Indeed. Fascism is power protecting itself. And, even if the specifics vary worldwide, power has needed a great deal of protection since it fucked up and crashed the global economy. Again.
I was thinking of Miliband, really. Got the same treatment as Corbyn but it never reached a crescendo because he caved.
And Labour in general, of course. Since Thatcher, at least, they always end up defaulting to this please-Murdoch-at-any-cost nonsense. Not that they were great before Thatcher (1945-51 excepted) but the media was much less extreme back then.
Not just children. The Tories need a kind of generalised hate to keep them in power. "Look! Over there! The poor people have all your money!". Not because a plurality of the electorate actually fall for it but because the billionaires who own the media keep the noise deafening to make sure no one pays any attention to their grift. Which means that the Labour party is too spineless to oppose it, keeping turnout nice and low while the Tories chase the fash to the right.
When New Labour introduced the 48 hour target to see a GP, the vast majority of GPs 'met' the target by closing down their phonelines as soon as they ran out of appointments. In the process, they turned the 48 hour target into a 24 hour target because otherwise they'd only have been able to open the phoneline every other day.
It was very bad back then. It's much worse now because the NHS was at least relatively well-funded under Blair.
Not that they're announcing this because they think the policy will work, obv. Just doing their best to make sure the voters blame everyone but them.
[The link is to a video of an election Question Time audience haranguing Blair about the foolishness of this target.]
The fact Starmer won’t even think about joining the single market is stupid too.
Joining the single market would simplify border issues but it wouldn't solve them.. We'd have to join the Customs Union and the common VAT area as well to do that. SM-only is not completely pointless but there is a massive political risk attached because it doesn't solve all the problems its advocates pretend it does.
There are only two ways to make Brexit work. One is to be an EU member in all but name (following all the rules but having a very limited role in making the rules). The other is a united Ireland (with a lot more expenditure on customs and warehousing in Britain).
The first is politically impossible, and also pointless. The second is up to the people of the island of Ireland and requires a British govt which is willing to invest in the real economy, rather than keeping most of us around to create the illusion of a real country instead of a tax haven based on a massive casino.
Important to emphasise that this is a real, and distressing condition.
But if it is real there will usually be a plenty of evidence that it is real. Sexsomniacs most often attack the person lying asleep next to them, and they're horrified and confused when they realise what has happened. The CPS should not be dropping cases simply because the defendant can afford expensive lawyers. And the case where they claimed the victim had sexsomnia is outrageous.
Amazing scientist and all round decent man. I'm glad he lived to see his particle found, or probably found, or whatever the current state of the debate is.
I especially appreciate him for saying these sorts of things, to colleagues, journalists and anyone else who might listen:
They're charging (fining) the recipients £5 to collect the post so the people they're robbing couldn't possibly have the relevant receipt anyway.
They better have some very good evidence that the problem is not with their stamps given the decades-long saga with the Post Office (which started years before Royal Mail was sold off as a separate entity).
Woods presented his real Social Security card and an authentic state of California ID card, but the assistant branch manager became suspicious when Woods could not answer security questions that Kierans had set for the bank accounts.
The bank employee called the phone number listed on the accounts, which was Kierans' number. At that point, Kierans correctly answered the security questions, and the assistant branch manager contacted the Los Angeles Police Department to investigate Woods.
Total incompetence from start to finish. But, you know, he was homeless. What are the police supposed to do, care about poor people?
London Elects said: “The Reclaim party candidate’s representatives met with London Elects for the first time on Tuesday 26 March, less than 24 hours before the close of the nominations deadline. At that time, the paperwork was incomplete.
“Mr Fox’s representatives were advised to ensure that completed forms were submitted well before the Wednesday 4pm statutory deadline. The paperwork was submitted very shortly before 4pm.
“Upon inspection, the nomination forms contained errors which – the deadline having passed – were too late for Mr Fox’s team to correct.
Monstrously unfair to disqualify incompetent fascists simply for being incompetent. Can democracy survive this outrageous attack?
Yes, that and increasing conditionality of benefits (which were originally designed to place a floor under which no employer could sink).
Minimum wage is a neoliberal policy, necessitated by the fact that capital would happily starve its own workforce to death and only then wonder why it could not find any more workers to exploit.
The Scandinavian countries are, I think, the only wealthy countries left with no minimum wage. Because sectoral bargaining still works there (hence Musk's travails in Sweden).
I haven't read this report but any research like this needs to also look at the proportion of the workforce who are at or close to the minimum wage, which has steadily increased since 1999. It has undoubtedly improved things for the most easily exploited workers but it has also meant that wages in general have pancaked downwards. Overall inequality has increased even as minimum wage improved things for the very lowest paid. This headline is reporting the good news while ignoring the bad.
For years, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has been investigating how the retirement age rise was communicated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to women most likely to be impacted by the change.
In 2021, its initial finding of maladministration by the DWP centred on a delay in providing direct information to this group of women.
While some women were aware of the general policy change, they did not know it would affect them personally. The ombudsman said that letters should have been sent directly to these women more than two years earlier than they were. For some, the delay was much longer.
And, just in case you're feeling all hard done by, pension rights were only equalised in 2005 (because civil partnerships meant the inequality affected men as well as women). It was not retrospectively applied and my mother has retired by then. So her pension scheme will pay the widows of the men in her pension scheme but her widower will get nothing. And the same applies to most of the pension contributions made by women before 2005; top-sliced to subsidise the men in the same pension schemes. Quit your whining.
The government acknowledged the new administrative burden for businesses and put an 18-month “easement” period in place. During this period all wines between 11.5% and 14.5% would have to pay £2.67 in tax, the 12.5% ABV duty rate.
and
Analysis by the Wine and Spirits Trade Association (WSTA) has found that when easement ends prices on about 43% of wines will increase.
So, it must be going down or staying the same for 57%. Oh noes, what a calamity.
It is a bit more complicated to tax by % ABV rather than per bottle but it really is not that much more complicated. The retailers have all the data needed to do the calculation, it's not like they were previously working out their tax bill by hand-counting bottles of wine.
Both taxation systems are crap, of course. The per bottle and per 0.1%ABV schemes are so that they don't have to do it by price because taxing rich people would be wrong. Fuckers.
Indeed. Fascism is power protecting itself. And, even if the specifics vary worldwide, power has needed a great deal of protection since it fucked up and crashed the global economy. Again.