Watching – so you don’t have to …
The only frontpage this morning with an exciting headline is the good old Star, bless them. I love how they nearly always manage to step out of the usual propaganda line, served today by ‘staff’ under: “Newspaper headlines: NHS pay deal and ‘Banks try to reassure investors” (link). Scroll down all the way to the bottom – I won’t give the game away!
As for the rest of the propaganda mouthpieces … well, apparently the nurses are now content with a lump sum and a rise of 5% on top of the 4% proposed last year. Isn’t that a bit of a climb-down, having demanded a cool 19% when they started their strikes last year? Never mind – it’s junior doctors now. Apparently, while they strike, consultants are doing their work.
We’ve not heard anything about how much the 100,000 civil serpents got, after their strike on the 1st of February. You didn’t notice that? No, me neither. We’ve also not heard if or if not the rail strikes have been resolved, and for how much.
It seems to me that one unintended consequence of the lockdowns is that we peasants have become more resilient, that we’ve learned to keep going anyway. The trade unions expected an uproar from us, in support of their strikes. It didn’t happen. Surely our esteemed MSM would have reported even the tiniest public support.
Labour, we remember, was remarkably reticent, even unto removing some of their figures from a prominent job because they joined picket lines, against the order of Starmer. Moreover, as we all know: if it’s not in the BBC and The Times, it didn’t happen …
Speaking of Labour and the BBC, early this morning the DT’s online front page had a fantastic combination of headlines, right on the top of the page. Next to “Labour threatens pension tax raid that ‘will hit millions’” there was “BBC licence fee could rise by £13 next year with the Government under pressure to intervene” – how tone-deaf! Funnily enough, for some reason neither news item has made it onto the print frontpage of the grauniad …
Lets have a quick look at the Labour Plan first because this is also in The Times. Their chief editors gave this plan a lovely spin: “Dash to retire before Labour reverses pensions lifetime allowance plan – Concerns that Jeremy Hunt’s move in spring budget could produce ‘gold rush’” (link, paywalled). How callous: thinking only of themselves! This is Labours’ argument:
“Labour described the policy as a “bung to the 1 per cent”. It said Hunt’s pension reforms, which are expected to cost more than £75,000 for every person they encourage back to work, were a “gilded giveaway” and pledged to reintroduce the lifetime allowance if it won the election.” (link, paywalled)
Let’s add the utterance of the tiny section of the Uniparty, or let’s call it the ‘Uni-Opposition’, the lovely LibDems. Yes, they’re still around:
“Steve Webb, a former Liberal Democrat pensions minister, said the changes could lead to a “gold rush” as workers accelerated pension savings, then cashed in by retiring early before the election if they thought Labour would win.” (link, paywalled)
Omigawd! How dare the wage slaves try and better themselves, especially when it’s about securing their old age! How dare they not obey their masters and go back to work, to generate more taxable income for the Treasury! The DT reports:
“Jeremy Hunt’s back-to-work drive is under threat as Labour prepares for a tax raid on up to two million pension pots. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, announced that the party would reverse Mr Hunt’s decision to scrap the cap on the amount people are allowed to put into their pensions before being taxed. But analysis showed that in two years’ time – by which point Labour could have won a general election – two million people could face paying taxes of up to 55 per cent on their pots as a result of Ms Reeves’ policy.” (paywalled link)
According to the DT, this announcement ‘has thrown financial markets into chaos‘, with savers inundating pension providers about how to protect their pension savings. But don’t worry: Labour is looking after their own, following the old rule that some animals are more equal:
“She [Ms Reeves, Labour Shadow Chancellor] promised, however, that Labour would introduce a separate scheme allowing doctors to pay into pension pots tax-free, amid fears that hundreds of NHS consultants are considering early retirement.” (paywalled link)
Interesting, isn’t it: Labour will protect ‘fat pensions cats’ like senior consultants, in order to ‘save’ these employees of the largest employer in the UK. Does anyone think such separate scheme wouldn’t also surreptitiously be applied to other NHS ‘fat pensions cats’ in e.g. admin? If so, you clearly haven’t got the message than none are more equal than those working for the Sacred Cow.
And so to the other sacred cow, the BBC. The telly tax is projected to rise by 8.2% next year, paying for all those glamorous figures like a certain crisp merchant, or certain ‘general directors’. Tory MPs demand government to stop this. I wonder if Labour will support the BBC – or the poor old paying peasants. Difficult, innit! Still, I don’t expect them to support actual BBC employees, workers in the music industry – of classical music, that is:
“The abolition of the BBC Singers is putting Britain’s peerless choral tradition at risk, the corporation was warned yesterday as musicians considered a boycott of this year’s Proms. The BBC’s decision to disband the country’s only professional chamber choir and make sweeping cuts to its orchestras has prompted an angry response from across the music industry.” (link, paywalled)
Will Labour tell us that “we” don’t need no Proms, singers and musicians because classical music is ‘only for the posh fat cats’? Will they demand to ‘save the Proms and raise the licence fee’? Or will they demand to raise the licence fee while also sacking all those musicians? What a difficult decision …
That’s all I have for today. We’ll see if the ‘Reeves’ schemes’ will become a Labour own goal, scuppering the expected election victory. As for me – I’m channelling my inner Rhett Butler, again. Have a Joyful St Patrick’s Day!
