the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Tag: news

October 26, 2025

33:64 presents “Bob Dylan.”

The defeat suffered by Labour in the Caerphilly by-election would be incredibly ironic were it not for the fact of it being an ominous portent.  

To begin with, the irony is that the same electoral discontent that propelled Labour into government is exactly the same as that which caused them to be so  comprehensively rejected in Wales. Just as how their victory in the general election of 2024 wasn’t evidence of some long dormant upswell in Labour values amongst the voters, more than that it reflected their collective disenchantment after fourteen years of Tory Government, so to does its defeat last Thursday indicate less of a desire for Welsh independence than to send a message to Stymied.

No matter how much Plaid Cymru (PC) might claim otherwise, their basic shtick to the people of Caerphilly was ‘We’re not Reform’. Which was a shrewd piece of electoral maths. Anyone that might have otherwise have voted for Labour, the Conservative, Liberal Democrats or the Greens would have calculated that tactical voting was far more important than the result of one inconsequential by election.

Because no amount of testiculation can alter the fact that by-elections are the medieval equivalent of the government of the day being dragged to the stocks by voters and then pelted with rotten fruit, eggs and faeces. They prove only how unpopular a government is, which can be discerned from the both the voter turnout and who it was that the voters bothered to turnout for. 

Which in this case amounted to 50.43% of them, of whom only of those 47.4% voted for PC of which significant proportion of those were the aforementioned tactical voters. The change in vote share bears this out, the short version being that Labour and Conservative vote share collapsed from the general election and from which PC benefitted. 

My point is that this not only highlights voter disaffection generally – as evidenced by by the low turnout – but also a specific disaffection with the options open for them to choose from. If the main reason for your electoral success is from hoovering up ‘x’s from voters who detest another party more than they support your one, then that isn’t good.

It is also ominous because if we consider the success in 2024 of the six Independent Alliance MP’s and the barely over 30% of the vote they got on a roughly 40% turnout, and then factor that in with the collapse of traditional voting allegiances, then its clear that times are indeed a changing. Gone are the old class based loyalties. There was a certainty about them, rooted as they were in tangible differences which essentially boiled down to rich or poor. 

Yes they were simplistic but the Britain of  1970’s, 80’s or even the 90’s, were simpler times, there was no hint of just how complicated politics were to become. But whilst the Britain of 2025 is still one of simpler times, it is not the simple one of of recent history, but rather the simple dvision of identity politics. 

This is an inevitable consequence of a society that champions, rewards and celebrates an ever greater division based on identity.  One that is increasingly partisan, intolerant and self-righteous but also a society which rewards those politicians that seek to fashion that discontent into political opportunity. By perpetuating the very division proclaims it opposes and by fostering more grievances, more reasons for division, they are like political alchemists; they turn impotence, frustration and alienation into electoral opportunity.  

With little or no broad policy agenda – other than being opposed to things – and with scant regard for voter engagement beyond their core base and having no upside in remedying that, we are seeing a new kind of politics. Typified by Rasin, who hasn’t just divided along traditional political sectarian lines – left and right – but also among left and far left, and incredibly, those in the far left who don’t share her vision of what the far left is. 

But then again, is she all that different to Stymied or The Cunning Stunt? Only by degree’s, not by instinct or motivation. They have spent the last eight years vilifying people who believed in the wrong kind of democracy. Would ideally prefer that it had never happened, traduced and impugned the reasons of the people who caused it to happen and ignored their point of view. How different is her divisive politics to those politicians who can’t accept that Brexit happened?

How is her continual repetition of the lie of there having been a genocide in Gaze not too dissimilar Stymied and Co banging on about the racist, xenophobic or bigoted motivations of Brexit voters? Or her pandering to disaffected former Labour voters, those who imagine themselves progressives or else those who feel more than they think any more cynical than than those politicians who citing Russian interference, manipulation by the ‘far right’ or fundamental ignorance as comforting explanations for Brexit?  

It’s all on the same spectrum. I disagree with you and because you’re wrong, you’ve forfeited any right to be treated with the same respect I demand of others. That’s why the tactical voting in Caherphilly was so ominous, not because of what it was so much as to what it foretold. A growing willingness on the part of the electorate not to vote for who they want but to prevent the election of someone they want even less, And along with that, the idea that society should prioritise your grievances, needs and values above any other concern. 

Now there’s a cheery thought.

Leave a comment
October 23, 2025

33:64 presents “Christine Keeler.”

A few weeks ago I posted a blog, in whichI outlined my belief that the British press love a sex scandal, just as long as it’s the ‘right’ kind of sex scandal.  And that how,  if there was a ‘right’ of scandal, then it followed that there was a ‘wrong’ kind, and that the ‘grooming gangs’ scandal was a textbook example of one.

The very fact of the press describing them ‘grooming gangs’ underlines precisely how much of the ‘wrong’ kind of sex scandal it was. By dint the press repeatedly labelling them as ‘grooming gangs’, then having politicians and the police follow suit, it trivialised the sheer scale and depravity of what they did. Calling them ‘grooming gangs’ made them sound harmless teenage  miscreants, engaged in some hi-jinks involving pranks on horses. Calling them rape/torture gangs, by contrast, would have been more accurate and have demanded immediate action.

