

 

Julie Sweeney

Another Yahoo is sentenced to 15-months for inciting violence and hooliganism towards mosques.

Racist, Julie Sweeney, 53, of Church Lawton, Cheshire, pleaded guilty at Chester crown court, to "sending a communication to convey a threat of death or serious harm." The judge told Sweeney that "keyboard warriors" like herself had to take responsibility for the language that they used online.

The court heard that Sweeney was the primary carer for her husband and lived a quiet and sheltered life in Cheshire.  John Keane, defending, said Sweeney accepted that she had been stupid.

I think some British politicians need to take responsibility for the language that they use when they make inflammatory speeches to whip things up for their own self-interests and political ends. The job of a responsible politician should be to curb the instincts of the mob and not throw fuel on the fire.

The perilous path of scary qualifications.

 

Anthony Burgess

The English author and journalist, George Orwell, seemed to think that in England, the intellectual and the educated, were treated with a degree of suspicion. I think Orwell was probably right.

 The Manchester author, Anthony Burgess, recalled how on one occasion, when he was in the British Army, he'd been detailed to clean the toilets at New Battle Abbey. As he was doing so, a general and his staff stopped to look at him. The general asked Burgess what work he'd done in civilian life. Private Burgess replied that he'd just graduated from Manchester University with a degree in English literature. The general said that he was pleased to see him doing something useful for once in his life - cleaning out the bogs.  Burgess says that the army top brass saw the educated British soldier as a potential barrack room lawyer. He joined the Education Corps and said that he'd spent most of his time writing letters for illiterate British soldiers and reading their wives replies to them. One wife, had written to tell her husband (Bert), that since he'd been called up, his stick of shaving soap had been like a proper husband to her.

 A country like Britain, is run a bit like Dad's Army and being highly qualified, can often act as a barrier to getting a job. I've known highly qualified people who have spent years on the dole after undertaking a three-year university course in para-proletarian studies and Rococo Marxism. Many employers often consider them over qualified for the work on offer or think that they won't stick with the job. I've also been told that some employers see educated people as far too pushy, confident and demanding, which makes them wary of employing them.

 I know of one man, who was advised by his DWP Jobcentre advisor in Ashton-under-Lyne, not to disclose that he had a university degree on his job applications, because it might be scaring employers off. Scary qualifications! He refused to do so, and gave an interview to the press. The story finished up in the Tameside Advertiser, the Manchester Evening News and the Daily Mail. This was at a time when the New Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was banging on about "education, education, education."

 Another man told me that he'd been placed on a government (one size fits all) back to work training course for the unemployed and he'd been told by a member of staff, that they found it easier to get half-wits and imbeciles back into work than people with university degrees.

 I remember being on one course (Labour's New Deal for the Unemployed), when I heard a member of staff ask an unemployed actor, "Dave, how do you spell the word stadium." One of his jobs was to check people's job applications for spelling and grammatical errors even though he couldn't spell himself. Another member of staff, told us, "Always smile when you phone an employer because they know when you're not smiling." Clever stuff.

 It seemed to me that it was the half-wits and imbeciles that were running these courses for Tony Blair's New Labour Government. 

 

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

 

Gosplan

“Sometime in the 1930s, at the office of Gosplan, the central planning authority of the USSR, an interview took place for the post of Chief Statistician. The first candidate is asked by the interview board, "What is two plus two comrade?" He answers: "Five." The Chairman of the interview board smiles indulgently and says: "Comrade, we very much appreciate your revolutionary enthusiasm, but this job needs someone who can count." The candidate is politely shown the door.

The second candidates answer is "Three " The youngest member of the interview board springs up and shouts: "Arrest that man. We cannot tolerate this kind of counter-revolutionary propaganda, under reporting our achievements!" The interviewee is summarily dragged out of the room by the guards.

When asked the same question, the third candidate answers: "Of course, it is four." The professorial-looking member of the board gives him a stern lecture on the limitations of bourgeois science, fixated on formal logic. The candidate hangs his head in shame and walks out of the room. The fourth candidate is hired. What was his answer? "How many do you want it to be."

Joseph Stalin once asked his doctor if he read the news. The doctor told him that he did. Stalin said to him, you know of course, that there's no news in Izvestiya and no truth in Pravda. In spite of all the lies and propaganda that Russian citizens were fed on a daily basis, most Russians knew that. They always retained a healthy cynicism about what they were told but expressing opinions publicly, could always be dangerous." In Russia today, it still is. 

