Wednesday 19th March 2025

[refitman]

Morning all.

[Frog222]

Morning

My last post last night said the opposite to what I intended , due to deep fatigue !

I intended to say that the difference in income/standard of living of the poorer 'n' % of UK people in full-time employment and those on complete State support of all kinds is so narrow because for many the UK is increasingly a low-wage society.

The heating or eating choice is a shared one ... so plenty of room for dissension and division.

Anecdotes on those £22billion unclaimed sickness benefits (Sky 12.34 AM) -- it might be even before the widespread interweb , or near the beginning say 25 years back, English families moving to Normandy were amazed that the 'Assistante Sociale' told them exactly what they were entitled to in the way of Child Allowances and others where appropriate.

[Frog222]

When a KGB psychopath meets the easily exploited Orange Narcissist--

[Frog222]

My GP buys the paper to read with his coffee before work and then puts it in the waiting room.

There was quite a detailed article on Page2 on Labour's austerity drive against the vulnerable .

[gilsey]

[gilsey]

My GP buys the paper to read with his coffee before work and then puts it in the waiting room.

There was quite a detailed article on Page2 on Labour's austerity drive against the vulnerable .

Not really big enough to be seen from space, but big enough to be noted on the continent. They must think we're mad, but then they've been thinking that since 2016 so it should hardly be worthy of remark.


And apropos of AK's snarky comment about a wealth tax last night, which I don't remember anyone here seriously advocating, Chris Dillow has it right. Starmer and Reeves are dead wrong and she at least should know better.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

A response to Torsten Bell's car crash interview last night on Newsnight. When it was put to him the cuts he was defending would lead to deaths his response was to accuse the left of supporting a Tory benefit system (which ignores the fact that half the reforms Labour are proposing were lifted wholesale form the last Tory government).



You can watch the full interview here, it starts at 8:20.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... -the-shots

And to think he was one of the few I had any hopes for.

[AnatolyKasparov]

My GP buys the paper to read with his coffee before work and then puts it in the waiting room.

There was quite a detailed article on Page2 on Labour's austerity drive against the vulnerable .

Not really big enough to be seen from space, but big enough to be noted on the continent. They must think we're mad, but then they've been thinking that since 2016 so it should hardly be worthy of remark.


And apropos of AK's snarky comment about a wealth tax last night, which I don't remember anyone here seriously advocating, Chris Dillow has it right. Starmer and Reeves are dead wrong and she at least should know better.

Nothing "snarky" about it, I actually said I was sympathetic.

But you literally couldn't keep count of all those claiming yesterday that it would pay for EVERYTHING.

[Frog222]

A response to Torsten Bell's car crash interview last night on Newsnight. When it was put to him the cuts he was defending would lead to deaths his response was to accuse the left of supporting a Tory benefit system (which ignores the fact that half the reforms Labour are proposing were lifted wholesale form the last Tory government).
And to think he was one of the few I had any hopes for.

No i-player but I did hear Bell on WATO . Paying a high price .

One thing the slashers miss is that every penny spent on individual carers etcetc is multiplied in GBP as the ££££'s stay in the economy and provide yet more employment . And so on .

[refitman]

Why are Labour selecting Reform candidates?

[Frog222]

Why are Labour selecting Reform candidates?

Obviously a safe pair of hands, may go far

[Sky'sGoneOut]

So there is still some decency left in the Labour Party.

Scores of Labour MPs raise concerns over welfare changes

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... re-changes

One MP said there was only one colleague in the room who defended the reforms without qualifications and that dozens of others had voiced concerns.

“It is highly unusual for this many people to be at a meeting like this,” one said. “They aren’t turning up to congratulate. People are there because they want to show the strength of feeling, they want to stop these cuts from happening.”

There's also been a backlash from Scottish MSPs, with Scottish Labour's own health spokesman saying the cuts should be scrapped.

So there is still hope, I think it's only just beginning to sink in just how brutal these cuts are, the kind of people they will effect, and the amount of money that's going to be stripped from them.

If all else fails I'll just move to Scotland. Benefits are devolved and it's a civilised country so they want no part of this.

[Frog222]

I bought his 'main book' over a year ago, and it took me months to even open it . Still not finished ...

" When you’re sitting in a chair, wires hooked up to your body, in some sense everything is simple. You are an enemy, and opposite you are your enemies. The electric current that ran through my body on April 11, 2017, for articles I’d written for Radio Liberty, forces my muscles to contract. Victims’ psyches “contract” in the same way, enabling them to endure torture: the organism musters everything it has.

Sitting in that chair at the “Ministry of State Security” in Russian occupied Donetsk, I knew why I was there. By that time I’d managed to write fifty-some articles for Radio Liberty, which exposed the totalitarian world of torture in the occupied territories of Ukraine. The masked people who tortured me told me Radio Liberty was still a branch of the CIA, and therefore an unequivocal enemy of Russia. "

[Frog222]

This really suits them so well --