Stupidity Rather Than Sound Policy Is Taking Over in the UK
Whichever way you look at it, Britain is in a mess. The mood is poisonous, the most common thing you hear people say is that the country is finished and the economy is circling the drain. This is a time for strong, bold leadership, bursting with good ideas to turn things around and what do we have? A Prime Minister that prefers playing soldiers with his friends to running the country, a Chancellor who seems to be completely out of her depth and making things worse with each passing day and a foreign secretary that thinks that belligerent and empty threats are a viable alternative to diplomacy.
Where we should have measured argued debates on the floor of the House that decide policy going forward we get some spur of the moment ministerial whim. Instead of carefully thought out, sound policy, we get children’s games dressed up as good governance. The following contains examples of the stupidity at work in the government today.
Don’t You Know Who I Am?
“Yes, we do and that’s why you’re not coming in.”
You may have heard that Wera Hobhouse, the MP for Bath, was inexplicably denied entry to Hong Kong and put on the next flight back to the UK.
Hobhouse told the Sunday Times her passport was confiscated, she was asked about her job and the purpose of her trip, her luggage was searched and swabbed, then she was escorted to the boarding gate by four immigration officers.
In other words, she was treated just like an anti-war British journalist arriving in London. She said she believes that it is an attempt to shut her up.
She said: “It is very chilling that authoritarian countries can treat us in this way. Until now, I think there had been a diplomatic understanding that we might have different values, different political ideas but there is some sort of basic rule in which we allow politicians into each other’s countries, and that sort of understanding seems to be collapsing.”
Talking of authoritarian countries barring entry, the UK barred entry to over 1100 Chinese medical researchers (mainly cancer specialists) in 2022 alone, with no reason given for why they were barred. But that’s OK because Britain is an open democracy; whereas, China is an authoritarian dictatorship.
She also said that the reason she was denied entry was not given, but she said that it might be because she’s a British MP. The article did give away the real reason, which is that she is a member of IPAC. IPAC is the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and their core mission was to bring “democracy” to China and force them to comply with the “rules-based international order.”
In other words, they want to overthrow the Communist Party in China and basically move in and take over. This despite the fact that according to polling conducted by Harvard University’s Ash Center:
The survey team found that compared to public opinion patterns in the U.S., in China there was very high satisfaction with the central government. In 2016, the last year the survey was conducted, 95.5 percent of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with Beijing.
Say what you like about the Communist Party of China, they have managed to lift over a billion people out of poverty and turned their country into the world’s leading industrial powerhouse, after their century of humiliation. This humiliation was started by the British forcing them at gunpoint to buy opium because Britain could no longer afford to buy Chinese tea as they’d run out of silver to pay for it. Hong Kong was ceded to the British after the first opium war in 1842 as the place from where the opium was to be distributed. So, it’s surprising that the Chinese allow Brits in at all.
Mrs. Hobhouse (nee Wera Benedicta von Reiden), our innocent victim, muttered darkly about a “secret list” of people who were banned from China.
Wera Hobhouse says her apparent presence on secret list of critics of country’s human rights record made her a target.
The list is hardly secret – in fact here it is together with photographs. One notable inclusion on the list, indeed, the co-chair of IPAC, is Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the right honorable member of parliament for military intelligence (he is supposed to represent Chingford, which was Winston Churchill’s old seat). Who said, in an interview with the Telegraph, “…we can’t restore our nation to strength without confronting China”. So, we can be assured of their humanitarian bona-fides.
Particularly when we find that the group’s principal donor is the National Endowment for Democracy (N.E.D). The very same N.E.D that employs Victoria Nuland and organized and paid for the student riots in Hong Kong back in 2019.
So, to recap, a member of a group that actively works to overthrow the popular and legitimate government of China in order to subordinate them, was denied entry to Chinese territory and somehow that’s not fair.
As Mrs. Woodhouse herself admitted:
“I’m a member of IPAC,” she said. “IPAC is watching the human rights adherence, or not, of the Chinese Communist party, but I’m not more outspoken than other MPs about criticizing the Chinese Communist party.
“Therefore, anybody who ultimately is seen as standing up for freedom, democracy and human rights should feel that they are going to be targeted by the Chinese authorities. And that is really, really chilling.”
Now, try replacing the word “Chinese” in the last paragraph with “British.”
Here is Keir Starmer boasting about the number of people sentenced for commenting on social media:
There is one puzzling aspect to all this and that is, if China is such a terrible place to live, why has her son been living and working there for over 5 years?
And why wasn’t there as much of a fuss made about two British MPs that were denied entry to another country for similar reasons?