I’m not suggesting that some sex crimes are more deserving of proper examination than others. A sex crime is a sex crime. There should be no hierarchy. But according to the press there is. The events of this week prove this to be demonstrably so. One looks at how Prince Charmless has been all over the media this week, as compared to the scant coverage given to yet another rape/torture gang trial in Rochdale. 

This is a criticism of the media, how they choose to cover certain stories and of how the coverage of these stories can become an end in themselves. Of how these choices are made not according to some arbitrary moral code, but on basest of base principles upon which the media operates these days; cost and time. Of how by pursuing such lamentable objectives they inculcate in their readers an unhealthily prurient interest in how the story unfolds. Often, and the trial in Rochdale illustrates this, at the expense of stories more redolent of their readers lives. In my year at school for example, there were three girls who now would be the subject of all manner inter-agency safeguarding protocols, initiatives or interventions but back then, were just left to fend for themselves 

In Rochdale, six men are currently on trial for multiple sexual offences, including rape. The victims are two young girls, one of them 12. Both, the trial was told, “Were very vulnerable children with deeply troubled home lives and were known to the authorities. Their school attendance was poor and they were often missing from home. These men preyed upon those vulnerabilities for their own perverted sexual gratification in the most humiliating and degrading way imaginable.” What is so depressing is just how familiar I’ve become with learning of similar tales involving similar victims and similar perpetrators using similar methods. 

Rape/torture gangs have been predominantly operating the North of England. At least 1,400 girls were abused in Rotherham and more than 1,000 children in Telford. The gangs were also active in Newcastle, Bristol, Derby, Oxford and Halifax. That’s what I mean by scale. The crimes involved so many perpetrators and in so many locations, that it beggars belief that rumours didn’t begin circulating in these locations, and that these rumours didn’t reach the press. My contention is that they did and for a variety of reasons to do with how the press now operates, these rumours were not properly investigated by by the local press resulting in them not getting the sort of national coverage that would have angered the public much sooner. 

Firstly, most of the local press in this country is syndicated, meaning that apart from the odd local story, most of its content is generated elsewhere. Sometimes starting life as a press release sent out to an agency like Pressat or prfire who will then forward it on to their many subscribers. Maybe the local paper is part of a much larger media behemoth, like Newsquest which is “one of the UK’s largest regional media groups with more than 250 news brands.” TOn top of that you have the advertisers, who if not similarly syndicated, will be acutely aware of local reputational damage  if associated with a controversial story. Think of the digital mob, how quickly social media can be weaponised and then think of the struggling retailer with wages to pay.

And as if there weren’t already enough plates spinning in the air to be getting on with, there is also the cost of employing journalists to fill the space that isn’t taken up by all those rehashed press releases, generic celebrity pish, advertorial and proper adverts. So the last thing an editor wants to be thinking about is expensive legal action arising out of a story which instinct, anonymous sources and highly placed whistleblowers have confirmed but for which the pockets are not deep enough.

So we get to learn all about Prince Charmless instead. Editors of the big nationals know they’re on very safe ground there. The royals don’t sue – really, does anyone think Harry is a proper royal? – and Charmless doesn’t have a reputation anymore, well not one worth defending anyway. They can go wild, find ever newer ways to keep people scrolling, posting and consuming. Who knew what and when? Was there a cover up and if so, who was involved? How damaging is it to the monarchy? Will he have to leave his tiny mansion? Where could, would he go? Would Lord Lucan be with him?

It’s all nonsense, a well-organised distraction, one that has claimed so far one dead American paedophile, his former girlfriend and now Charmless, who is as real to most people as Snow White. One that distracts us in much the same way that waving something shiny and noisy will distract a small child.  

So unfortunately and for may reasons, the rape/torture gang scandal wasn’t the ‘right’ sort of scandal.  For one thing, it hadn’t happened years ago and far away and even worse, It had happened here, very recently and possibly still is. To further compound matters, it was difficult, required the kind of actual investigative journalism our press no longer does and not just a rehash of information others had uncovered. Additionally, it questioned a foundational principle that underlines multiculturalism, namely that if assimilation had been achieved, and the British born Pakistani men who made up those gangs had been fully integrated, how could this evil have happened? 

For good measure, they might have asked why such evil flourished in different parts of the country, usually with the same victim/perpetrator profile and often with a similar modus operandi. They might also consider whether the fact that most of the towns where these gangs operated were run by Labour councils and that if this played any part in the abject lack of action. If a desire not to be seen as racist, to prioritise ‘community relations above all else, was only extended to one part of the community.  All of which demands perseverance in the face of official stonewalling, determination when confronted by blanket refusals to co-operate and the sort of fearless leadership needed when the lawyers get involved, qualities our press is not renowned for. Calls for questions to be answered are easier to ask if those answers will have negligible repercussions for those asking them and then only if there exists the will to ask them in the first place.