(Economics: The User’s Guide – Ha- Joon Chang)

The Tameside Labour councillor who finished up sewing mailbags in Wormwood Scrubs.

 

Today, the mealy-mouthed local press in Tameside, is reluctant to express criticism of Tameside Council or to expose the shortcomings of its councillors to public glare and scrutiny. However, in 1996, the local Tameside Reporter, ran a front-page exclusive story about a former Tameside Labour councillor called Craig Brodie, who was charged with armed bank robbery. He was remanded to Wormwood Scrubs and subsequently tried at the Old Bailey and convicted. I think he was given a rather lenient sentence of five years’ imprisonment.

I remember reading about the case. Brodie had held the bank up with a glue gun which he was carrying in a bag. The bank, which was situated in Islington, was a branch of the Midland Bank. One of the bank staff hit the alarm/panic button and Brodie was confronted by a posse of armed police officers as he was leaving the bank, with his swag bag full of cash. Upon seeing the armed police officers stood outside the bank, Brodie shouted, "Don't Shoot, Don't Shoot, I'm not a terrorist."

Brodie, had been a Labour councillor for Droylsden, along with two other Manchester wide-boys, called Kieran Quinn and Ged Cooney. I think all three were brought up in Droylsden and may have been Roman Catholics and of Irish ancestry. They may also have been school friends.

Brodie's political career as a Tameside Labour councillor, seems to have come to an abrupt and sudden end after he was convicted of assaulting a fellow Tameside Labour councillor, called Lee Henderson. It was claimed in court that Brodie had launched a kung-Fu-style kick at him during a quarrel.

Brodie, a former Chairman of the Tameside Education Committee, vowed to clear his name but seems to have left the area in disgrace and moved to London, where he became a rather incompetent and inept bank robber, who finished up sewing mailbags in Wormwood Scrubs. 

Comrade Starmer to restrict civil liberties to curb riots. Will he bring the army in next?

 

It's absolutely disgusting the way in which louts on the far right, have used the tragic deaths of three little children in Southport, as a pretext to stir up racial unrest and to try and instigate a race war in Britain. The law-abiding people of Southport have appealed for calm and called on protesters to stay away.

Since the riot in Southport, other copycat riots have taken place in other parts of the country. In central Manchester, louts ransacked and looted Sainsbury's and protesters were seen giving the Nazi salute - an insult to all British people. A black man was also beaten up. In nearby Newton Heath, so-called English patriots, congregated outside the Holiday Inn hotel which is housing refugees and attacked car drivers driving down the road. They even dragged a man off a bus and beat him up. In other parts of the country, mobs have attacked Mosques, refugee centres and even libraries and a Citizens Advice Bureau. In Rotherham, the mob attacked and ransacked a refugee centre.

Many of these far-right protesters, have been whipped up by the bigoted nationalist racist rhetoric used by politicians like Suella Braverman, the minister for hate, Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson of Reform UK, or propaganda and misinformation spread on social media, by the likes of Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the nationalist anti-Muslim English Defence League (EDL).

It had been claimed on social media that the 17-year-old suspect in the Southport stabbings, was an asylum seeker who arrived in Britain by a small boat. He was in fact born in Cardiff and lived in Southport and the police have not been able to establish any link to any radical Islamist faction or group. These thugs have been seen chanting "we want our country back" and "Oh Tommy Robinson". While Britain goes up in flames, Robinson, a convicted criminal, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, is believed to be currently on holiday and staying in a five-star hotel, in Ayia Napa, in Cyprus. He left Britain in a hurry to avoid an arrest warrant.

I believe in the right to peaceful protest and the right to engage in non- violent civil disobedience, but violent disorder and mindless thuggery, is likely to lead to a crackdown on civil liberties in Britain and greater social control over the British population. No doubt, some of these people may have genuine concerns about the way in which Britain is being run, but turning to mob violence, is likely to play into the hands of those who would like to turn Britain into a police state. Furthermore, it's not in any of our interests that the people of this country should be dictated to and harassed by the instincts of the pitchfork mob.

Humza Yousaf, of the SNP, has already called on the Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer to deploy the British army to deal with rioters. This could lead to curfews, deaths, and emergency measures being introduced - martial law. 

