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  1. #526
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    and the latest plate car on leases, can sit at home gorging on Ubereats to maintain their weight as a means to justify being too fukin fat to work - i loath them, sadly this winter these won't be the ones that die as a result of having to chose between heating or eating.

  2. #527
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    Some far reaching changes suggested should Labour get power in 2 years time

    Labour unveils plan to overhaul constitution and replace the Lords


    Gordon Brown’s Commission on the UK’s Future also aims to curb influence of wealth and foreign money

    Labour will consult on replacing what the party calls the “indefensible” House of Lords with an elected chamber as part of a 40-point plan written by Gordon Brown to overhaul the constitution, but stopped short of committing to its abolition in the manifesto.


    Keir Starmer will on Monday join Brown for the launch of the former prime minister’s Commission on the UK’s Future, which makes recommendations on Lords reform, devolution of power and the future of the union.


    The party said its centrepiece would involve mass transfer of power from Westminster to the people and their local areas, with Starmer saying “the centre hasn’t delivered”.


    Brown recommends cultivating “300 emerging clusters of the new economy” and eliminating “Westminster and Whitehall bias and giving everywhere a fair share of our future prosperity”.


    Labour said one of Brown’s recommendations would be the abolition of the Lords, as well as new rules to “end the undue influence of wealth and foreign money, and prevent MPs part-timing the job”.


    Brown also recommends “tighter enforcement of the rules, with the public directly represented in a new integrity commission” for politicians and public life.


    All 40 of Brown’s recommendations will now be subject to consultation, with the conclusions of that further process ending up in Labour’s manifesto.


    Abolishing the House of Lords would shake up a centuries-old constitutional model and would be likely to face resistance from existing peers. Lord McFall, the Lord Speaker and a former Labour MP, is due to give a speech on Wednesday arguing for consensus-based reform of the Lords.


    In comments released ahead of the Brown report, Starmer made no mention of the House of Lords, instead concentrating on how Labour would bring about “real economic empowerment for our devolved government, the mayors, and local authorities”.


    This would include new powers over transport and infrastructure, development and housing, such as compulsory purchase orders on vacant sites, and measures to stimulate growth.


    “We have an unbalanced economy, which makes too little use of the talents of too few people in too few places,” he will say on Monday. “We will have higher standards in public life, a wider spread of power and opportunity, and better economic growth that benefits everyone, wherever they are. By setting our sights higher, wider, better, we can build a better future together.”


    Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said on Sunday that Labour will make sure there is an elected second chamber, and the plan is for it to be done in the first term. “We will be consulting ahead of the manifesto around how we make that happen,” she added.


    In an interview with the Sunday Times, Starmer said there were “questions of implementation”, telling the newspaper: “The answer is that this is the bit of the discussion that comes after Monday, because that’s testing the propositions, refining them, and then crucially answering, thinking when and how this is implemented.


    “What will require legislation, what won’t require legislation, whether we want to do each of the steps. The purpose of that is to craft a manifesto that says, ‘This is the overall project, these are the bits we intend to do in the five years, this is the delivery you can expect to see.’”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/04/labour-unveils-overhaul-constitution-replace-houes-of-lords

  3. #528
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    overhaul the constitution, but stopped short of committing to its abolition
    I am reading that as a typo for 'institution'. Even the genius Gordon Brown, the man who sold the nation's gold at the lowest market price (Brown's Bottom), would find find it difficult to abolish an unwritten constitution.

  4. #529
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    According to the person who interviewed Starmer on Radio 4, the BBC now wish to run the country!

  5. #530
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    Not sure its a shock...

    Rishi Sunak would lose seat and Labour set for 314-seat majority, shock polling finds

    Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is on course to win a 314-seat majority at the next general election, according to a shock new polling and seat forecasting.


    Labour are predicted to take 482 seats and Conservatives set to win just 69, the major study by Savanta and Electoral Calculus has found.


    The Tories would lose all seats north of Lincolnshire – including Rishi Sunak’s Richmond constituency – if current polling was replicated at the election, their worst results in a century.


    Labour is up three on 48 per cent, the Tories down five on 28 per cent, and the Lib Dems up one at 11 per cent, the latest Savanta voting intention survey found.