Labour will promise this and that when seeking votes but at the end of the day they break their manifesto promise almost as much as the Tories do.
And no Harold HarryAgain Armitage either. Did he forget to set the alarm last night, having had a story read to him at bedtime by his old mate Biscotte. Perhaps is he still in full slumbering mode…… W-I-C-K-E-P-E-D-I-AAAAAAA, that should wake him up.
CH- oi! Let sleeping dogs lie. And that’s twice this week you have dobbed me in. Do leave off.
And to a previous query – yes I have watched football at both Dundees, Forfar, Brechin, Montose, and Arbroath clubs. Worked with Chay Downie – (Bandy) Montrose forward.
The Star at Brechin on a Saturday night, Sally Army Dances at Freichome, and being banned out of the Barracuda nightclub in Dundee. Happy days.
Living in Aberlemno by Rescobie Loch for a couple of years probably accounts for some of my Scotchisms ole Cheal.
Biscotte is feeling the pressure in finks. Perhaps he has received words of advice in his shell like about his past trolling behaviour. I knew you were a fully paid up member of the Brechin City fan club. You are used to losing……
Here’s the second posting today and it is 14.37 although there is not much reported to provoke a comment today. Nothing surprises me about about the BBC any longer as it has undergone a concerted programme of dumbing down on everything that is traditional and good in this country over the past forty or so years. The professional chamber orchestra has hit the buffers and been disbanded, and has gone the same way as the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Big Band and many other BBC Orchestras like those led by Henry Hall, Roy Fox, Leon Young and Cyril Stapleton, to name but a few. This all gained momentum many moons ago when the BBC in their wisdom banned the Black and White Minstrel Show from the airwaves in the late 1970’s early 1980’s because somehow in the minds of those cultureless university educated executives in the BBC boardroom they deemed it to be racist, but in truth the dumbing down has been going on for much longer. Sorry, but the Black and White music may have had its roots in the 1920’s and 1930’s and considered to be old hat to those BBC management ‘Rockers’ but the standard of the orchestral arrangements and singing was first rate. The shortsighted approach by these so called BBC executives who probably think Rap Music is the new classical brand of music, have eliminated the possibilities of those professional musicians who went to Music Schools and the like to make a career in music, and as a result of this we will all be worse off for it. The Saturday and Sunday night programmes of yesteryear like The Dick Emery Show, Generation Game, Sale of the Century etc all had proper orchestral backing behind them, but now the signature tunes of what passes for entertainment on television these days is probably conducted on a synthesizer and pretty damn tuneless as well. Besides which more or less all musical genres prior to the advent of Rock and Roll in the late 1950’s have been marginalised on the BBC and the radio programmes that used to feature British Dance Band Music and Big Bands and the like presented by exceptional presenters like David Jacobs and Malcolm Laycock who knew their stuff have been permanently kicked into the long grass and treated as if it had never existed. It is just another reason why I don’t have a TV or Radio for that matter and of course no Licence, and never likely to either.
First reaction – long haired cats need more grooming even than long haired dogs. That one looks distinctly bedraggled. Tut, tut.
Pauline…..when I first saw the cat at the top I thought of you. On the contrary I think that puss strikes a regal pose, and he/she is obviously partial to the odd lemon and apple as well.
Well as I recall, the immortal Rhett Butler said……”Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”
Looking at the headlines today I can see why that might be the case! What can one do when the madness goes beyond simple nuttiness to frankly full blown hysterical insanity!
I’ve always been more of a Scarlett person myself…..After all, “Tomorrow is another day”! Well at least it might be. That’s always assuming that the ‘madness’ doesn’t get so out of hand, it cannot be fixed!
“Nurse”!………
Them posh ones wantin Beefoven, Glug, Choppin, Ann Del, Mo Start, and that lot. Tax em I rekon. That’ll lern em toffs.
Biscotte, that well known Rapper..
Viv, I still love you!
Still reeling from the budget?
Reduce luxury tax – now vat, to say 15 pct or less – if brussels allows it.
Remove vat on heating fuel – if allowed by brussels.
Stop hs2 brussels vanity project – if allowed by brussels.
Alter business rates to same as eire. Not a race to the bottom, its called market forces.
Tell the courts – pass a law, to make Brexit Britain sovereign again – if snivel service and brussels allow it. Then boot out illegal immigrant (illegal right?) an anchor on tax outgoings for skools, housing, health, crime, terrorism, illegals processing, taxi-ing rubber boats here and on and on.
Bail out banks with public money – (what? its coming) a big boy in brussels made me . . .
Generally kick out the Maharaja unelected loser, bring back Winner Truss and her economic polices.
Biscotte at 1.37pm. Hear, hear!
they’re scared silly of Liz and Kwarteng.. They put the stark choice. There is no answer. So they are reduced to false laughter. Thus display deep ignorance and fear.
Viv, 11.00 a.m. and no posts! Many places I’ve lived in, cook the meat before putting it on the table?
(Before replying, a challenge – post a picture of a fat cat in Morocco (four legs)).