Aren’t we lucky: the footie team in Qatar has sweetened the start to this week, providing some headline writers of some of this morning’s print editions with an opportunity to indulge in feeble word-plays: ‘Roarsome’? ‘Three-mendous’? ‘Here Oui Go’? Really? Gimme strength … At least the broadsheets are suitably gloomy even though they all have the same footie photo on their front pages (link).
However, the online editions of the broadsheets have toned down the headlines of their gloom-and-doom articles. The DT for example has elected to go with footie stuff at the top of their online edition at the time of writing (link). Their printed scream about the rail strike is a bit further down:
“Rail bosses refuse to save Christmas from ‘catastrophe’ after rejecting 8pc pay rise – Unions press on with series of disruptive walkouts that threaten to wreck festive holiday plans for millions of people” (paywalled link)
Scrolling down a bit there’s a rather intriguing paragraph (my emphasis):
“The RMT waited until the country was distracted by the England World Cup knock-out game to announce it was rejecting the first formal pay offer made by the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) in a dispute that began six months ago. Mick Lynch, the union’s general secretary, said: “We have rejected this offer as it does not meet any of our criteria for securing a settlement on long-term job security, a decent pay rise and protecting working conditions.” The RMT did not put the deal to its members.” (paywalled link)
A bit dictatorial of Mr Lynch, no? Perhaps he knew that his members were also indulging in a spot of footie-watching and thought this was the perfect opportunity to show who is boss, that he can disregard the members once they’ve voted.
It’s not just the rail workers going to make Christmas miserable, another group of civil serpents is planning to join the rest. In their print edition, The Times leads with the headline “Met Office braced for lightning strikes as pay storm gathers” (link, scroll down a bit) – how we sniggered!
For their online readers they’ve toned it down a bit, dropping the ‘lightning’ from their headline. We read next that it’s not just the Met Office workers planning to strike:
“The forecast is a spell of strikes across the country, with widespread industrial action later: the Met Office is ready to join the mass public sector walkouts. Forecasters are among the latest public bodies set to announce backing for industrial action this week, along with health and safety inspectors, chemical weapons scientists at Porton Down and experts tackling bird flu and Covid.” (link, paywalled)
Oh dear – how could we possibly survive without weather forecasts? How could the common private sector industries survive without Health ‘n Safety inspectors, never mind experts ‘tacking’ bird flu and, gulp, covid? Perhap, to keep us all safe and secure, government ought to declare a general lockdown for all of us, Christmas or not? It worked in 2020, didn’t it!
But fear not: somehow we’ll muddle through to the end of this year because those strikes are planned for next year should all those “scientists, engineers, managers and technical experts across the public sector” vote for strikes, presumably joining the rail workers, the nurses and ambulance drivers, the posties and fire brigades who will keep striking.
All we now need is the trade union representing the upper echelons of Whitehall civil serpents to ballot their members and declare a strike in Whitehall. Then the nation would be sooo fluffed!
To keep the dire mood going, we’re drip-fed sob stories by our glorious MSM, about poverty and ‘cost-of-living crisis’. Auntie Beeb had one a couple of days ago, on how ‘Teh Poor’ in Cardiff were reduced to eating pet food (link). That was a wail by a ‘community worker’ running a ‘food project’ in Cardiff.
It just goes to show that those ‘reporters’ simply don’t have a clue: pet food is expensive and costs more than plain old tins of baked beans – but it paints a nice picture of misery. Yesterday, Auntie Beeb had another story about ‘food banks for the poor’:
“While food banks help thousands of those struggling to make ends meet, the goods given are not always suitable for everyone due to religious or cultural reasons. BBC News visited one centre which is committed to making sure every bag is right for the recipient.” (link)
How utterly lovely, innit: segregating food for the poor according to halal! As if hunger is different depending on one’s religious affiliation, as if charity must also be ‘diverse’ in order not to ‘offend’.
Back to the print front pages where the Grauniad leads with a headline on a report regarding a ‘widening health divide’. Online, their headlines act as a summary:
“Health and wealth divides in UK worsening despite ‘levelling up’ drive, report finds – Exclusive: economic inactivity due to sickness at highest level since records began, with north, Wales and Northern Ireland disproportionately affected” (link)
This, you understand, is the fault of Sunak because under his regime – how long has he been ‘in office’? – Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda has become ‘less of a priority’, having been ‘critically undermined’:
“[…] as the new data shows sickness is twice as likely to force people out of work in the north-east of England, Wales and Northern Ireland as in London and the south-east. Labour said the report was “devastating” and showed that the Conservatives were “utterly failing to deliver, and inequalities are in fact getting worse”.” (link)
One might ask what ‘the Tories’ were supposed to ‘deliver’: more sick pay? Forcing GPs to write fewer sickie notes? Giving ‘moar money’ to the NHS to make that part of the nation more healthy? Scrolling down, there was this intriguing snippet:
“The report finds that Covid-19 has made this regional inequality worse, as Wales, Scotland and every region in the north of England and the Midlands have higher long Covid incidences than the UK average.” (link)
So covid did have an influence? Who knew! Weren’t those sick & poverty-stricken regions those with the strictest local lockdown measures? Never mind – Labour will correct all that once they’re in government!