As far as I’m concerned, the press has demonstrated yet again how poorly they serve the public and how, as the saying has it, what interests the public isn’t always in the public interest. Why is the rape/torture gang scandal so rarely in the news. I don’t mean the political distraction engulfing it either, That too is safe ground for the press, its a known thing, a political row played out in the Westminster pantomime, headlines and tweets. Why hasn’t the inquiry happened? Why has no chairperson been appointed? Why are people so unwilling to take part in it? How committed to it is the government? What will blah blah fucking blah…

The press, normally so keen to foster identification with the victims of crime, the easier to keep the readers interested, has been curiously restrained in dealing the true horrors of the rape/torture gang scandal. Where are the tales of unimaginable degradations, of wrecked lives and ongoing trauma? Or is it easier to focusing on the suffering of children when those children are thousands of miles away? The real scandal is why some scandals become scandals whilst others do not.

Leave a comment
October 17, 2025

33:64 presents “Robert Bolt.”

If anyone had any doubts whatsoever that the outbreak of peace in Gaza was the ‘wrong’ kind of peace, the cover of the latest edition of ‘Time’ magazine allays them. Ostensibly, it is a photo of Tangoed captioned ‘His triumph’, recognising the most remarkable diplomatic achievement of this century, in bringing an end to the fighting in Gaza. However, out of all the photos of him that they have, they chose one of the most unflattering. No-one looks at their best when photographed from underneath, certainly not an older man, so much so that when I initially saw it, I wasn’t even sure it was even him.

There can be no question that this was an editorial choice made at a very senior level. The cover had to be repeatedly approved and passed up the chain before the magazine was even published. But management at ‘Time’ might have calculated that their readers would have correctly interpreted the cover for the back-handed compliment it was. ‘Yes’, the cover says, ‘ we acknowledge that the fighting has stopped and whilst we are overjoyed at that, did it have to be you that made it happen? 

And that, fundamentally, is the main reason why it is the ‘wrong’ kind of peace. It affects people’s business. Because if, for the last two years, lots of people had business’s that depended on the upon the war in Gaza continuing. The longer it did, the more profitable the profitable denunciation could occur, the more outrage, the more fulmination, the type of profit they were making being directly related to whom their it was that business was focused. But no matter what it was, that business has come crashing down around them. At the front of the gravy train there are the heads of governments, intergovernmental organisations and global media conglomerates. In second and third class are the NGO’s, the charities and the various domestic political opposition parties, all the way down the to those at the other end, the student protesters, the march organisers, the keyboard warriors, all of them fucked, and not in a good way. 

American politics is a prime example of what I mean by it being bad for business. If you were a Democrat politician who had constantly decried Trump as someone who was the very embodiment of Hitler, as being a very real threat to democracy itself and essentially Satan in a bad wig, then this peace deal is absolutely the worst possible news. If your whole shtick had been to make a name for yourself by castigating Israel for anything and everything, being an apologist for Hamas and suggesting that Tangoes cosying up to Notonyournelly had made the prospects for peace even more remote, then you were fucked. The profit that your business depended on, which was turning media appearances, penning opinion pieces for old and new media, visibly grandstanding at protests,  and then turning all that into votes, gone. In an instant.

The same is true for our domestic politicians. They also have the difficult task of welcoming the cessation of war whilst not wanting to acknowledge the fact of who made it possible. This is further compounded by the fact that the Americans have been explicit in critiquing the UK’s recognition of Palestine as a state as making the deal more difficult than it needed. Which in itself was a very  deliberate act of diplomatic point-scoring, a chastisement of various government leaders, highlighting exactly how much their chasing of domestic electoral success had acted against the very aims they professed to want.

The media who now find themselves in a situation entirely of their own making. When he was running for President the first time around, the media first portrayed him as a joke candidate until he emerged as a corrective to the more ‘professional’ politician they were used to. When he won, in part by appealing to those who had felt ignored by the old political order, they were appalled. In the UK it was worse, given how irrelevant we are within the American political system. However if one read most of the UK’s broadsheets, visited news websites – like The Huffington Post – or subscribed to online news organisations – like Novara Media – one would be forgiven for thinking that we were integral to its smooth operation.

Because, in a weird way, it was. Tangoed is good copy. He is news, and the business of news is to attract readers, or eyeballs and keep those eyeballs or readers doing so long enough so they can sell them to advertisers. That’s why he’s has been rarely out of news for over ten years now. The media knows this, knows that its in an ever more competitive world and ‘The Guardian’ is the most blatant example of this inevitable reality. It printed at least one negative story about him seemingly every day for years, some about the war, some not and endless opinion pieces all having the same opinion The more they printed, the more money their readers gave them. It was like a weird version of payola. 

The’ll have to some proper news now, focus on events much closer to home, do the hard years that actual journalism requires and just reinforce what their readers have been duped into believing. This is equally true for our own shyster politicians, opportunistic rabble rousers and the rabbles they rouse. How can they call for a ceasefire when there is one? How can they pretend to want peace, yet when the very peace they were calling for and which they endlessly claimed was so elusive actually happens, what now for them? What of their profit, which amounted to little more  than increased visibility, name recognition and enhanced reputational  kudos now?  