Starmer, a former Trotskyist and authoritarian director of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), has already said that the Labour government will allow the police to use facial recognition technology to control and restrict the ability of people to move about freely. He's also talked about curbs on social media and prosecuting people who are suspected of inciting social unrest by spreading lies and disinformation on sites like 'X' (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. This should also apply to lying British rabble-rousing populist politicians who make inflammatory speeches to whip people up for their own political purposes and self-interest.

Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves claimed expenses for her household fuel bills.

 

Rachel "Freeze" Reeves

Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves, has removed the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners.

The Chancellor's decision to end the universal payment in England & Wales, means that only around 1.5 million people will now be eligible for the allowance, down from a 11.4 million. Reeves said that the cut will save the government around 1.5bn a year. As an MP, with two homes, Reeves claimed expenses from the taxpayer for both gas and electricity, despite receiving an annual salary of over 90K plus expenses.

Reeves's announcement in the Commons was met with cries of shame, but the austerity Chancellor replied, "If we can't afford it, we can't do it."

Meanwhile, Labour's energy secretary, Ed Milliband, seems to have a wad of cash. He's already announced that the Labour government will honour the pledge to give £11.6bn in overseas climate aid to developing countries.

When Reeves was running the DWP, she said that Labour would be tougher on cutting welfare spending than the Tories. She's also said that Labour is not the party for people on benefits, but the party of hard-working people.

Labour ditches social care reforms to save money. Pensioners to pay more for care!

 

Labour's honey moon period with the British electorate is now over. It looks like the elderly in Britain and those in receipt of state benefits, are going to get shafted under Labour and Sir Keir Starmer-oid.

Most of my mother's life savings were spent on her residential care costs in just under three years. She was a 'self-funder' and paid for her own care costs and the care of others. It's generally acknowledged that self-funders pay higher care fees to subsidise those residents funded by the local authority. After a life time of working, saving and paying her taxes, she was penalised for being prudent and thrifty because of 'means-testing' and received no help with her care costs from the local authority or the NHS. She would only have been entitled to financial help with her care costs if she had qualified for NHS continuous health care funding or had savings of less than £23,250.

Under social care reforms introduced by the previous Conservative government, next October 2025, the £23,250 threshold for getting council support to pay for care cost, was going to be raised to £100,000 and after spending £86,000 on their care, people would've had their care costs paid by the local authority. Both these measures have now been scrapped by Labour's austerity Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who says that scrapping the reform will save £1bn by the end of next year. Reeves has already announced that many old age pensioners are going to lose their winter fuel allowance. Only older people on Pension Credit and means tested benefits will now get help with paying for their fuel bills.

I wouldn't be surprised if the email Inbox of Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, isn't already full with complaints from irate pensioners who have had their pockets pinched. Like Fagin, in the musical ‘Oliver’, Reeves believes that ‘You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.”

All three Tameside MPs, are now on the front bench. Many older people were hoping for some relief from sky high care bills but ditching the cap, could now lead to people paying extremely high social care costs, running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Some will lose their homes and life savings. In opposition, Labour's manifesto did not commit to a date for introducing the cap, but Labour's shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said his party would introduce the spending cap if it won the general election. Labour has now reneged on that promise but as we know, there's no pledge or promise that Starmer-oid won't ditch as and when it suits him.

In previous interviews, Reeves has said that Labour is not the party of people on state benefits. When she was shadow work and pensions secretary, Reeves vowed to be tougher than the Tories when it came to slashing the benefits bill and she said the unemployed would not be able to "linger on benefits."

If Labour is serious about filling a financial black hole left by the Tories, they could start by taking measures to close tax loopholes that allow corporations like Amazon and Starbucks to pay very little tax on massive European profits. Amazon had sales income of €44bn in 2020, but paid no corporation tax. And what about increasing taxes on the wealthy? Similarly, some people do wonder why the British taxpayer is subsiding the food and drink bill in the House of Commons and the rent, food and energy bills of MPs, who receive an annual salary of £91,346 plus expenses. 

Millions of pensioners to lose winter fuel allowance under Labour!

 

Labour Chancellor - Rachel Reeves

Britain's state pensioners are likely to become far worse off under Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party. In opposition, Labour said that it would protect pensioners from the cost-of-living crisis and ensure that older people had security in retirement.

Earlier this month, Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, responsible for levelling up, said that Labour would "extend protections against damp, mould and cold." However, Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has just announced that from this year onwards, state pensioners will no longer automatically get the winter fuel allowance to help with paying their fuel bills. She said that only people on Pension Credit and other means tested benefits will now qualify. More than one in three pensioners who are entitled to pension credit, don't receive it.