    It would mean the Tories facing an almost total wipe out in “red wall” seats in the north of England and Midlands, while losing plenty of “blue wall” seats in the south to the Lib Dems, according to detailed analysis of the findings.


    Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, said it was a marked shift since the last multi-regression and poststratification (MRP) analysis predicted a 56-seat majority for Labour in September.

    The economic fall-out from Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget has boosted Labour poll leads since then, with polling experts saying a slight “Sunak bounce” seen in November had largely flatlined.


    “Even the most optimistic Labour supporter would not have foreseen what was to come, such was the subsequent Conservative collapse, and therefore this latest MRP model reflects the position now, of two parties experiencing widely differing electoral fortunes,” said Mr Hopkins.


    He added: “But we must still express caution. Many seats going to Labour in this model, including a few that could be deemed ‘red wall’, still indicate a 40% or higher chance of remaining Conservative.”


    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-majority-poll-election-tories-sunak-b2244467.html

  6. #531
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    Well that's torn it. I would be staggered if they did but this is British politics and nothing surprises me after the last decade.

    Theresa May predicts Tories can win the next general election

    Theresa May has predicted the Conservatives can win the next general election, thanks to Rishi Sunak.


    Ms May, whose successor Boris Johnson was forced out of No 10 in the wake of the Partygate scandal, said Mr Sunak could “show people that a Conservative government can be on their side”.


    With two years to go, the current prime minister had enough time to “turn it around and … win that election”.


    But she also called on Mr Sunak to remember the impact blocking a new trans law in Scotland would have “on people” and not to water down her modern slavery legislation.


    Polls suggest the Conservatives are heavily trailing Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

    more https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-general-election-rishi-sunak-b2251552.html

  7. #532
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    Or sub text she's kicking down on Blo Jo , who betrayed her and whose supporters still think a come back is possible , like so many men he believes he can come again and satisfy all and sundry.

    Regardless of my views if Sunak flops in polls and many think they will lose their seats teh call for a leadership challenge may occur next summer to get a "Winner" in place for the next election.
    Quote Originally Posted by Latindancer View Post
    I just want the chance to use a bigger porridge bowl.

  8. #533
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    Sunak is doing a splendid job . . . discussing finance with the homeless - he fits right into the English political system

  9. #534
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    Quote Originally Posted by david44 View Post
    teh call for a leadership challenge may occur next summer to get a "Winner" in place for the next election.
    Can't see it. 2 years is little enough time to effect a change significant enough to sway the vote, dialling that down to one year with an electorate that is suspect fairly fed up with all the musical chairs is an impossible ask.

  10. #535
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    ^Or in other words...'The tories are fucked'.

    Which is exactly what they've done to the economy.

    And Sunak's conversation this week with a homeless guy, however brief, shows how hopelessly out of touch with the real world they are.

  11. #536
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyrille View Post
    .'The tories are fucked'.
    I suspect so, but whatever the case the policies of the last 30+ years haven't been working and a dramatic rethink is required - obviously not one like Truss tried which was purely monetarist but asking what do we want from the state and how is it gong to be paid for with a backdrop of millions of workshy and those reliant of tax/universal credit its not looking good

  12. #537
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    What is 'not looking good' are the disastrous moves made by the tories over the last 6-7 years, culminating in the truly inexplicable decision to make Truss leader.

    From Brexit to Truss - what an utter debacle.

    Yet still you vainly try and blame it on the unemployed.

    Well, not even an electorate as easily fooled as in the UK look like they're going to buy that sack of again.
    'That's the nature of progress, isn' t it. It always goes on longer than it's needed'. - JCC

  13. #538
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    how is it gong to be paid
    Boatloads of suasage smugglers opening Bong Gong saloons, nailbars, deliverooing cocaine to the flabby middle classes while the rentiers devise even better offshore money laundering to keep the square mile , well on the square at the expense of browner people down south and I do not mean Bognor and Bournemouth.

    You make a valid point how the low paid feckless can generate a decent pension pot or afford someone to wipe there bum at the end.