Its funny that Tangoed once wrote a book called ‘The Art of the Deal’ because with this deal, which they assured us could never happen, he’s managed to call all of their bluffs.        

Leave a comment
May 23, 2025

34:63 presents “Mr. Kobayashi.”

All of the chatter last week about the assisted dying bill was concerned with MP’s voting for an amendment to give health workers an ‘opt out’, and a slew of measures that had been added ostensibly as ‘safeguarding’ vulnerable persons, to protect them from coercion. 

Because of this, one might be forgiven for thinking that this was a fine example of MP’s putting ‘country before party’ and voting on principle, that the grubby business of party politics had been temporarily suspended in pursuit of some notion of a  higher moral obligation. 

You’d be wrong though.  

To understand why, first of all you need to question who exactly it is those MP’s were so keen to safeguard and then to ask yourself who are the vulnerable people at risk from coercion? It is never fully explained what safeguarding is, or what a vulnerable person is, is it? Not really. ‘Safeguarding’ and ‘vulnerable people’ have, in regard to having any meaning within the whole assisted dying debate are as meaningful as calling a trans-woman a woman.

Where is any there notion of safeguarding the public purse in all this, of putting economic probity first, of safeguarding all the other public services that would face ever more drastic cuts to help pay for an increasingly ageing population? According to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), whereas today 18% of the population is over the age of 65, by 2065 they predict it will be 26%. It gets worse because whilst 26% of people will be over 65, an additional 15% of them will be under 16. Thats nearly half of all the UK’s population not paying tax, but still expecting the state to provide for them. Granted, eventually the young might become taxpayers, but by then quite a lot of them them will be working in the kind of low-wage job that requires government bailouts – working tax credits, housing benefit and the like – to avoid even more government help.

It’s all a vicious circle, and part of the blame lies with the NHS. Yes the NHS, so beloved by, well everyone, being as it is an institution that occupies such a unique place in our collective psyche that a segment extolling it was included in the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. Because all of its various health initiatives – to help people to stop smoking, improved detection leading to better survival rates for heart disease, cancers and other previously life ending conditions for example – have been too successful. 

So successful in fact, that of the 26% of the population that will be aged over 65 by 2065, the that the Office for National Statistics estimates that by 2045 there will be 3.1 million of them or 4.3% of the population will be older than 85. So to my way of thinking, anyone over the age of 85 who is claiming a state pension is guilty of benefit fraud. It may well be through no fault of their own, but they’re still claiming a benefit to which they’re not entitled.

To misquote Mr Kobayashi in ‘The Usual Suspects’, the fact that they were unaware that they were committing fraud is no excuse.  When the current crop of pensioners – those over 80 I’m talking about here – were adults of working age and paid tax, successive governments had a realistic expectation that their time as a pensioner might last for maybe 15 years or so. Wasn’t that the deal with state pensions, that when they were of working age, the they tax paid then paid for pensioners pensions then?

The pension bill is only going to increase, whilst at the same time the umber of people paying that bill is decreasing. It is a state of affairs that is as unaffordable as it is unconscionable. Adult social care alone cost £26.9 billion in 2021/22, up 3.8% from 2020/21 and according to the OBR, pensions will account for 42% of the welfare budget this year, that’s £124 billion, the largest single expenditure – more than we spend on defence, transport and education combined. And those numbers are only going to get bigger.

Thats why the Assisted Dying Bill is hopefully a much needed first step towards state sponsored euthanasia. And just because people find something distasteful to even to contemplate, doesn’t make any the less urgent. If anything, the fact that people do find the subject of euthanasia, or assisted dying a topic they’d much rather avoid altogether is precisely the reason why it has become so urgent.

The government could offer pensioners upon retirement a deal, a lump sum equal to the value of their pension for 15 years – that’s the state sponsored bit – in return for a guaranteed undertaking for voluntary euthanasia on their part. 15 years seems about enough time for people to pit all their affairs in order, take all the holidays they’d never had and generally depart with dignity. Of course, when the 15 years had elapsed they could renege on their part of the deal, of corse they could, but that would mean an immediate termination of any governmental – local or central – responsibility for them. 

And of course the financial benefits to society would be worth it. In addition to the savings garnered from a reduced welfare budget, the savings to the NHS, and local authorities, if people knew what the deal was, then the money invested in private pensions – estimated to be £112 billion in 2021 by the Institute for Fiscal Studies – quite a bit of that might be ploughed back into the economy. It would also help the NHS. There’d also be a societal benefit. In the housing sector, as more stock became available, house prices and rents would fall. Employment too. There’d be a huge swathe of jobs that were no longer needed, thereby creating new employment opportunities

We urgently need our politicians to do the leading part of leadership, as opposed to them being constantly fixated on what the media or the public think and constantly aware of their ow career. Of course MP’s have a idea of themselves as being all kinds of wonderful to everyone – after all being an MP means they have to take part in a popularity contest every five years – but unfortunately for them, economic reality makes their ideals unaffordable. Its those ideals that are actually coercing millions into hardship, creating the vulnerable they seem so concerned with protecting and plunging the country state ever closer to civil unrest. Generational inequality is not something that can be ignored for much longer.