Britain Is Running Out of Prison Places
Such is the Starmer government’s evident relish in locking up people who don’t toe the government line, that they’ve run into a problem:
The Justice Secretary raised eyebrows last year when she conceded that even her own government’s prison expansion plan – to add 14,000 more places by 2031 – may not be adequate. Back then, she told the BBC: “building alone is not enough”. Yesterday, prisons minister Lord Timpson went further: “We’ve got around 500 spare places in prison today, in the male estate. You can’t run any organisation when you’re that close to running out of space. We know that the prison population is increasing by about 100 people a week — you can’t carry on doing that.”
But don’t worry, Sir Keir has a plan. He is simply releasing prisoners who were locked up for violent crimes, early:
Labour has already released thousands of violent offenders at the 40% mark through their sentences. One example is Daniel Dowling-Brooks, a 29-year-old sentenced to seven years for kidnap and GBH [Grievous Bodily Harm]. He was filmed shouting “big up Keir Starmer” while celebrating his early release. Another, Djaber Benallaoua, 20, said the decision to institute early release was a “very good” policy and said he was “going to get lit” after being freed from HMP Isis. He said the move had made him “a lifelong Labour voter.”
There are problems with this rapid release strategy, such as prisoners being released by mistake because of the numbers of prisoners being released and plain old incompetence. These include rapists and murderers, like Anthony Joseph, who went and killed Richard Whelan, hours after being released in error.
Obviously, Britain needs to free up prison places to lock up dangerous felons like Lucy Connolly, who was handed a 31 month sentence after calling for “mass deportation now” in a social media post to her 10,000 followers on X on the day three children were killed in a knife attack in Southport.
And that’s not the only shortage the country is facing:
Almost 40% of SME owners have either fled the UK or are considering leaving, according to a Handelsbanken Wealth & Asset Management survey of 200 business owners. Firms are pointing the finger at Reeves’ ‘jobs tax’ and Rayner’s ‘Union’ Employment Rights Bill – clobbering them with taxes and rising costs, forcing them to pack their bags. Taking their capital and jobs with them…
Spain tops the list as the preferred haven for escaping Labour’s Britain, followed by the US and then France. Just one in ten business owners say they’re planning to hire. That’s after a third of firms warned of job cuts as Rayner’s workers’ rights reforms saddle businesses with extra compliance costs and red tape. Starmer might claim SMEs will “re-arm the nation,” but his policies are arming economies abroad instead…
But we should never underestimate Sir Keir. He has another plan to address that, by encouraging small companies in Britain to make products to kill people.
The Reeves’ jobs tax, refers to the National Insurance increases that were implemented as part of Reeves’ disastrous first budget. National Insurance was first introduced as a way of creating a fund to pay for the newly created, single payer, health system (the NHS) and to fund pensions.
The scheme is split into two parts; the first part is taken from the employees’ wages and the second part is what the employers pay. It was the latter that the Chancellor increased after pledging that she will not raise taxes.
Given the nature of the payment, which cannot be viewed as anything other than a tax, it has been dubbed a ‘jobs tax’, as it is based on the number of people employed. Almost immediately after the announcement there were howls of outrage among the business community, with the Times stating it will lead to over 150,000 job losses.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, said: “The increases to employer national insurance contributions are going to hit businesses and workers right across the UK.
“The impacts will be stark, with hours for staff reduced, trading hours shortened, prices increased and, in the worst-case scenario, jobs lost.
“These damaging rises not only hit cherished hospitality venues and communities but the Government’s ambition to get people back into work. It needs sectors like hospitality to create the jobs to get people out of the welfare system but these tax rises will have the opposite effect on job creation.”
But help is at hand.
Sir Keir Starmer acknowledged earlier this week that the cost-of-living crisis is ongoing and people are feeling the pressure of rising household bills but pointed to the minimum wage increase.
Excellent! However, there is a tiny snag and that is that his government has frozen personal tax allowances so the increase in the minimum wage will drag low paid workers into paying tax for the first time. Even the Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility has acknowledged that fact:
Freezing thresholds, rather than raising them in line with inflation, increases tax receipts as rising wages tip ever greater numbers of workers into the tax system or onto higher rates, a trend known as ‘fiscal drag’. From one forecast to the next, higher-than-expected earnings both increase the numbers expected to be paying a higher rate of tax and the amount of tax that they pay.
Some estimates say that low paid workers will actually be £500 worse off after the increase. And, of course, it is businesses that will shoulder the increases, in an economy where they are being assailed from all sides. And it is looking increasingly likely that they’ll be hit with further tax increases later this year. More businesses than ever are closing down as they just can’t afford the current taxes, which are the highest on record.
