Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th March 3025

[refitman]

Morning all.

[refitman]

It's good to see that Labour are focusing on the important things

[Frog222]

Morning
Began the day with some light reading, female Cabinet members being targeted by a cabinet smear campaign of 'malicious briefings' , it's no longer a safe place, something like that --
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -ministers

Others in Whitehall and in parliament say they feel it is No 10 or Treasury aides who are responsible for frustrated briefing, whether towards Kendall, who has fought an internal battle over the welfare cuts and funding for jobs programmes; Phillipson, for the handling of the academy changes, or others, such as the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, because of political differences.

All a guardian smear campaign , of course

I liked the bit about Streeting being the insider favourite to succeed the unfortunate Starmer, while he's the least popular out in the real world ...

[Frog222]

Meanwhile , away from the ninja-sword-'controversy'

[refitman]

It is reassuring that Streeting is as unpopular within the party membership, as without

[Frog222]

[Frog222]

For dubbed RU TV -- Julia Davis is the champion

[Frog222]

[refitman]

In some good news, it looks like The Daily Wire - home of Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh and many other terrible people - is going down the shitter

[refitman]

This is the person that the Labour government has commissioned to do a review on sex & gender data collection

[notnowsonny]

This is the person that the Labour government has commissioned to do a review on sex & gender data collection

Commissioned in February 2024 so a Tory decision, I would have said.

[refitman]

Look, there are just no other options, than cutting benefits to disabled people. Absolutely no other ways of raising money for the government.

[refitman]

This is the person that the Labour government has commissioned to do a review on sex & gender data collection

Commissioned in February 2024 so a Tory decision, I would have said.

You're right, my bad.

Still being used by Labour, in conjunction with Cass, to harm trans people.

[notnowsonny]

@refit
Can’t disagree with your riposte. Just think it could be a lot worse, without in any way endorsing the way it’s going at the moment. Eternally optimistic, I suppose!

[Frog222]

Look, there are just no other options, than cutting benefits to disabled people. Absolutely no other ways of raising money for the government.

Here is the link, somebody got there first !

https://archive.is/2025.03.30-001056/ht ... -xdfgtxdxz

Reeves, then, is like the First World War company commander who has made difficult decisions about her own troops but now faces going over the top into a fusillade that could cut her plans to ribbons. And while she has fixed bayonets, Starmer is the general who has seen his reputation for statesmanship grow by remaining behind the lines in a French chateau — or more accurately, hobnobbing with President Macron in the Élysée Palace.
Brussels has threatened immediate retaliation, but Starmer’s team plans to play it more calmly, consulting the affected industries and preferring to conduct economic diplomacy quietly, rather than over a megaphone.

First -- the OBR is often wrong ('events' too! ) , can be a liability then .
Second -- the Canadians didn't sent teams to 'negotiate' with the Ogre, Carney stood up to it and united the country behind him, then had a phonecall with it .
So far Captain Forensic has united the country either in apathy or opposition to himself and 'his' Party ...

(It's a long one, so off to read the rest ! )

[Frog222]

Posted this on Friday, did read it and never came back !
I got halfway through this on Starmer's 'hybrid government' , suspense killing me for the rest when I come back from shopping

After a small handful of gradualist good policies Andy Becket writes this --

Yet one problem with this interpretation is that it largely ignores Starmerism’s nasty side. His party’s relentless purges of leftwingers and contrasting reverence for reactionary voters are starkly different from Labour under Wilson, who treated the party as a broad church and promoted social liberalism.

Another huge difference is in how the current government deals with financial pressures. Previous Labour premiers faced them, too, and sometimes imposed austerity policies, but the pain was spread much more evenly between the privileged and the disadvantaged. Under Wilson, there was briefly a combined income and investment tax rate of 98% for the highest earners. By contrast, Reeves and Starmer seem to have accepted the self-serving argument from big business and its many media champions that increasing taxes on the rich is both impractical and undesirable – even though many voters and many analysts of the long boom in elite wealth, such as Thomas Piketty, strongly disagree.