Tough choices should mean exactly that, because otherwise they’ll only get tougher.

Leave a comment
May 20, 2025

34:63 presents “Judas Iscariot.”

Much as it pains me to write this, I suspect that Farrago might be only honest politician in Britain. This bold assertion comes with add a few important caveats. The foremost one of these is that the usual standard of honesty as most people understand it, does’t seem to apply to to the world of politics. Boris’s Johnson’s entire political career bears this out. As his former Home Secretary Amber Rudd once put it “Boris well he’s the life and soul of the party, but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.”

But at least Boris tried to implement the will of the British people  after they voted for Brexit. This was despite the entire cultural and media elite being fervently opposed any expression of democracy that didn’t advance their interests, the judicial and parliamentary attempts to thwart it, and the relentless besmirching of those who’d dared to do make the elites nightmare a reality. The deal he got wasn’t perhaps the best deal he could’ve got, but it wasn’t as if the EU were minded to offer him one. They wanted to signal to other EU member states – the ones who had a high degree of Euro-scepticism among their electorate and were closely looking at how Britain fared – France, Italy  Austria, and The Netherlands – exactly how steep the price for leaving would be.

Fast forward two elections and five PM’s to yesterday and Plonkers so called ‘reset’ deal  with the EU. I’m not going to discuss it in any great detail and not just because I’m holiday as I write this, looking out at the sea and luxuriating in the good weather, but more importantly because it was’t a surprise, him never exactly being a massive supporter of Brexit.

After all, he campaigned for a second referendum, happy to ignore the democratic wishes of the majority of UK citizens when it suited him and his increasingly metropolitan outlook. By that I mean an outlook that wasn’t predicated upon prioritising the needs of the many, but instead the minority of people unhappy about the whole Brexit enterprise, people who thought of themselves as Europeans and not British.The ‘Youth Mobility Scheme’ bit of the deal amply demonstrates this.

Ostensibly a scheme to allow UK youth to work and study in Europe, in reality it serves as an encapsulation of his betrayal  of Brexit. Firstly, it is because only those children that have not just the necessary skills and qualifications needed to make that even a possibility, but also parents rich enough to make that possibility a reality. Parents who not only have encouraged their children learn a European language, but have inculcated in them a sense that this is but the restoration of an entitlement. So not the kind of parents who work in care homes, as mechanics or teaching assistants. 

Secondly, we have a population of around 60 millions, as compared to Europes total of nearer 450 millions. Can anyone see the problem here? In Britain we have a welfare system, one that’s struggling cope as it is, without even more demands placed upon it from EU citizens with a legal rights to it.

All this at a time when net migration is at historic highs, when the public is palpably crying out for control, when Reform UK gave Plonker fair warning as to the levels of discontent brewing in the country at the recent mayoral and council elections and he responded by seeming to take heed of their concerns, when in reality all he has done is make it worse. 

Thats why, much as I am am loathe to, I think that Farrago might be the most honest politician in Britain today. Don’t be thinking I’m in any way a fan of Farrago. I think he’s nothing more than a snake oil salesman, all smarm and the kind of bluster that most people mistake as plain speaking. But if you were to ask any British voter at anytime within the last 15 years or so what two things sprang to mind when they thought of him, those two things would be the EU and immigration (although to be fair, that’s because they were the only things he ever seemed to talk about.) So he hasn’t shifted so much as the electorate have moved closer to him, in part because the other political parties have have moved further away from them. 

So with that in mind, I’m going to rename Plonker ‘Stymied’ because that’s what he’s done to Brexit and as always, when I write about Brexit, I feel the need that to point out that I voted to remain

Leave a comment
May 3, 2025

34:63 presents “Asterix”

I must confess to feeling slightly disappointed upon waking this morning to discover that the sky hadn’t fallen in. Because yesterday, the media were full of either grim pronouncements or jubilant celebrations about exactly what Reforms UK’s performance in Thursdays elections meant for the future of British politics.

Brexit, as it is for most things nowadays, was involved, being the catalyst that lay behind this wholly predictable, and indeed, widely predicted drubbing. Indeed, in all the coverage I’ve read, what is striking is just how much opinions are shaped by Brexit. In a tangential yet unremarked way, Brexit was but a symptom of a greater, more fundamental problem confronting democracy, not just in the UK, but elsewhere. One that moreover, has the capacity to fatally undermine it by using its own inherent flaws to achieve this, voter turnout, or more accurately, voter absence.

In all of the mayoral elections contested on Thursday, not one of them had a voter turnout of more than 34% and neither of the ones that elected Reform UK mayors managed even 30%. Why no media attention is being given to this problem is beyond me, especially as a little over a year ago the dangers were revealed to exist. 

Remember George Galloway’s campaign in the Rochdale by-election last year? Where he made it clear from the outset that he was targeting the Muslim community in Rochdale – 30% of its population – and instead of focusing on local or even national issues, but rather on Israel/Gaza? It was an act of effectively strategic masterstroke, resulting him getting 40% of all the votes cast, which sounds impressive, until you realise only 39.7% of voters actually bothered to. And then suddenly that 40% seems even less impressive, especially when you realise that that once impressive 40% translates into 12,335 actual votes.

