UK Politics: The Tory leadership (disg)race to the bottom and beyond - not worth a Penny.

[James Arryn]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I don't mean to ruin my weekends but when is someone going to organise some serious protests/riots?

Why do you want Great Britain’s Greatness to be marginalized by Brussels?

[A wilding]

Another random first world rant.

A rich elderly driver who should have given up driving kills a baby and gets away with it:

Driver cleared over Waterbeach pram death

This is a real trigger subject for me. I now have direct experience of four elderly people who tried to keep on driving when they were manifestly no longer safe doing so. Fortunately all these were resolved without any innocent person being hurt, though in was a close run thing in at least one case. One of these people positively glorified in how many minor incidents they had had. Another is still angry about being made to stop and still needs watching (recently we found a letter to them from the DVLA "thank you for your application for a new driving licence. However we note that you did not mention your notifiable medical condition on the application ...").

It is a point that living in a nice house in an affluent village is very restricted without wheels, but they are the generation that created a country where rural public transport is totally inadequate, so my sympathy is muted. And there was nothing to stop them moving somewhere more convenient.

And of course these people all vote and mostly vote Tory, so there is zero political will to do anything about this. Relatives, police and doctors are often reduced to just begging someone to stop driving, often to no effect.

 

[Heartofice]

31 minutes ago, A wilding said:

Another random first world rant.

A rich elderly driver who should have given up driving kills a baby and gets away with it:

Driver cleared over Waterbeach pram death

This is a real trigger subject for me. I now have direct experience of four elderly people who tried to keep on driving when they were manifestly no longer safe doing so. Fortunately all these were resolved without any innocent person being hurt, though in was a close run thing in at least one case. One of these people positively glorified in how many minor incidents they had had. Another is still angry about being made to stop and still needs watching (recently we found a letter to them from the DVLA "thank you for your application for a new driving licence. However we note that you did not mention your notifiable medical condition on the application ...").

It is a point that living in a nice house in an affluent village is very restricted without wheels, but they are the generation that created a country where rural public transport is totally inadequate, so my sympathy is muted. And there was nothing to stop them moving somewhere more convenient.

And of course these people all vote and mostly vote Tory, so there is zero political will to do anything about this. Relatives, police and doctors are often reduced to just begging someone to stop driving, often to no effect.

 

Yes I totally know this feeling, I have an elderly relative who has some degenerative issues, who insists they are fine to drive, doctors have even said it's ok which is baffling. I understand how not being able to drive is a real loss of freedom, and makes it hard to ever go anywhere for some people, and old people get stubborn, but it really angers me.

I also saw this story and it really upset me

[Derfel Cadarn]

37 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Yes I totally know this feeling, I have an elderly relative who has some degenerative issues, who insists they are fine to drive, doctors have even said it's ok which is baffling. I understand how not being able to drive is a real loss of freedom, and makes it hard to ever go anywhere for some people, and old people get stubborn, but it really angers me.

I also saw this story and it really upset me

The Glasgow bin lorry crash of December 2014 was because the bin lorry driver failed to disclose previous fainting episodes while driving (including while driving a bus). 6ndead, 15 injured.

When it came out he had failed the mandatory requirement to report his previous blackouts when renewing his hgv licence, he became one of the most hated men in Scoand for a time. Lot of criticism that the courts never prosecuted him

[A wilding]

32 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

doctors have even said it's ok which is baffling

I think that doctors need real courage to tell a patient they can no longer drive. They have to face the patient's likely denial and wrath, and to work through some time consuming official procedures as well. Plus there are legitimate issues of patient confidentiality.

Small wonder that most of them just give advice to give up, even though the patient then often wilfully misinterprets or ignores this advice and goes on driving anyway. I am morally certain that in one of my cases the doctor did advise giving up, but the person concerned then lied to us (and possibly themselves) about what the doctor had said.

[A wilding]

2 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Lot of criticism that the courts never prosecuted him

If you dig into the case I linked, you see that the police needed a lot of persuasion to prosecute and probably only did so in the end because of heavy pressure from the parents of the dead baby.

A question of resources and priorities I suppose.

[Which Tyler]

JRM, principal proponent of Cancel culture
https://archive.ph/FFMK4
 

Quote

UK civil servants have been ordered to trawl through the social media accounts of guest speakers at one government ministry, including going back up to five years to see if they have ever criticised government policy, as part of a new vetting process.
The new Cabinet Office rules cover the vetting of outsiders coming into the department to take part in “learning and development” events and urge managers to carefully check the backgrounds of such guests.
...
article continues

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

The Crown Office has graciously decided to drop the prosecution of several women who attended the Sarah Everard vigil

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62539973

[Raja]

3 hours ago, A wilding said:

I think that doctors need real courage to tell a patient they can no longer drive.

There are formal DVLA guidelines regarding this, so it's not really a free for all in that it's up to us to tell if someone can drive or not. It is freely available to look at here and driving advice is generally based on this. Some cases involve contacting the DVLA directly, but a lot do not, but like you said, we can tell people they shouldn't but then it's up to them if they decide to follow it.

[dog-days]

1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

JRM, principal proponent of Cancel culture
https://archive.ph/FFMK4
 

 

Every time I think the government and JRM can't sink any lower...

Another quote from the article:

Quote

“There have been far too many examples recently where essentially extremist speakers have been invited to speak to civil servants and staff networks,” said a colleague of Rees-Mogg.