The spike in insolvencies also comes before a rise later this month in the amount of capital gains tax applied to business asset disposal relief, said Dan Booth, head of insolvency specialist Leonard Curtis. A wave of solvent company owners had already opted to wind up their companies before October’s budget to avoid the expected increase in the levy on entrepreneurs.
Firms are contending with the “ongoing impact of inflation, falling business confidence and supply chain issues” along with higher costs and the “potential impact” of new tariffs, said Simon Edel, a partner in EY-Parthenon’s UK restructuring business. Small and medium size businesses have driven the trend, choosing to call time on their companies rather than looking at rescue options, he said.
Business confidence has crashed to its lowest level (-3) since the Truss era, according to a survey by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). A record-breaking 56% of firms now say Reeves’ relentless tax raids are a “growing challenge,” hampering hiring plans and killing off confidence. ICAEW’s CEO Alan Vallance warns that
“…tax worries have never been so prominent” and are driving “record levels of distress” in the business world.
And ICAEW’s Economics director Suren Thiru says:
“These figures suggest that this year has so far been a pretty harrowing one for the UK economy as accelerating anxiety over future sales performance, April’s eye-watering tax hike and US tariffs helped push business sentiment into ominous territory. Our data suggests that firms are currently responding to intensifying cost pressures with only limited price rises, but at the expense of more restrained recruitment and weaker spending on staff training, which will hinder productivity.”
Meanwhile, the latest ONS figures show the unemployment rate remains high at 4.4% for the last quarter as the jobs market suffers its worst slump since lockdown. Deloitte has just released its closely-watched Q1 2025 CFO survey of 67 CFOs of companies with a combined UK market value of £427 billion. Conducted between 18 and 31 March, the results paint an increasingly grim picture:
- CFOs expect the sharpest decline in corporate hiring since Q3 2020 over the next twelve months.
- Wage growth expected to slow from 3.6% to 3%.
- A net 30% say UK corporate capital expenditure will fall over the next 12 months.
- 58% say there will be a decline in discretionary spending.
- 63% say cost control now a ‘strong priority’ for their business. Second-highest on record…
- Risk appetite is down with only 12% reporting that now is a good time to take on more risk. Less than half the long-term average of 25%…
- A net 63% believe operating costs will increase over the next 12 months.
- A net 35% expect to see an increase in revenues.
- Inflation expectations up to 3.1% for next year from 2.5%.
Here is a guide to the maze of tax increases currently being implemented. And that’s just the extra costs imposed by central government, to that firms must add an increase of 5% in property taxes and much higher utility and energy bills.
What Have Electric Vehicle Batteries, London Pubs and Park Benches Got in Common?
The answer is that they are all spying on behalf of the Chinese government according to this hilarious entry to the FUD watch hall of fame from the Daily Mail. First off, there are EVs whose batteries are being used to spy on secret defense establishments. They got the idea from the fact that China had banned Teslas that were equipped with multiple cameras from top secret Chinese sites.
But the Chinese have gone one step further by getting their batteries to act as spies, which is concerning as they supply around 80% of all the lithium batteries used in EVs. How they get the batteries to do that, and what sort of information they send back, we were not told.
Then there are the park benches that are spying on us by recording our conversations. According to the security services, the Chinese have bugged trees, lighting poles and park benches around Westminster. Have they got evidence, like do they have any of these bugs they can show us? Well, no, but we are guaranteed that they’re there by MI5 and they never lie.
And then there are the pubs like the Red Lion which is situated between Westminster and Soho (a.k.a Chinatown), which is full of Chinese spies apparently. How they know they are real Chinese spies rather than restaurant workers who are enjoying a quick pint before going back to work is a secret.
Government workers are also being advised to stay away from five-star hotels and St James’s Park as they are a hotbed of oriental skullduggery. Because, as ‘a source’ (journalist speak for “I just made this up”) said, Common’s researchers are regarded as “the soft underbelly of Whitehall.” Do Common’s researchers, who are amongst the lowest paid parliamentary aides in Whitehall, really hang around in five-star establishments? No wonder the public sector costs are so high.
Another shocking statement is that they are spying on doctors who are treating British soldiers in order to get access to their medical data. Why they would want to do that when they can simply request the very same data from the UK Biobank – 20% of all successful requests are from China – is again a secret.
Anyway, doctors are advised to not be in proximity to a mobile phone or a computer and to use paper records only, which are then keyed into the Biobank database. Why do the Chinese want this information? Allegedly, to develop bioweapons.
Not only that, but they are building secret police stations all over the country. That might well be welcomed by UK citizens given that most official police stations have been closed down.