This trick – targeting a specific community and focusing on an issue not directly related to their daily lives – was repeated a few months later at the 2024 general election. Whilst George Galloway wasn’t re-elected, five candidates were, all pandering to concerns of a minority but crucially, a minority who turned out to vote. Together with Jeremy Corblimey, they formed the Independent  Alliance and their ranks could easily have been increased to nine, because three candidates,  standing on a similar platform were narrowly defeated.

It isn’t that surprising that Labour is so quiet on this issue – low voter turnout – because it suited them very well at the 2024 general election. Despite the fact there was a load of guff in some of the media about how constituency boundary changes and the need for voter I.D would work against Labour, like so much political speculation, that didn’t happen. Voter turnout  was about 60%, and despite Labour getting a lower share of that, 34%, somehow they got 412 seats or 63% of them. 

Some awfully clever people have worked out that the you take into account the number that did vote for them, the number that didn’t and the number of people who could have voted but chose not to, combine all of that and only 20% of the UK electorate did so. Of course the media are predicting all manner of things, because that’s what the media do. Political forecasting is as good at predicting the future as reading tea-leaves, checking ones horoscope or listening to a clairvoyant.

Its much easier than them questioning why this keeps happening, why political parties have consistently failed to engage with voters the way seem all to happy to do with lobbyists. And by not doing this, they’re not only perpetuating the problem, they’re failing to do their job. Nearly as much as the politicians.

Leave a comment
May 2, 2025

34:63 presents “Mari Wilson.”

As with all things, the devil is in the detail, and there is a lot of detail for Farrago to dwell on, following the overnight constituency, local council and mayoral elections. It is now Friday afternoon and more grim tidings are expected to be heading Plonkers way. But the results are just as troubling for Farrago, albeit in a different way, one replete with potentially longer term damage. 

First of all, a quick shufti at the actual results. The Reform UK candidate, Sarah Poitin, won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes, overturning a majority that rights, shouldn’t have been vulnerable. However, as stunning – and widely predicted –  as her victory undoubtedly was, she only got 38.7% of the votes cast and only 42.6% of the voters actually bothered to vote. And even that was lower than the turnout less than a year ago. at the general election.It’s not like there hadn’t been any publicity, media interest and speculation about it or anything.

Which means a few things, none of them good for her glittering parliamentary career, which may or may not happen or for Reform UK’s positioning of itself as a viable electoral proposition. Firstly, with a majority that is the very definition of ‘by the skin of their teeth’, and with such a low turnout to boot,  a better result for her would’ve been to have lost by six instead. Because you can bet that the local Labour Party will scrutinise her parliamentary attendance record, forensically examine her expenses claims, flood her constituency surgery with labyrinthine constituent problems, all designed to portray her as bad MP at the next election. They’ll also be all over her social media content – especially in her youthful postings – for any damaging content, and trying to unearth anything in her past that might be used against her. So basically what every political party handed such opportunity would do.

The situation in Greater Lincolnshire, where Dame Angela Jenkins became Reform UK’s first mayor, is if anything, potentially even worse. Yes, she’s a former Conservative MP so she knows how the game is played and yes, as mayor of newly formed super council, essentially overseeing three smaller councils each represented two senior councillors each, – given as how all of whom are Conservative,- this in theory doesn’t pose as much of a problem as if they were Labour.  I didn’t know this, but prior to last night, over 65% of Reform UK’s local councillors were defectors from the Conservatives. But be that as it may, Ange got her gold chain with a vote share of 42.2% – good -, a majority of nearly 40,000 – double good -, on a voter turnout of, er, 29.9%.  

So her election has succeeded in highlighting the flaws in our voting system and nothing else. As the mayor of a new super council, she needs the support of six others to ratify any policies she wants to introduce. They in turn are at the mercy of local officials, in town halls and council departments to make those policies real. And successful implementation of her policies will, even if they succeed in permeating down through the layers in bureaucracy, rely on council staff and contractors, who might be instinctively opposed to Reform UK. They won’t want her mayoralty to become a shining example of good governance should Farrago enter No.10.

And this is why the greater the electoral success that Reform UK has, the greater the threat to Reform UK has of suffering irreperable reputational damage. It can only present themselves as the change Britain needs for so long. At some point, they’ll have to deliver that change, and whilst bemoaning the structural unfairness of the first-past-the-post voting system chimes with people who care about such things, if potholes are left unrepaired, schools face staff shortages, or social care is pared back even further,  nobody will much care.

They won’t care that central government has cut the councils budget, but they will care the their council tax bill goes up or that they have to buy a residents parking permit. They won’t care that the council is barely meeting its statutory obligations but they will care when those statuary obligations are perceived to be applied discriminatorily. They won’t care when council run things that they never use are closed, but they will care when things that they do use close. Then they’ll care, then they’ll care a lot. 

And it won’t just be Farrago regretting getting the thing he always wanted.

Leave a comment
April 30, 2025

34:63 presents “The Corporal Jones guide to politics.”