    As for your indubitably prolix prosody and panache your leaked end of term report reads

    "“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

    Praise a runt of my stature may only ream off.

    I hope the ointment works

  14. #539
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    the policies of the last 30+ years haven't been working
    Interesting point . . . so, the debacle since Brexit is simply a continuation of something you claim hasn't been working in the last "30+" years?



    Quote Originally Posted by cyrille View Post
    From Brexit to Truss - what an utter debacle.
    This is more to the point and trying to minimise this shit heap is quite typical of apologists.

  15. #540
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    interesting this was announced yesterday but is buried down the Beebs front page in favour of the yanks tying themselves up in knots with their ridiculous political system. If he can deliver one before the next election it would be something, but even if by some miracle he delivered all 5 it'll still not be enough to stop a next Labour Govt. I see Stammer is posting his credentials as a prudent PM with a promise not to spend spend spend when he gets in.

    Rishi Sunak's five promises analysed

    Rishi Sunak has pledged to halve inflation and bring down NHS waiting lists, as he set out a fresh vision for his premiership with five promises to voters.


    In his first major speech of 2023, the prime minister promised to deliver "peace of mind" to the public, even as his government grapples with an NHS under severe pressure and a continuing wave of strikes.


    So what are the political risks in his promises, and can the PM achieve what he's said?


    "First, we will halve inflation this year to ease the cost of living and give people financial security."


    The prime minister knows rising prices are one of the biggest challenges facing many families right now, so it's not surprising he's put this high up his priority list.


    Some economists think inflation might already have peaked and the Bank of England has predicted it will fall midway through this year, so you can see why the prime minister feels able to make this pledge.


    However, there will still be huge challenges for households, not least those facing higher mortgage payments because interest rates have gone up. The cost of living will undoubtedly be one of the issues that dominates Rishi Sunak's premiership.


    "Second, we will grow the economy, creating better-paid jobs and opportunity right across the country."


    Growth - remember that word from former PM Liz Truss's time in office?


    Growing the economy is something successive governments have tried to do - and made big promises about. There's not much detail on exactly how this might be measured or by when, though when questioned the prime minister said he hoped to see the economy growing by the end of this year.


    Politically it boils down to one thing: will people feel better or worse off at the time of the next election?


    The government's hope is that the country might be through the worst of the recession and feel like it's on the up again, but after such a tough economic time for so many that's not going to be easy to achieve.


    "Third, we will make sure our national debt is falling so that we can secure the future of public services."


    Rishi Sunak has made getting control of the public finances one of his priorities since he took office. His first big economic statement alongside his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, in the autumn outlined tough spending decisions and difficult choices.


    However, huge government interventions at the height of the Covid pandemic and subsequent support with energy bills haven't left a very rosy picture.


    The thinking behind this pledge is likely to be the fact that Mr Sunak wants to have a reputation for economic credibility, particularly after the turmoil of the Truss government, in the belief that's important to voters - particularly Conservatives.


    Whether he can deliver - and by when - is another matter.


    "Fourth, NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly."


    The NHS is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges facing Mr Sunak's government, so it's no surprise it makes his list. He wants to show this is a priority for him in the face of critics who argue there's been a lack of government action.


    Given the current length of waiting lists and the wider pressures on the NHS, this isn't going to happen quickly. But note the prime minister hasn't put a firm time scale on his promise, instead outlining a gradual plan to reduce waiting times which allows him some scope.


    He said he wanted to be held to account for delivering the pledges he has made - there's little doubt that, on this one, he will be.


    "Fifth, we will pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed."


    This is something Rishi Sunak has already said is a priority. He announced in December that the government would be bringing forward new legislation in 2023.


    It's something many Conservative MPs have repeatedly raised as a concern for their constituents, which is why it's high up the to-do list.


    Mr Sunak has already set targets to reduce the backlog of asylum cases this year - something that can be directly measured. Today he was asked by journalists to provide a clear target for stopping or reducing the number of small boats attempting to cross the Channel.


    He didn't, opting instead to outline the steps the government was taking to tackle the problem and stressing it was a priority.