Joking aside, have they got any evidence they can show us like, say, a photo of one of these places?
No, they don’t, but what they do have is evidence of a torture ‘dungeon’ in the basement of the new Chinese Embassy they are developing on the site of the old Mint and which cost them a cool £255 million. Our ever-vigilant watchers over our security said the dungeon is on the plans for the embassy.
Actually, no it isn’t. It just shows a two-room basement, which are probably secure meeting places or simply for file storage like in just about every other embassy in the world.
Further evidence of their dastardly subterfuge is that “in 2010 there were only 94 Chinese officials living in the UK but by 2020 this has surpassed 116, with 120 living in London alone [sic].” Mathematics is hard, ok?
And did you know that when you visit China, they keep a record of your name, your passport number and where you’re staying. In Britain they also take photographs of your genitals.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, and the author of this bilge, said “We know China is building a spying and repression network right here in the UK.”
Actually, no, no we don’t know that, but we do know that the British government is. Ask yourself two questions, which country has the most surveillance cameras per head of population in the world and which country’s police taught the Chinese how to censor the internet?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith weighed in; “Anything to do with China has to be looked at, China is no longer benign.” Britain, on the other hand, hasn’t been benign at any time in the last 500 years.
Some Advice on What to do if You Lost Your Pension to the MIC
Or starve!
As Sir Keir proudly boasted “…my government is giving you choices.” And the euthanasia bill, once it becomes law, will add yet another choice.
The UK Incidence Rate for all Cancers is Among Highest in Europe
According to Cancer Research UK the cancer incidence rate in the UK is higher than most countries in Europe, particularly when compared to Mediterranean countries. One wonders why.
This Is Not Going to Help Race Relations in the UK
They are becoming anti-racist by being racist. It is stupidity like this that has tanked the Welsh economy.
The latest official data showed that the Welsh economy was 1.8% smaller in 2022 than in 2019, making it the worst performer of any region or nation on this metric. The gap between Wales’ and England’s GDP per capita, therefore, grew to over £10,500 in 2022. This compares to a gap between Scotland and England of around £3,500.
Wales relies more heavily on manufacturing and production more broadly than the UK as a whole. These sectors have faced volatility in recent years because of global headwinds, holding back growth in Wales disproportionately. Poor infrastructure, including a limited motorway network and the recent imposition of low-speed limits in certain areas, is also a factor restricting Wales’ performance.
Wales in this only country in the UK that has no motorway or rail connection between the north and the south of the country. Maybe, they should work on that before coming up with counter-productive proposals like this.
FUD Watch
Can anybody explain why Russia would want to attack Europe? What has Europe got that is so attractive? And how do they know the date?
This is very good.
Thank you!
p.s. I am trying to find an answer to the final question on Germany myself “Can anybody explain why Russia would want to attack Europe? (…) And how do they know the date?”
So far there is – of course – nothing at all.
I have tried to point out to my MP that in fact opposition ought to demand evidence for the completely insane allegations. There is nothing beyond the authorities claims.
It´s a vicious circle. I don´t know if any party will try to dig deeper.
Technically, it doesn’t say that Russia will attack Europe/Germany. It says to prepare for war WITH Russia.
Drang nach OSTEN!!!! *
*a pretty solid and HUGE wargame from GDW…
I remember playing that along with Destruction of Army Group Centre. Multiple commanders for each side! (Setting up your order of battle took enough time that we had to start the game early, like six or seven in the morning for an all-day “Kampfen.”)
Which one was that?
Possibly escaped me???
oh, no!
Sorry to tell you, but the Russians called it Operation Bagration.
After a couple of years “messing about,” the Soviet Army got its act together and began grinding down the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. It was the Beginning of the End for the Reich. Just like today. Funny how History may not repeat, but it certainly does rhyme.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration
My mind was apparently messing with me in the middle of the night having too much coffee, cause, I thought you were talking about, ahem, some strategy game I missed out on.
Sorry…but as Bagration goes – indeed the only place they never heard of it is, er, Germany…
p.s. As a Martyanov regular it is virtually impossible to not know about Bagration. He mentions it every other show.
>’Can anybody explain why Russia would want to attack Europe?’
I’m not sure, but the ghosts of the British Empire is certain of it, they were there with the Russians in Paris after Waterloo.
Kicking!
Greetings from the sunny U.K. for this great review, Kevin.
As it happens the money situation is so dire that I am trying to schedule whom to stop paying in the near term. As in like who can attach to my house and whom I simply let Sue.
Thanks.