In the long-run, is the 'triple-lock' safe under Labour? I doubt it. Winter Fuel Payments were introduced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 1997, to help older people meet the costs of heating their homes in winter and to end fuel poverty.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition (EFPC), have claimed that over 1,000 people died in England in December 2022, as a result of living in cold damp homes. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), an estimated 43,500 excess winter deaths (EWDs) (defined as the number of deaths that occurred in the winter period minus the expected number of deaths for that period based on non-winter months), occurred in England and Wales 2014/15 and these deaths were concentrated among older people.

In removing winter fuel payments for most UK state pensioners, we're going to see more elderly people dying of hypothermia in their homes because they will struggle to pay their fuel bills. Labour's Rachel Reeves may well be engaging in 'gerineglicide'. 

 

Blues legend John Mayall dies at 90.

 John Mayall

It has just been announced that the English blues legend, John Mayall, died at his home in California on 22 July 2024, at the age of 90.  Mayall has often been described as the 'Godfather' or 'Father' of British blues.

I probably first heard of John Mayall in the late 1960s, when a friend let me listen to a Mayall album called 'Bare Wires'. I also saw him at the MEN Arena in Manchester, when his band were the supporting act for the BB King band. A cousin once told me, that he remembered John Mayall playing a gig at Audenshaw Grammar School.

In a moving and very emotional tribute posted on YouTube, Eric Clapton, referred to Mayall as a friend, 'mentor' and 'surrogate father' who had "rescued him from oblivion" when he'd invited him to join his band the Bluesbreakers in 1965. He had just quit the Yardbirds because he was unhappy with their commercial direction and he says he was on the verge of giving up on a musical career.  Clapton was one of many guitarists who became more famous after joining Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

As a band leader, Mayall was a good talent spotter and his band was a school of excellence. He sang, composed songs and played guitar, harmonica and keyboards. Among those guitarists who played with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, were Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Buddy Whittington, Mick Taylor, Walter Trout, Henry 'Coco' Montoya and the British bassist, John McVie. Walter Trout once said in an interview that John Mayall and Carlos Santana had rescued him from descending into drug and alcohol abuse. Mayall, sacked John McVie and replaced him with Jack Bruce, because of his drink problem.

Mayall was born in Macclesfield on 29 November 1933 but grew up in Cheadle Hulme, a prosperous suburb of Stockport. His father, Murray Mayall, had played the guitar in local pubs. When his parents divorced, Mayall went to live with his mother at his grandfather's house on Acre Lane, Cheadle Hulme. He claimed that he lived in a tree house which was in his grandfather's garden, until he got married. After serving three years of national service, much of it in Korea, Mayall enrolled at Manchester College of Art. After graduation, he worked as an art designer.

It was another blues legend called Alexis Korner, who persuaded Mayall to become a full-time musician and to move to London. He also introduced him to other musicians and helped him to get gigs. In the 1960s, Mayall started to live part-time in the U.S. and in the early 1970s, he bought a house in the Hollywood Hills of Laurel Canyon. The house was destroyed in a bush fire in 1979 and he lost a lot of personal property. He married twice and had six children from both marriages. 

Charles Dickens

 Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens not only walked out on his wife, but he also took the children, which was the law of the day. Charles Dickens junior, was the only one who stayed with his mother Catherine Dickens, who gave birth to ten children.

While Dickens didn't encourage his children to see their mother, he didn't prohibit contact. He purchased a house for Catherine Dickens and sought a legal separation. He blamed his wife for her numerous pregnancies and thought she'd given him far too many children.

There were friends and acquaintances who thought Dickens had treated his wife badly. He accused her of being an unfit mother and we know that he tried to have her committed to a mental asylum, but a doctor found no evidence that she suffered from a mental disorder.

Dickens had become infatuated with a young 18-year-old actress called Ellen Ternan and they later entered into a secret relationship. It seems strange that considering the way in which he treated Catherine Dickens, her sister Georgina Hogarth, continued to live with the family as the housekeeper and remained devoted to Dickens.

Another sister, called Mary Hogarth, who died aged 17-years-old, is probably the sister that Dickens was far more interested in. She'd also lived with the Dickens family and he was badly affected by her death as was Catherine Dickens.