In recent days there has been a lot of speculation in the press concerning what exactly Plonker will do in order to nullify the threat of a Reform UK rout of Labour at the upcoming local elections tomorrow.  They have pretty much conceded the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, which voting also place tomorrow, which on paper they should win, given as how the former MP Mike Amesbury won it with a majority of nearly 15,000 at the General Election barely a year ago. 

But then having a by-election forced upon you because the sitting MP had to resign after recieving a 10-week suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to punching a constituent last year, is not a good look. But neither is it a good look for a politician to carefully finesse his public image so that him saying little about actual policy in the general election campaign – so that everyone can fill in their own hopes onto him – works only so far. Which in his case, turned out – to no-ones surprise – to be until he was elected and soon thereafter revealed himself to be as slippery as most other politicians.  

Anything less than a resounding victory for Labour- an increased majority, an increased voter turnout from the general election and the other parties being thoroughly rejected by the electorate – will be a defeat. It remains to be see if its a crushing one or not. The local elections pose more of a threat, because most people will vote based on how competent or not they judge central government to be. Sad but true. Its politics. Just like when in February Local Government Secretary Angela Ratner announced that local elections in East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey would be delayed for one year to allow major reorganisations to take place. It may well be true, maybe there’s a compelling rationale behind her decision. But in order to prevent the taint of political chicanery being levelled and gaining traction, making the announcement less than three months before they’re happening, again, isn’t a good look.

But this government seems to be constantly bedevilled by events, responding to them, and being in constant firefighting mode, rather than shaping them and exuding calm. The postponement of the aforementioned is but one example of this. Another is sudden flurry of headlines this week suggesting that Plonker will take a stronger line on immigration in order to try and mitigate the threat from Reform UK.  Its not because of something as old fashioned as its the right thing to do and that doing such – reducing the numbers of people being granted asylum – might have a beneficial effect on already overstretched public services. That Plonker seems unwilling to grasp this obvious political calculation is one reason why Reform UK is polling so well and why all Plonker has are desperate last minute throws of the dice. His default position on immigration is to label anyone who thinks that immigration needs tougher action as racist or bigoted or far right extremists, effectively attempting to shut down any sensible discussion on this topic.

But as Reforms growing threat, and Labours craven reaction to it amply demonstrate, while such a strategy might work in posh metropolitan circles, out in the wild, out where most of the electorate live, out where the very real consequences of immigration are being felt, that strategy isn’t working. 

Don’t be thinking I’m in any way a fan of Farrago. I think he’s nothing more than a snake oil salesman, all smarm and the kind of bluster that most people mistake as plain speaking. Like a lot of people flirting with Reform UK, its only because of the lack of any other viable political alternative And like a lot of people who are considering voting Reform UK, my values and principles, my fundamental conception of what the state should do – and what it shouldn’t – and what obligations the state owed to the citizen – and vice-versa – haven’t really changed. Its the political parties who have changed out of all recognition. 

Despite the many horrors that the Grocers Daughter visited on the UK, she at least had ideological underpinnings to them. There was a logic, twisted and serving the interests of a minority, yes, but a logic.  The most socialist thing about Plonker is his first name, and the only thing he stands for is a piss.

Leave a comment
November 30, 2024

34:63 presents “Simplifying parliamentary procedure using ‘Life of Brian'”

The juvenile in me can’t resist stating the obvious that House of Commons, in having voted to progress the assisted dying bill onto its next parliamentary stage really put the black into Black Friday. You know, because black is the colour most people associate with death, wear when mourning and at funerals. No other reason. I just felt the need to point that out, because of times we live in. I’m not sure what’s worse; either feeling that you have to explain it in case deliberately people misconstrue it for reasons of their own, or going ahead and doing it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, the theme of this post isn’t to discuss the merits or otherwise of yesterdays vote, as long overdue as the outcome was welcome was. Its to make the rather obvious point that rather than showing parliament at its best, which seems to the prevailing opinion, pronounced upon by MP’s themselves and slavishly reported on and amplified by the media, it showed it at its worst, and as MP’s as the self-aggrandising blowhards I’ve always suspected most of them are.

Consider this. Yesterday the chamber was packed. There was barely enough standing room. The debate lasted hours. MP’s on both sides of the argument made impassioned, intelligent speeches. Lots of them admitted they had changed their minds after speaking to their constituents. Some even shared those stories. The mood was of calm solemnity, befitting the occasion. 

Now try and think back of the last time you can think of that happening. Difficult isn’t it? Those seemingly never ending Brexit votes don’t count. They were to calm and reason what death is to life. No, its only when a decision to go to war is being debated that the chamber is like it was yesterday. The one that sticks out in my mind was the debate on the eve of the Iraq war and that was in 2003!  Possibly there been a few more since, but only a handful, and a newborn baby’s hand at that.

Normally the chamber is hardly ever close to being full. Only for Prime Ministers Questions (PMQ’s) is it full and that’s only because MP’s hope that they’ll get the chance to ask the Prime Minister a question, which’ll hopefully get them on national or regional TV news and remind their constituents who they are. They can then put a clip of it on their website. PMQ’s lasts for half an hour once a week and as soon as it’s over MP’s vanish as fast as a virgin on prom night. So far from yesterdays debate showing Parliament at its best, it in fact showed what it could be, but very rarely is, the exception that proves the rule..