There's some debate on whether wealth taxes work, with the IFS bloke saying they don't , but ... ... the alternative to doing nothing on that front is that the concentration of wealth and income upwards is leading inexorably to a situation of a tiny number of very rich individuals and corporations, another few well-paid, and a whopping great underclass of neo-serfs .

[Frog222]

RE "the impartial Alice Sullivan" --

猫好きな人‬ ‪@valoisdubins.bsky.social‬

So the UK government appointed Alice Sullivan, someone who thinks being trans is “incompatible with an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle”, to chair a review on trans issues.

That’s Nazi-style rhetoric, Alice.

Wow !

[refitman]

Fucking hell, getting dunked on by Gove

[Frog222]

Only £40BN ? Not worth bothering with !

Inman yesterday

Another route could be to examine the £200bn of tax breaks identified by the National Audit Office that successive governments have failed to monitor and prove are effective. One of the largest tax breaks is the tax-free allowance for pension saving. This costs the government about £40bn a year. Would savers stop putting money in a pension if the government subsidy was reduced? No one knows.

Is it fair that pension savers can take a quarter of their pot as a tax-free lump sum? This subsidy is likely to come under review in the autumn budget, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

[refitman]

Nah, got to punish the 'undeserving'.

[Frog222]

Refit -- it's not ALL bad --

That nice Mr Starmer is almost certainly going to make a wedding present of a few hundred million pounds to Mr Amazon for his upcoming wedding in Venice .

[Frog222]

Consumables --


Excellent reporting from this brave youngster, with Harri EST--

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I'm back feeling a bit more sane but still just as angry.

My Dad voted Labour for the first time at the last election and now says he bitterly regrets it, as does my brother whose wife is on PIP and ESA due to a workplace injury. If Labour don't think these benefit cuts have cut through to people they're living in cloud cuckoo land. It kept coming up in pub conversations even with random strangers, and not because I brought it up, I was trying my best to have a relaxing weekend and avoid the subject. A friend of my Dad's who cares for a daughter with Down's Syndrome reckoned she and her daughter will lose about £10,000 a year. She volunteers keeping the local beach clean which is where we met her while out for a walk and she got so upset talking about it we insisted on taking her for a stiff drink. It was heartbreaking.

This is in a constituency which Labour won for the first time in their history last year with a wafer thin majority. Perhaps then you might think their shiny new Labour MP would be open to listening to the complaints of this lady given his precarious position and need for every vote he can get. Fat chance, he's a self professed Blue Labour clown who's been arguing against farmer's paying inheritance tax.

It's little wonder every conversation we had on the subject ended up with 'they're all the same/what's the point of voting'. In the past I'd have attempted to disabuse those we were talking to of such notions, but not this time. Because they're right.

On the plus side though the weather was beautiful (if a bit windy) and I got some awesome cheese from the lasses who come up from the Grainger Market in Newcastle on a Saturday and set up stall on the high street with their wares. On this occasion some Welsh truffle wonderfulness and a delicious Dutch goat Gouda. Everything I've bought from them has been wonderful.

https://matthewscheese.co.uk/

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I feel I should say at no point has anyone from Matthews cheese bought me concert tickets or posh glasses (mine are currently held together with speaker wire and superglue), I'm promoting them simply because they sell amazing cheese.

From Madras cheddar which melted on chips is heaven to the most esoteric cheese connoisseurs delights. French sheeps cheese Brie with truffles aged in a cave for 10 years until it's gone hard and costs about a tenner for 100g. Worth more than it's weight in gold. What kind of idiot would buy that? The kind of idiot who puts it in the freezer then occasionaly shaves a couple of slivers off on top of some mundane pasta to make it taste amazing.

Labour may be a depressing disappointment, but cheese, good cheese, will never let you down.

Which sounds like a campaign slogan for the cheese party. Which I would absolutely vote for.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Anyone seen AK recently? I just want it to be known that I love the guy and I hope he comes back.