    Rishi Sunak'''s five promises analysed - BBC News

  16. #541
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    Arguably we could see the Tories in the wilderness of a good many years, their share of the vote is certainly going to get carved up with parties such as these.

    Tories should be ‘smashed and destroyed’ at next election, says Richard Tice

    Reform UK leader hopes ‘we are seeing the dying days’ of Conservative rule that has left country in a state of ‘national emergency’

    The Conservatives deserve to be “smashed” into political oblivion at the next election, the leader of Reform UK has said.


    Richard Tice insisted he would never consider doing another deal with the Tories to help keep Labour out of power, saying he still “bears the scars on my back” from the 2019 pact Nigel Farage agreed with Boris Johnson to save Brexit.


    In a speech in central London, Mr Tice said 12 years of Conservative rule had left the country in a state of “national emergency”.


    Asked whether he would countenance standing aside in some seats to help the Tories again, the Reform UK leader said: “No, absolutely no deals.


    “I think the Tory party deserve to be smashed and destroyed given what they’ve done to the country, and the country deserves proportional representation.”


    On the 2019 pact, he added: “I bear the scars on my back and I still get grief from people who are upset and the reasons why we did what we did.”


    The 57-year-old said there was “nothing at all” Rishi Sunak could do to win him over, adding that the Conservatives “need to be ousted”.


    “I genuinely think we are seeing the dying days or potentially the last majority Tory government in my lifetime,” he added.


    Asked whether he wanted to make the Tories “extinct”, he replied: “Extinct is not the right word, but to make sure they never have a majority government again, yes.”


    Mr Tice said his party will be targeting Red Wall seats at the next election but declined to put a number on how many he hopes it will win.


    Recent polls have put Reform UK on as high as eight per cent of the national vote, meaning it could play a pivotal role in deciding the next election.


    Even if the party does not win any seats, its presence may tip the balance away from the Tories in dozens of marginals, especially in the north of England.


    Mr Tice also said Reform UK has seen a 9,000-strong surge in its membership since the ousting of Liz Truss and the installation of Mr Sunak as Prime Minister.


    “There are Tory activists and councillors, and indeed MPs, who are despairing because they recognise the party that they thought they were working for,” he said.


    Asked whether his party was in talks with any Conservative backbenchers about defecting, he replied: “I couldn’t possibly comment.”


    During his speech, Mr Tice unveiled plans to kickstart the economy by getting two million people on benefits back into work within two years.


    He said this would be achieved in part by raising the threshold at which people pay income tax from the current £12,571 to £20,000. The move would free up six million people from paying income tax, with people on low incomes saving an average of £1,500 a year, he added.


    Mr Tice said the estimated £40 billion per year cost of the policy could be offset by a huge reduction in the benefits bill.


    He said Reform UK would stop the Bank of England from paying commercial interest on its reserves, which could save up to £45 billion a year.


    Separately, the party would set out an ambitious target to bring NHS waiting lists down to zero within two years, he said.


    At the core of the plan would be exempting most frontline health and social care staff from income tax for three years to encourage more people into the profession.


    Only doctors and nurses on the top rate – those who earn more than £50,270 – would have to pay and would see their bills reduced as a result.


    Reform UK has also proposed hiring 150,000 extra workers and paying the private sector to take on three million operations to clear the backlog. It said eliminating waiting lists would save around £2 billion a year by reducing the need for agency staff and cutting the benefits bill.


    Mr Tice insisted his party was not just a Right-wing movement and would be “going after everybody” at the next election, saying it plans to stand in all 632 seats across England, Scotland and Wales because “if you want to shape influence, you’ve got to be on the ballot paper basically everywhere”.


    The Reform UK leader plans to hold a series of press conferences this year to pile pressure on Mr Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader.


    “Over the next few months we will be coming out with policies that are to the Left of where Starmer is on certain issues,” he said. “I’m coming up with common sense policies that work for our country and that will surprise people.


    “We’re right in the sense that we’ve got the right solutions, but we’re not right-wing and right of centre on everything.”