That’s my first problem with all this. The second concerns what happens next. Because if you only based your conclusions on TV news footage from outside Parliament as the result of the vote filtered out, you’d be forgiven for thinking that by the end of next week there’d be disabled people in wheelchairs screaming as they were being propelled by unscrupulous relatives to death centres and it would all be perfectly legal. 

The problem with a properly functioning democracy is one of its inherent flaws; that unless the electorate knows how it functions – at least have a have a basic understanding of how it all works – it isn’t a properly functioning one. Not in my book anyway.

Whilst the bill passed the second reading in Parliament yesterday, there are still loads more stages for it to go through if it is ever to become law. Many MP’s appeared on TV stressing their unease about the bill as it is currently drafted, but were at pains to point out that they’d only voted for it to progress through its many Parliamentary stages precisely because they wanted the time to scrutinise it, to suggest amendments and have more debates. The haggle scene in ‘Life Of Brian’ is the clearest example of what all this means in practice; the earliest it’ll become a law that people can make use of is early 2026 at best.

And having a right to do something doesn’t mean you’ll actually ever do it, but that if you wanted to, you could. As far as I’m concerned, the sort of people who are wilfully misinterpreting what happened yesterday in parliament are not too dissimilar to anyone who detects an ‘ist’ at the start of this post. 

Leave a comment
March 31, 2024

Mark Twain meets James Naughtie

There are many things governments are noted for, but having a whimsical, almost mischievous sense of humour isn’t one of them. So ii is all the more gratifying to see both of the governments England and Scotland impressively rising to the challenge set by no-one and and introduce into law on the same day – today,  April Fools Day – two vastly different, legislative pranks of the very highest order. 

In Scotland, today sees the introduction of their new Hate Crime Bill, which is to is going to be the subject on another post but and manages to be both arbitrary  to arbitrary and prescriptive at the same time. Whereas in England, we have the implementation of an increase to the National Minimum Wage (NMW), which might seem to be a good thing, but actually isn’t. 

because From today, the NMW will increase by 9.8% in cash terms and 7.8% above inflation. Sounds great doesn’t it, until one realises that a percentage increase by a small amount of an already small amount isn’t going to make that small amount substantially larger. So that impressive sounding 9.8% means that the NMW will actually increase from £10.42 an hour to £11.44, to the rather less impressively sounding £1.02 an hour. (And because the NMW is age dependant, that only applies if one is 21 or over. More on that in another blog.)

Its hard to imagine it seeming even less impressive than that, but since the NMW was introduced in 1999, “it has driven up the pay of millions of Britain’s lowest earners by £6,000 a year, making it the single most successful economic policy in a generation”, according to a someone at a think tank who will never have to set foot inside a food bank. 25 years multiplied by 52 weeks equals 1300 and if we divide that by £6000, we get the princely sum of just over £4.61 a week.

Its not like the cost of living has gone up much since 1999, is it?

I was thinking about on this when I thought of Chancer and of him proving that foot and mouth disease can be passed to humans, with his assertion that £100,000 a year salary didn’t ‘go that far’. I suppose if you live in a world in which the company you co-founded sold for £30m in 2017, and despite you quitting it in 2009, the 48% stake in it netted you over £14m, then £100,000 a year isn’t that big a deal. He has to scape by on his MPs salary of only £84,144.

If someone thinks that this is somehow ‘the single most effective economic policy in a generation’, then that someone needs to urgently contact the Nigerian prince who a few years ago was always pestering me to give him my bank account details so he could get his fortune out of the country.

That same so called think tank pointed out that that its analysis of the UK showed that between 1980 and 1998, hourly pay growth in the UK was twice as fast for the highest earners as it was for the lowest earners – 3.1% versus 1.4% a year. They only pointed this out however, so could make the claim “that since 1999 this trend has reversed, and hourly pay inequality has fallen with pay growth for the lowest earners five times that seen by the highest earners – 1.6% versus 0.3 per cent per year.” But as I’ve pointed out, whilst the numbers may well be factually accurate, their practically meaningless, as a small percentage increase on a very large sum will have a greater overall effect on the total than the same percentage increase on a much smaller sum. 

All of which left me thinking that the increase to the NMW, is in fact a coded message to both the poor and the business sector. To the poor, that the government has to go through the motions of pretending to care, but really all it does is take the piss. To business it reaffirms the governments ongoing commitment to facilitate payment of the NMW, by means of such corporate welfare instruments as Working Family Tax Credits (WFTC).  In plain English, WTC effectively guarantees that the government will top up the wages of the lower paid if they meet certain criteria, which employers are only too aware of and will ensure their workers meet them.

I had this one job and it paid me 50p an hour. But I was only 15, did it after school and on Saturdays and because I knew I was being ripped off, so whenever I was on the till I topped up my hourly rate to something more agreeable. But that shop isn’t the government and a government use its taxpayers money on something that will improve its citizens lives in a more practical way than saving a few minutes off a train journey from London to Birmingham.

Leave a comment