One of Rachel Reeves’s first decisions in No 11 Downing Street was to approve inflation-busting pay deals for swathes of state workers.
Fixing public services after years of Tory neglect was critical, she argued, as she dished out £9.4bn of pay rises in her first weeks as Chancellor.
Reeves then had to find ways to pay for such largesse. Her maiden Budget included the biggest tax raid on record at £40bn, alongside plans to borrow tens of billions of pounds more to fund a £70bn-a-year increase in public spending.
Labour’s for, you know, labour. It’s bedrock of support is in hte workforce of public services. Labour gets into office, public services will get a pay rise.
Obvious.
But that is why farmers are being shaken upside down. To pay train drivers.
It’s essentially the state sector unions deciding how much to pay themselves; how much plundering of the workers they can get away with.
So it’s not to force all the farmers to sell out to Blackrock, Cargill, and Mr Gates then?
I know some Labourites who still believe that it is the party of the ‘Working Class’.
No amount of evidence to the contrary will convince them.
It is like a religion – see also Goebbel Wormers and the NHS.
OTOH I know some ex-Labour voters have seen Starmer & co in action and have deserted them. Maybe they will go back when he’s booted out but atm he’s doing a good job of alienating the entire world.
But that is why farmers are being shaken upside down. To pay train drivers
Nope. The returns from fleecing farmers and independent school will be, in the context of public sector cash spunking, be tuppence. Nowhere near enough to fund the train drivers (and the rest, just wait til the teachers want their bit).
It is an attack on class enemies.
Here’s a bit of goose: there’s a petition demanding a fresh general election on the grounds that Labour have gone back on promises made in the run-up to their election victory.
It’s such fun watching the numbers clocking up like mad if you just leave the site open on its own tab in a browser: there were 350k signatories ten minutes ago and now 390k.
TMB
The first thing Labor did when it seized power in Oz was to put the Voice to the voters. Since I’ve no abo blood I naturally didn’t vote to make myself a second class citizen. Nor did a majority of Aussies. It’s hard to persuade a majority to vote for minority rule.
Still, I suppose we could try a petition in Oz. Albo promised to reduce our electricity bills by $275 a year. So we could claim that he lied to us.
“there’s a petition demanding a fresh general election”
Has any petition ever actually had an effect? And yet so many people seem to believe in them. (And they don’t even have to clap their hands.)
Has any petition ever actually had an effect?
I’d say what happened to the Referendum answers that.
Yes. The one objecting to road pricing the last time these cunts were in power got so many signatures (in the order of 10m IIRC) it couldn’t be ignored.
(490k on this one now)
I doubt the petition will go anywhere but the debate will be another chance for a TTK own goal so I’m signing it anyway.
Two Tier Kier, Out This Year!
Yup Marius, no different from “Death to the Kulaks”.
Yup TMB – Signed it yesterday, not because I expect it to have an effect, just to put Starmer the Farmer Harmer under the spotlight. The more light that is shone on the slithy tove the more likely he is to get (figuratively) stabbed in the back by one or more of his ambitious fellow communists.
Will it have any effect regarding it’s stated aim of triggering a new election? Not a bit of it. Amusement value only. Labour will hold onto power with a death grip until the end in 2029.
Vote Reform UK!
It’s amusing to lookat the coloured map showing where the signatures for that petition are coming from:
https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=700143
It basically shows London clinging on to power, but besieged by the rest of England.
@P,S: “It basically shows London clinging on to power, but besieged by the rest of England.”
Nice Mr Putin might rescue us from London.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned before my theory that much of the SNP vote is essentially an anti-London vote. (That’s among the echt Scots. Among the Irish who live in Scotland it’s simply a racist anti-English vote.)
J.G.:« Labour will hold onto power with a death grip until the end in 2029. »
That would certainly be their natural instinct but they have generated so much antagonism with two-tier everything of which the most dangerous example is the overt favouring of public sector employees over (and at the expense of) the private sector. A concerted push-back on a scale that government can’t contain shouldn’t be entirely excluded.
On the subject of two tier, the government has published a local government reform paper proposing the abolishing of two-tier local councils. Maybe they’ve heard the approbrium heaped on “Two Tier” and got confused.
We used to have 7.5 councillors in my town, we now have 2 after unitaryisation. Democracy? Yeah, we’ve heard of it.
654k now.
Otto “I know some Labourites who still believe that it is the party of the ‘Working Class’.
Unions are a good thing if you’re in a monopoly situation, like the days of old when people walked or cycled to t’mill and it was hard to work elsewhere. But once the working people got reliable cars, it was as easy to just change jobs if your boss was an arsehole or they paid better. So they stopped being union members.
Which meant unions were about public sector monopolies. And along with the Co-op, that’s who funds Labour. So they care about nurses, teachers and so forth. Not warehouse staff.
Perception is changing, though. Reform made some big gains in the sort of places that used to have a lot of Labour people.
The Welsh government had to row back it’s 20mph speed limits mandate after over a third of the population signed a petition.
Was a fcuking stupid mandate that pretty much everyone started ignoring on day 2 anyway.
Luckily Führer Drakeford is gone now.
@ John Galt
Starmer is *not* slithy – he is neither slim nor lithe