    Tories should be ‘smashed and destroyed’ at next election, says Richard Tice

  17. #542
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    Is all going swimmingly

    A new party may soon destroy our clueless political class


    With neither Labour nor the Conservatives offering solutions, furious voters are itching to sweep them both away

    It will now take a miracle for the voters to forgive the Tories. Our strike-addled NHS has imploded, with another 2,837 excess deaths in the most recent week. Some 20 per cent more people are dying than normal; there have only been eight worse weeks since 2010 and all of those were during the first two waves of Covid.


    Yet the Government’s lack of empathy is shocking, its refusal to admit that we are in a major emergency baffling. What is the plan? Why aren’t hospitals being put into special measures, or a supremo brought in to tackle the crisis? Do we even have a functional Government, or is it merely a Potemkin construct run by people who pretend to be in charge and enjoy the trappings of office, such as the chauffeur-driven cars and grace and favour residences, but are terrified of actually governing?


    It’s not just the health service that is failing monstrously while the Tories watch uselessly: much of the rest of Britain is breaking too. Consumers were paid to use less electricity this week, ushering in a new era of explicit rationing. Trains and roads are in an appalling state. The economy is flatlining and wages are going down in real terms. Taxes are eye-wateringly high while far too many people depend on the state for their income. The housing crisis is getting worse. Policing is a disgrace.


    The Tories have refused to make the most of Brexit, aren’t even pretending to level up, are doing little to combat the woke revolution and are busily waging war on motorists with their idiotic 20-minute cities. Freedom of choice, aspiration and hard work are out, replaced by bureaucracy, central planning, dependency and state controls: the conservative dream has turned into a nightmare.


    Overwhelmed by ugly, reputation-shattering sleaze scandals, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives give every impression of having all but given up: their survival strategy seems to be to hide, say nothing and hope something, anything turns up. It’s too late: many of the Tory voters of 2019 feel that they have been taken for mugs.


    Their bitter disappointment will reinforce a disillusionment towards the traditional parties that has been building for two decades. Middle England has been desperate for change since the mid-2000s, and deeply dissatisfied by the status quo. Many felt that they had been lied to over immigration, over the Iraq war – and then came MPs expenses and the financial crisis. Brexit was the great opportunity to kick the political class, and Boris Johnson, the quintessential change candidate, harnessed this mood beautifully in 2019.


    Three years on, the opportunity to realign politics has been squandered, with Johnson derailed by Covid and his own deficiencies and Sunak governing as a centre-Left technocrat. None of the festering issues that so angered voters have been addressed, and the lack of meaningful economic growth since 2008 is starting to hurt.


    The Tories misled their voters in four catastrophic ways. The first was to keep insisting that the NHS was the world’s greatest health system. The second was to downplay the cost of Covid and lockdowns; their true price, it turns out, was mass inflation, dislocation and a broken labour market. The third was to pretend that net zero carbon was a costless exercise with no authoritarian undertones. The fourth was in failing to make the case for capitalist economic growth.


    Faute de mieux, the voters will plump for Keir Starmer in 2024: they will do so with zero enthusiasm though his majority could be immense, especially if Richard Tice’s Reform UK party continues to grab votes on the Right. However, the Labour leader is no anti-establishment candidate and has no fresh ideas. He will win by default and is likely to be in power for just one term. His failure will fuel the public’s fury at mainstream politics.


    His majority may rival that of Tony Blair but the circumstances are, otherwise, entirely different. Blair was young, exciting and, at first, hugely popular; he was to the Right of the current Tory administration on numerous subjects. He was riding the Tory economic boom, though Gordon Brown ruined all of that and much more. Wages and wealth were rising and voters thought Britain was improving during Blair’s first term, even if the supposed progress was eventually exposed as chimerical.


    Starmer will inherit a basket case and immediately make everything worse. His war on non-doms will further undermine growth and Labour has no meaningful plans to tackle the collapse of the NHS, the housing crisis, the failure of schools or stagnant real wages. With spending already at record levels, resources will be scarce: taxes will go up further but the money will be squandered. The nationalisation of GP practices will further centralise a failed socialist system. Starmer’s energy, transport, woke and net zero policies are worse than the Tories’.