Thank you! So many points I could make. Firstly, I would rather have the Communist Party of China spying on me than any western organisation. Secondly, my local (Labour MP) sells himself as a “local” but if you looked at the fine print, the people who proposed him are his family and friends and he appears like someone parachuted in from Islington, London. Third, he thinks his alphabet credentials protect him. Gay guy here say “big fat nope as you voted for cuts and are clearly innumerate”.
Fourth, the local Labour Party looks NOTHING like the local population: it’s a bunch of people who look like they’ve been beamed over from Islington, London. And you’ll be surprised when we vote in Reform? FFS. We HAD a good candidate under Corbyn but you explicitly said his stuff was “shit” (and I quote directly from the local Labour chair during the one year I erroneously thought the Labour Party was the solution and was a member).
Fifth. You’re toast because you do not understand MMT etc. You could make a difference but you choose not to. Locals round here are gearing up to give you the biggest electoral kicking ever. They might not understand MMT but they know YOU are the problem. You are going to say “wahhhhhhh anti-gay.” NOPE. I’m a big homo and think you’re just shit. When the biggest stores in our suburb close down and you post your pictures of your wedding to your hubbie on Twitter do you really think that is good PR?” Jeeezzzzzzz. At least you don’t visit our house anymore to canvass. Dad and I show you up for your stupidity whilst mum just launches a tirade against you. Eff OFF.
Kevin Kirk: Your report tonight is one of most spirited descriptions of the apocalypse all’inglese that I have read.
I found this piece of analysis especially sly: “Business confidence has crashed to its lowest level (-3) since the Truss era.” Liz Truss? Wasn’t her epoch about seven hours and fourteen minutes long?
And you end up searching for casus belli. “Can anybody explain why Russia would want to attack Europe? What has Europe got that is so attractive? And how do they know the date?”
It seems to me that very little in Europe attains the attractiveness of exemplars of the English elites with names like Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws. (But then my secret name is Lord Pinkingshears of the Herrings.)
The Russians must be itching to land at Hull.
Is the Shaws as in the Basonesse of the ___ related to Shawlands in Glasgow?
Watch the Crypto Sovs land teams of Spetznaz during the Regatta! Is nothing sacred anymore?
Thanks for the report–sounds like we Yanks learned from the best.
When it comes to the prison situation I believe GB invented the concentration camp, including the name, during the Boer War. English weather may be a problem.
If adopting our American version you need a guy in aviator glasses with a shotgun who is addressed as “boss.” It’s also part of our rich cinema tradition.
We still have a few chain gangs without the chains here in SC. They mostly pick up roadside trash.
I believe GB invented the concentration camp
I think the Brits stole the idea from the Spanish who instituted them in Cuba in one of the Cuban wars of independence sometime between 1868 and 1898, so before the Boer War though the British may have invented them independently.
>…sounds like we Yanks learned from the best…
Col Wilkerson says the Yanks learned everything they know from the Brits.
They’ve learned nothing since, or forgotten anything.
It sounds like the American elites are Bourbons on the Rocks.
“Can anybody explain why Russia would want to attack Europe? What has Europe got that is so attractive? And how do they know the date?” No, but can anybody explain why Germany would want to attack Russia? What has Russia got that is so attractive? Can it be all those natural resources, by any chance, or is it just another way to satisfy Germany’s genocibal urges but by being a participant rather than just an onlooker as in Palestine?
It is significant that the Starmer government is using all possible tricks to extort money from the productive elements of the economy and the “small people”, but not from the City, nor the top 1% with all its trusts and tax avoidance shenanigans, all while the insane expenses to prop up Ukraine remain a sacred cow that must be preserved no matter what.
Yes exactly. People round here don’t necessarily know that’s the issue but they FEEL that they are way down on a list of priorities and don’t think Ukraine should be above them.
They will punish Labour massively ASAP. Unless Starmer changes course on monetary and overseas policy then Labour will be wiped out (along with the Conservatives) within two general elections. They deserve it. I’ll be polite to our MP should he canvass (hahahahaha) but my mum will name every error he made in voting at 120 Db to make sure he stands NO chance around here…….I struggle to blame her. Plus Dad, as a business owner and progressive, has been hit by the budget. He understands MMT and LVT and thinks Labour are trash. We all want that party gone. Why? Because it left us and was treasonous. We need a party that believes in MMT, LVT and the rule of law……and that is NOT the Labour Party.
It’s like they’re pissed off the “small people” aren’t in a hurry to go die for their bank accounts.
And squeezes like this are a sign of losing a war. And the rat’s that started it aren’t paying for it. After “winning’ there was an expansion of the welfare state.