The example of that Labour ‘Prince’, the tinpot dictator of the Principality, provides us with a perfect demonstration of how things will change under Labour:
“Mark Drakeford spends £13,000 of taxpayers’ money on World Cup trip – First Minister says people ‘would not have wanted to see a seat for Wales left empty’ despite criticism around Qatar’s human rights record ” (paywalled link)
Why should Dripford worry about human rights in Qatar when he isn’t worried about people having to eat pet food in Cardiff or about ‘sickness and poverty’ in North Wales! After all, Labour has ‘governed’ Wales without interruption since 1997 so those reports surely are wrong! And anyway, it’s the bad Tories in Westminster who refuse to hand out more money to Wales or NI or The North – Labour would never do such thing, nevah!
It suits Labour, the various Trade Unions and their mouthpieces in the MSM to depict the governing Tories as greedy, skinflint monsters, sitting on full moneybags, depriving ‘Teh Workers’ and ‘Teh Poor’ of their money. It’s irrelevant that all those hand-outs have to come from the private sector workers and their taxes. It’s irrelevant that all those public-sector demands will increase inflation, as history surely has shown us repeatedly.
It’s irrelevant that people, taxed until the pips squeak, as the former Labour chancellor Denis Healy famously said, won’t be able to buy things to keep the economy going, never mind getting out of recession. Is Labour not so much aiming for ‘levelling up’ but for ‘levelling down’, installing that ‘Great Reset’, while they, the Labour ‘Princes’, lord it over us, enjoying the fruits of our labours?
We should try and enjoy the weeks remaining in this month and year as best we can. January may well become the harshest winter in the lives of the millennials, so eager for a Labour government.
‘Caveat emptor!’, warned the ancient Romans: ‘buyer beware’. Afterwards it’s too late for wailing and gnashing-of-teeth, even for Labour loving millennials in Westminster.
It was all very well of Nadhim Zihawi yesterday stating that the Unions were asking for too big a pay rises because the country could not afford it etc and that they should settle for less, but he and his fellow Members of Parliament set the ball rolling themselves earlier in the year when they accepted a £2300.00 rise in MP’s annual salary and a commensurate rise in Ministerial salaries. I didn’t hear too many MP or Ministers then complain that their rise was too high, and that the country couldn’t afford it. Some did say however that it wasn’t them that negotiated the rise in their salaries but their own pay review body. So, that’s alright then isn’t it, well, no it’s not because as usual where those occupants of that large House on the Thames is concerned,its double standards all down the line. Certain MP’s said that salaries had to increase so that they matched those of senior members of the Civil Service, and they had to increase their pay so to atract the best candidates became MP’s. Well, that hasn’t worked then has it, and if certain MP’s cannot live on their existing over paid salaries, then they should bugger off and do something else and go and live in the real world, rather than the cossetted world in which they live right now with heavily subsidised restaurants and all their expenses, need I say more………
I hope the Welsh are not depriving pets of premium tins. Pets deserve treats too.
In 2015 the OECD calculated pension replacement rates – the percentage of former income enjoyed in retirement – and the average across 30 countries was 62%. The UK’s rate was 29%. We have poor people by design. We also have comfortably off people by design. Unfunded liabilities for public sector pensions (i.e paid out of general taxation) has reached £2 trillion. (I don’t have figures to hand for the proportion of the BBC licence fee that pays its generous pensions).
I agree with the BBC that something needs to be done though what I have in mind is the opposite of what they want.
Well, depriving pets of their treats “because: poverty!” is one thing. The worse thing to come is the coming deprivation of birds of their food – all those creepy-crawlies needed for ‘eat an insect for dinner – have a mealworm burger’ change-of-food is another. Mind you, I dunno why vegans would eat worms – they’re meat, innit? Perhaps we can develop a new industry where we can use flour not for our bread but to grow mealworms on an industrial scale …
Anyway, own-brand baked beans are ok … even the dog eats them.
Even the dog eats baked beans? Duck and cover!
Well, he’s on a strict dog-food-only, no baked beans ‘diet’ so we’re ok. In a pinch we’d share beans and dog food though, I promised him, so the, ahem, ‘beans effects’ will be shared.
Viv When young I seem to recall the small farms around here (mostly sheep and cattle) feeding their sheep dogs on a yellowish cereal mix. Don’t know how to spell the name of the food but it was pronounced as U-Vee- Ko Unsuccessful in finding out if it is still fed to working farm dogs.
Interesting! I never heard of that, but then again, my ‘colliemumhood’ only goes back 27 years.
It doesn’t matter a jot which establishment party is in power, they are all ‘owned’. Anyone voting for establishment parties does not inhabit the real world I fear. For 50 years or more establishment parties find once in power they serve not the British electorate, nor uphold their manifesto promises but serve the agenda of powerful national and international unelected bodies and individuals. If one accepts this notion of where the power really lays then a Labour Lib Dem coalition is no more to be feared than the current continuity Labour Party in power. The one thing the establishment and their controllers really fear is the British public (same as in most Western democratic countries) abandoning establishment parties and turning to independents, centre Right challenger parties or to a lesser extent not voting at all.