    Within a couple of years in government, Starmer’s popularity will have collapsed, with Middle England hunting for a new political home. The Tories will still be a mess. The Liberal Democrats will remain marginal, as will the Greens and Reform. There will clearly be an opportunity for new parties, led by political entrepreneurs who understand the gap in the market and target the mainstream majority.


    Unlike in much of Europe, we must hope and pray that there is little appetite in the UK for extremists. Britain, I suspect, would be more likely to go the way of Canada in the 1990s, when a new centre-Right group crushed the old conservatives, or France more recently, when President Emmanuel Macron destroyed the centre-Right and centre-Left.


    For the first time, with an increasingly volatile electorate desperate for change, such a dramatic upset might be possible in a British election even under first past the post. It would be relatively straightforward to construct an uber-populist, 20-point manifesto with every policy scoring 60 per cent or greater support. With the right leader, could such a grouping grab 35 per cent or more of the vote from a standing start?


    Quite possibly, though I doubt I would like such a party: it would probably be good on law and order and wokeism but terrible on class warfare and the NHS. But that is the way British politics is at risk of going, whether we like it or not: the public are itching for a change, and our existing parties are not up to the challenge.

    A new party may soon destroy our clueless political class

  18. #543
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    But what is the alternative . . . despite the existence of smaller parties, the UK is basically in the same rut as the US with two firmly entrenched major political forces that won't be dislodged.

  19. #544
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    None of it matters. We just have wait out the rich getting richer until countries and the citizens who don't have a positive balance of payments say enough is enough and we aren't going to keep on increasing national debt with commensurately ever larger interest payments that make the state funded elements of the books untenable - won't be in my lifetime but i can see it coming. Sadly, in the meantime those with less will die in greater numbers and younger.

  20. #545
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    When the Scots, Irish and Welsh say fuck this we're out of here maybe what is then Singapore on the Thames will get it right?

  21. #546
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    ^ don't be so parochial - this shit will be coming to almost any country near you soonish - look around there aren't many success stories pointing the way.

  22. #547
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    another one bites the dust...

    Nadhim Zahawi to stay on as an MP and attacks press after sacking by Rishi Sunak

    Nadhim Zahawi will stay on as an MP and launched an attack on the press after he was sacked by Rishi Sunak on Sunday morning.

    The Prime Minister dismissed Mr Zahawi from his role as Conservative Party chairman after Sir Laurie Magnus, his ethics adviser, found he committed a "serious breach of the Ministerial Code" over his taxes.

    Mr Zahawi came under fire after it emerged he settled an estimated £4.8 million bill with HMRC during his time as chancellor last summer.

    Sir Laurie concluded that he had "failed" to meet requirements around declaring "any interests which might be thought to give rise to a conflict". In a letter to his now-former Cabinet colleague, Mr Sunak referred to his pledge on the steps of Downing Street to lead a Government with "integrity".

    Responding to the Prime Minister, Mr Zahawi wrote: "You can be assured of my support from the backbenches in the coming years. Your five priorities are the right priorities, and I will do whatever I can to help you deliver them."

    He also attacked the press as he said he was "concerned... about the conduct from some of the fourth estate in recent weeks", singling out the headline of a piece by The Independent headlined 'The noose tightens' which was about calls for him to resign from fellow Conservative MPs.

    Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, argued on Times Radio this morning Mr Zahawi should "absolutely not" quit Parliament. Asked if he should stay on, Mr Gove said: "I don't think Nadhim should resign as an MP, absolutely not."

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/29/nadhim-zahawi-sacked-rishi-sunak-tax-row-amid-calls-quit-parliament/

  23. #548
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    ^ don't be so parochial - this shit will be coming to almost any country near you soonish - look around there aren't many success stories pointing the way.
    So that's the line now.

    The UK is ahead of the curve.


  24. #549
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    Debt interest is now the second largest element of Govt expenditure

  25. #550
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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    None of it matters. We just have wait out the rich getting richer until countries and the citizens who don't have a positive balance of payments say enough is enough and we aren't going to keep on increasing national debt with commensurately ever larger interest payments that make the state funded elements of the books untenable - won't be in my lifetime but i can see it coming. Sadly, in the meantime those with less will die in greater numbers and younger.
    That is damn bleak

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