“rats”
It’s an established international convention that you don’t treat elected representatives of other countries like this, irrespective of their views or which party they belong to, and this incident is going to annoy a lot of countries. You will remember that something similar happened to a couple of British MPs in Israel a fortnight ago, and the government reacted extremely strongly then as well. But I suppose it’s OK when the Chinese do it.
Once the rules don’t hold for everyone then international laws break down and we enter a very dangerous world.
People round here don’t like the USA anymore…… basic food etc are their preferences. International diplomatic incidents mean nothing. Our elected representatives should keep that in mind because I see what locals round here are thinking……. do I agree with their methods? NO! But I see how things are playing out.
Oddly enough UK has sanctioned at least 386 members of Russian Duma. They can not travel to UK or own any assets in UK. Regardless of which party they belong to, and irrespective of their views.
Times they are a’changing, and The West just can’t have it’s cake and eat it anymore.
No, that’s always been accepted, if not common, and mutual sanctioning of each others’ politicians goes back a long way. But by convention, it’s hands off government ministers, people traveling on official business and members of parliament. The Chinese would be the first to protest if it was done to them.
So if a sanctioned member of the Russian Duma tried to visit London, they can expect to be allowed in without any interference?
After revoking the visas of 2 British Parliamentarians, the Israelis have also revoked the visas of 37 French Parliamentarians because who is going to stop them.
https://www.rt.com/news/616039-israel-cancels-visas-french-mps/
You’re contradicting yourself. Russian Duma is their parliament. So by your own words
I hear from the grapevines that Putin wants to visit Paris to eat his favorite French food. Should he be allowed in?
i’ll welcome him at my embassy(Wilderness Bar).
sadly, i do not have an airstrip.
hafta travel through hostile territory to gt here.
lotsa great big fields, though.
suitable for a chopper.
no red carpet, but good food.
and a keg o’ shiner.
I follow UK Novara Live 6pm (London time) every week day. They tend to be scathing on Labour (the Novara crew is well to the left).
I have to add that I am always rubbed the wrong way with that supposed Einstein quote. He was a socialist. If a socialist speaks of stupidity they would best point to policy, not humanity.
Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.
moi
Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable. That’s beautiful in its simplicity.
Not the same, but I often think of: We all do better, when we all do better.
“Say what you like about the Communist Party of China, they have managed to lift over a billion people out of poverty”
Sure. Poverty those people were in because of CCP policies, but better late than never.
You should actually crack open a history book or two. You do know that under the old Nationalist government decades before the Red Chinese took over, that in each city like Shanghai that carts would go around in the morning to collect the bodies of the poor who had died or been killed the previous night, don’t you? And that was every damn day of the week. Maybe the party realized that when you allow mass poverty to exist and beggars on the street, that there is a price to be paid. And I don’t mean by those poor people either. To wax philosophical, it corrodes the soul of a nation when that is allowed to happen and that when you uplift those people and help them become productive citizens, that the whole nation benefits. Don’t believe me? Just check how many Chinese universities are in the top twenty or which country is lodging the most patents. Take some poverty-ridden peasant living in China a hundred years ago. Follow his family tree and you might find his descendants being business people or microbiologists or teachers or the like and not just yet more peasants if China had not changed. I may not like the party but I sure as hell respect their results.
A poverty ridden peasant of 100 years ago, (and family,) would have been very fortunate indeed to survive the Civil War plus both the Great Famine and Cultural Revolution to become a “productive citizen”
Whatever the benefits since 1985, and there is much that has been very positive, there is also still considerable poverty, especially rural.
History requires cracking open a range of sources.
Is it the sort of grinding poverty now where parents have to sell their children like they did a hundred years ago? But yeah, surviving the filters of the past century was a trick and a half.
According to statistics and probability any Chinese had ~92% chance of surviving the Civil War plus Great Famine plus Cultural Revolution. I’m sure they would have felt very fortunate, though. As in, many likely knew somebody or of someone who perished.
Not trying to belittle the human suffering at the times, just pointing out that scales matter.
I did not vote Labour, am not a member and am not very impressed by their performance so far but it is worth noting, for the sake of balance, that the increase in employers National Insurance was to offset the cut in employees National Insurance which the Tories, recklessly if you accepted their fiscal rules (which is a debate in itself), made in the run-up to the election. Labour were constrained by their manifesto which (foolishly IMO) committed them to avoid raising tax rates on working people (employers for the sake of argument obviously being excluded from their definition of working people).
Personally I think they should be looking at Gary Stevenson’s proposal for a wealth tax on the very rich.
