Do they think we are stupid?

 Today my council tax demand arrived and I was shocked to find it is now £3,350 per year. That seems a lot given the state of the roads, pavements, non existent policing etc. I bought the house in 2000 so I decided to look up how much the council was back in the good old year 2000. So it was approximately £1,250 per year. Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator that £1,250 should now be £2,340 but it's now £3,350.  A difference of £1,005 or 43% more than it should be after inflation. Are the services better as a result of this extra £1,005?  No. Are the roads in better shape?  No. Do I feel it is better value for money?  No. I can say the bin collection has been consistent.  But I can say the tip/recycling facility is far worse - huge restrictions on what you can take there and the inconvenience of having to book in advance. All the local police stations have closed and there are none in my borough yet it says I paying for policing. The libraries a...

 Whenever Starmer or Rachel are on the ropes, their default "get out of jail card" is to state that Liz Truss crashed the economy. She was Prime Minister for 49 days, from 6 September 2022 to 25 October 2022. That's nearly 4 years ago.  I know Labour havent got a clue about the economy but can something which happened 4 years ago and never got implemented really have caused such prolonged damage to the economy?  It's clear Rachel's jobs tax, the huge inflation busting pay rises for public sector workers and big increases for those on minimum wage has been inflationary and caused a big increase in unemployment.  Surely this must be worse than Liz's damage? So let's wind the clock back.  Crashing the economy implies economic output fell or GDP fell. So let's look at the ONS numbers. Q2/22 GDP = £686,335M (Before Liz was PM) Q3/22 GDP = £687,029M (During her premiership) Q4/22 GDP = £688,817M (After  her premiership) So Q4 is higher than Q3 so surely if s...

The news today is that the British public are being rewarded with a cost of living reduction by Ofgem reducing the price cap by £117 from April. Wind the clock back to November 2025 and Rachel promised to remove £150 of "green taxes" from our bill from April. So how come a £150 reduction has now become just £117? Where has the £33 per household gone? Well the excuse is that network costs have increased. Energy prices have come down by £38 per year but network costs have increased by £66 per year. So that's an overall increase of £28 yet it should be £33. The reduction should be £122 not £117.  Where has the £5 gone? Who is getting that? The network costs have gone up due to the RIIO-3 price control framework. The reason is that  we are paying for £28.1 BILLION to upgrade the transmission network through our bills- that's needed because the old model was we have a few power stations and now we have wind turbines, solar panels etc distributed everywhere.  The old grid ...

 I've just watched Channel 4's excellent real-life drama Dirty Business.  It's about the sheer scale of law breaking in the privatised water industry and more importantly the complicit regulator. The volumes of raw sewage  dumped into OUR rivers is astronomical.  The water companies seem to think they own the rivers....   The sheer scale of unethical behaviour exposed in the documentary is staggering.  People have died and the powers-that-be have deflected guilt and blame elsewhere. As the show highlights - the fines are less than fixing the problems.  There's a denial culture that the pollution even exists. This is the Post Office Scandal all over again.  Ash Smith and Peter Hammond deserve knighthoods whereas serious questions about whether Sir James Bevan is guilty of  misconduct in public office need to be asked.  It seems we need a great purge.  With the current state of duffers in position in power - it does beg the quest...

 It's been an eventful Chagos comedy sketch this week. The exciled Chagosian government has secretly travelled to Chagos and landed on the island to reclaim their homeland. Trump has called the disposal of Chagos stupid (again). The British Indian Overseas goverment (ie Starmer) within hours served eviction notices on the small Chagosian party now living on a Chagos island.  The eviction notice states they would be subject to imprisonment and fines for illegally trespassing on their own land. The irony that all the illegal migrants arriving in Dover we can't deport, fine or imprison. However these are not illegal migrants - these are British citizens returning to their home land which they were forceably removed from by a former Labour government. Given Squirmer claims to be a human rights lawyer, I am surprised that he cannot see the blatant contradiction in what he is doing.  He is violating the rights of the native islanders at every step of this process. He has failed...

The Times newspaper did some excellent investigative work into Labour Together exposing that they had failed to disclose £750k in donations to the Electoral Commission.  This was published 12th November 2023.  Rather than accept that fact -  Labour Together decided to engage the services of APCO Worldwide (a USA lobbying company with UK offices) to gather information in order to run a smear campaign against the journalists. The activity codenamed "Operation Cannon" targetted  journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Paul Holden. This smear campaign has now been exposed. APCO Worldwide LLC is registered in Washington DC however it's actually hiding behind a complex corporate structure where the real company is based in Delaware.  The officers of APCO Worldwide are Bradley Staples, Bradley Staples, Margery Kraus and Jonathan Friedman. None of these have direct links to the Labour party. However the UK subsidiary of APCO Worldwide does have links to...