Who are these "essentially extremist" speakers? LGBTQ advocates? Progressive academics? Anyone that thinks JRM is a human impersonation bot with the personality dial stuck eternally on the setting for a Brideshead-Revisited-themed murder mystery party? 

[The Anti-Targ]

On 8/13/2022 at 10:15 PM, Spockydog said:

She's probably talking about valid criticism of the state of Israel's appalling, criminal treatment of the Palestinian people.

 

Surely any woke civil service culture that strays into antisemitism should have been well and truly expunged by now, given the clearly proactive anti-antisemitistic Tories have been in control of the civil service for over a decade now.

[Spockydog]

Impossible to argue against any of this, unless you're a useless Tory apologist with your head stuffed up your arse. Or Keir Starmer.

 

 

 

[Poobah]

Why the fuck is Labour's plan to spend £29b paying off the energy companies and their shareholders, simply kicking the problem down the road at enormous national expense, instead of nationalising these bastards? 

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Why the fuck is Labour's plan to spend £29b paying off the energy companies and their shareholders, simply kicking the problem down the road at enormous national expense, instead of nationalising these bastards? 

What would that achieve? We nationalise them, we prevent them selling at a high price during a global energy crisis caused by global events, then when energy prices fall back to more normal levels we cap the consumer price again and those same companies can barely turn a profit, and so the taxpayer is subsidising those companies. It doesn't really make any sense. 

Centrica just made a huge profit this year and people are going nuts about it, but they've also been losing money hand over fist these last few years due to the price cap. They've made some monstrous moves to cut costs, renegotiating engineers contracts at lower wages, laying off huge numbers, slicing off whole portions of their business. You want the government to buy that because one year in the last decade they actually made money? 

[Spockydog]

46 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Centrica just made a huge profit this year and people are going nuts about it, but they've also been losing money hand over fist these last few years due to the price cap.

Forget about Centrica. Let's have a look at BP. Let's have a look at how hard their struggles have been over the past five years.

2017 - £6.2bn profit
2018 - £9.4bn profit
2019 - £3.5bn profit
2020 -£2.3bn profit
2021 - £6.2bn profit 

I mean, Christ knows how they coped in 2020, only making £2.3bn in profit. Ooooooh, woe is BP. Will nobody think of their director's' children?

Incidentally, BP used to be known as British Petroleum, before Thatcher privatized it. Now, British people will be dying next winter in order to protect their profits. And the Tories will just stand back and let it happen, because they're up to their tits in oil money.

This. This right here is Thatcher's Britain. The decisions taken by that witch have wrought untold damage on our nation. But it's only now we are starting to feel the full effect of what she did. And it's only going to get worse.

Great Britain? GTFOH.

[Which Tyler]

Say it isn't so

 

[Spockydog]

1 minute ago, Which Tyler said:

Say it isn't so
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1558770724793368576

ZOMG MIND BLOWN

[Spockydog]

56 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Why the fuck is Labour's plan to spend £29b paying off the energy companies and their shareholders, simply kicking the problem down the road at enormous national expense, instead of nationalising these bastards? 

Because Keir Starmer.

[Derfel Cadarn]

11 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Say it isn't so

 

Gasp! That canny political operator Liz Truss has seen through Sinn Fein’s grand deception. Who’d have thought that all this time, they were planning to unify Ireland? They’ve hidden it so well.
 

Tomorrow’s revelation: Nicola Sturgeon’s secret plan to remove Scotland from the UK …?

[Heartofice]

21 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Forget about Centrica. Let's have a look at BP. Let's have a look at how hard their struggles have been over the past five years.

2017 - £6.2bn profit
2018 - £9.4bn profit
2019 - £3.5bn profit
2020 -£2.3bn profit
2021 - £6.2bn profit 

I mean, Christ knows how they coped in 2020, only making £2.3bn in profit. Ooooooh, woe is BP. Will nobody think of their director's' children?

Incidentally, BP used to be known as British Petroleum, before Thatcher privatized it. Now, British people will be dying next winter in order to protect their profits. And the Tories will just stand back and let it happen, because they're up to their tits in oil money.

This. This right here is Thatcher's Britain. The decisions taken by that witch have wrought untold damage on our nation. But it's only now we are starting to feel the full effect of what she did. And it's only going to get worse.

Great Britain? GTFOH.

Ok well lets look at some other companies then. Since 2021 31 energy suppliers have gone out of business due to energy price increases not being able to be passed on to customers due to the price cap. 31!! The number is even more staggering if you go back to 2016.

https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/energy/failed-uk-energy-suppliers-update/

 

Quote

ince the beginning of 2021, 31 energy companies have ceased trading due to soaring wholesale gas prices, leaving over two million customers dependent on the safety net provided by the market regulator, Ofgem, to maintain their supplies and protect their credit balances while it moves them to a new supplier.

Additionally, Bulb Energy, with 1.7 million customers, has been placed in Special Administration. The government and the regulator have appointed Teneo to run the business until its future is decided, which may mean it being sold or closed down, with tits customers transferred to other suppliers.

The corporate failures are blamed on rising wholesale prices, particularly for natural gas, which has risen in price by over 300% since the beginning of last year. Thanks to the Ofgem cap on how much suppliers can charge for the energy they sell (see below), firms are obliged to set prices below what it costs them to buy wholesale gas and electricity.

I'm all for finding solutions to keeping prices lower for everyday people and stopping companies having insulting levels of profit, but it's worth keeping in mind what the landscape was looking like for the past few years for energy companies, the voices calling for nationalising it back then were certainly not as loud.