What is also worth pointing out is that Labour have adopted a more expansionary fiscal policy by increasing provision for public spending, which is much needed and which should be welcomed by their supporters. This is normally ignored in discussions of their economic policy which here lacks balance. Much will depend on how well this increase in public spending is managed. Time will of course tell.
But Labour’s public spending increase is smoke and mirrors.
They are spending more on war. They are spending more on surveillance tools (NHS Palantir contract etc). They are compelling councils to spend more on SEND and social care but this devolved spending is unfunded by Whitehall and local councils are going bankrupt. And they have hugely increased their own delivery costs with the NI increases.
And they continue to permit BoE to pay £50bn p.a. in interest on overnight reserves to banksters. And they are spending a fortune on badly run mega projects for snouts in the trough consultants (a one off high speed railway to Birmingham rather than a high speed rail building capacity and network plan; a one off nuclear power station in Somerset rather than a fleet of them to reduce electricity prices).
And this is before we consider the mandatory non tax costs imposed on consumers, with Net Zero restrictions in e.g. gas heating when the electricity network is close to failing and proposing billions of investment and billions of unreliable renewables subsidy recovered through household bills.
I am not convinced that a penny of their increased expenditure will find its way to a concrete material benefit. Somehow they have managed to move the economy and public spending function from a bad equilibrium to a worse one, with a net contraction in domestic demand through purchases of US arms and surveillance and interest payments to rentiers.
The world’s smallest fucking violin is playing for our supposed misunderstanding of Fiscal Reeves.
Anonymous 2: “Personally I think they should be looking at Gary Stevenson’s proposal for a wealth tax on the very rich.”
Yes, and yes again.
Neoliberal Labour is a travesty. However, as I read through this compendium of errors I look in vain for contrasting policy anchor points, like a serious wealth tax on the rich. As it stands, it seems to accept the logic of a capital strike by unhappy capitalists. Isn’t the Corbynite wing of the party proposing useful alternative policies?
The Corbynite wing of the party has been silenced, suspended or been expelled, and party meetings are forbidden from holding serious policy debates.
Such meetings, usually at a constituency level, are attended by regional officials who intervene if things deemed “too political” stray into interesting territory. “Too political ” is anything declared off limits by the party leadership, which can mean anything that encourages members to think for themselves. Democracy and debate are effectively dead in the Labour party. It is the sentinel of the corrupt status quo.
My father was Labour and trade union through and through, but even he said years ago – during the stupidities of Neil Kinnock – that Labour would have to be destroyed as a party before a proper progressive politics could arise in the UK.
Now, thanks to their inherent idiocy and dishonesty the Labour right are the agents of that destruction. Politically, they are sitting on a tree branch whilst sawing it off at the trunk.
Yes. I joined Labour (and lasted just one year) during tail end of Corbyn leadership. The local party was a Starmer/Blairite group who said the most diabolical stuff about Corbyn. Yeah I totally understand that people liked his policies whilst regarding him personally as unsuited to be a PM but the vitriol in my local party made me vow never to touch Labour with the proverbial 10 foot bargepole.
The academic marketer in me shows itself when I see their local flyers…… do they really not see the optics of their pics? These look like they were taken in Islington London. That is way worse than “won’t work” round here.
The brit Elites are a different flavor of Stupid than the US Elites, but they have a lot in common.
One of those things is always referring to the “Chinese Communist Party” or “CCP” rather than the
“Communist Party of China”.
Along with “Houthi” rather than “Ansar Allah”.
The “Leaders” of both Countries behave like spoiled junior High School kids, which used to embarrass me but now leaves me with a feeling of weary disgust.
It’s hard to believe that both Countries once had the best politicians money can buy.
ive been utterly disgusted with “our leadership” since at least 1984.
discover a good one, and it turns out he was a klan member in his youth,lol.
regardless.
as i was being, variously, and electrician, plumber, farmer, rancher and cleaninglady, today, a also managed to cook my own rooster.
chicken tchapatoulas, braised for 4 hours over a fire in a dutch oven, with vegggies(mostly from here) and arborio rice.
wish i could figger out the picture thang, because its pretty
and my county commisioner buddy is still on me to run for the soon to be open seat for my district…or provnce…or whatever
i put it up, and the cats are doing the precleaning of the big a%% dutch oven.
That’s a hard dish to make and here you make it ‘sound’ easy. Actually, I think it’s the sauce that is difficult. Haven’t made it in 20 years but I will eat it any time. The problem is I have never seen it on a menu, so you have to make it yerself.
I make chicken w’ green sauce all the time. Maybe I should do the tchapatoulas for the evil step daughter when she visits next week.
Thank you, Amf! I love Béarnaise sauce and chicken Tchapatoulas sounds delicious. I assumed it was Greek!
Something new to cook….
Germany is also across the pond and Patrick Lawrence is doing a four part deep dive on the subject. Part two is about how US interference with Europe’s energy didn’t start with Biden.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/04/21/patrick-lawrence-germany-in-crisis-part-2-a-short-history-of-exploding-gas-pipelines/
“Can anybody explain why Russia would want to attack Europe? What has Europe got that is so attractive? And how do they know the date?”
I’ll have a go. Typically the dates of invasions are well known by the aggressor side. There might be a false flag operation and a build up of troops and materials in the general area the aggressor plans to invade. Currently the EU has decided to spend quite a bit on materials of war. They will want to use them so they can justify buying more (what else will those factories make – they won’t able to compete on cars unless they fully automate and find a source of affordable raw materials). So apparently in 2027 the war goods will be ready to use. I’m guessing they will start in Ukraine since it’s already pretty wiped out.
According to the expert (though i can only hope he is one) in the interview, *if* Russia would deliberately seek conflict, that would most likely happen in the Baltic states, though he also warned of a NATO and Russia might inadvertently “slip” into a conflict, in view of the number of military activities in Europe.
He’s right, you know? Russia certainly would start a war with the NATO in spain.
What strikes me as most important is that he tries to rush the german government to spend it’s money
even faster than planned. This would be a great way to open the way for more corruption.
“Can anybody explain why Russia would want to attack Europe?”
I doubt that we will and hope we won’t, but a lot of the infrastructure supporting Ukraine is there, isn’t it? If we truly wanted to wage total war, then hitting bases and factories throughout Europe would seemingly make sense.
“Stupidity Replaces Sound Policy” Errr… not quite..
Relying on Guido or MailOnline as sources for this piece is as bad or worse than relying on Fox News or Breitbart for balanced or accurate reporting.
Helena Kennedy is very well respected on the centre left for her justice campaigning, especially human rights and civil liberties campaigning, and Shawlands is a slightly shabby area in south Glasgow.
IDS is a total dickhead though.
Incidentally, we Welsh are not racially different from the English – this racist interpretation and nuance is very much an American perspective.
Welsh Labour, aka the Taffia, sometimes alongside Plaid Cymru as the devolved government in Cardiff, have long struggled with the structural problems of having the deteriorating relics of the 19thC industrial powerhouse of the South Wales coalfield, and equivalent North Walian decline of that traditional industrial base. It was made considerably more difficult, if not impossible, to resolve by Conservative governments in Westminster from 1979 onwards. The north of England has suffered the same fate.
“Poor infrastructure, including a limited motorway network and the recent imposition of low-speed limits incertain areas, is also a factor restricting Wales’ performance.”
Cachu llwyr……
Road deaths and the overall accident rate have actually fallen since the introduction of the 20mph speed limit. Hardly undesirable.
There has never been a single easy or direct rail link between north and south Wales, within the country. It’s either hilly or mountainous between north and south with minor branch lines prior to the Beeching axe.
There are actually many Welsh who feel the existing road network – with fast motorway standard access on the M4 in the south and A55 in the north from England have created as many problems as they have solved, with over tourism and ultra high second home ownership destroying rural villages in Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion as well as Gwynedd and Conwy areas.
Nor are there many fans of the proposed high voltage transmission line infrastructure from mid Wales to England either, taking renewable power generated there to middle England.
We really haven’t had sound policy in the UK since the demise of Keynesianism post 1980 when UK unemployment exceeded 3 million after Thatcher first adopted the free market zealotry of Chicago School thinking, and then, even worse, went full Hayek.
Both mainstream parties in the UK are still broadly neoliberal with little to separate them, but unfortunately, with the dire populist right on the rise too – but it was the Reagan/Thatcher alliance that created this situation, and anyone left of centre still blames Friedman.
Americanised capitalism really has failed the UK.
We would have been much better off with Scandi social democracy.
At least we don’t have IQ 47 and his useful idiots in leadership roles, but a mediocre centre right technocrat aided by a third rate mainstream economist who definitely won’t repair the damage of 45 years of neoliberalism, but probably won’t make it significantly worse.
Devonian owner of an Anglo-Irish-Scottish-Welsh son here (No, I don’t know who he’d play for!).
The Welsh are genetically different from the English (and Scots, Orcadians, Cornish and Devonians etc.).
https://peopleofthebritishisles.web.ox.ac.uk/population-genetics
It’s not clear whether there’s any such thing as a race so I wouldn’t want to comment either way about racial differences.
But Wales is definitely culturally different to England. It has a Celtic love of music and respect for education, for one….