Your Tax Money At Work

Women who question transgender ideology have been branded ‘farts’ as part of equalities training offered to civil servants in Nicola Sturgeon’s Government, it has emerged.

Workers who attended a workplace “trans 101” course were told the term was an acronym for “feminism appropriating ridiculous transphobe” and that women who oppose inclusivity measures were part of a “trans hate group”.

Probably best off just cancelling all such training – all diversity, sexuality, gender etc – in order not to employ any such activists….

When London won the bid in July 2005, its backers billed it as a groundbreaking moment. Previous Olympics had done so much damage to host cities, leaving behind useless venues, unleashing property speculation and social displacement. But London’s bid was different. It vowed to be “a model for social inclusion”. Its legacy would be “the regeneration of the area for the direct benefit of everyone that lives there”. Sebastian Coe, chair of London’s organising committee, promised that the regeneration of the area in and around the Olympic park would produce 30,000-40,000 new homes, “much of which will be ‘affordable housing’ available to key workers such as nurses or teachers”.

Ten years on from the patriotic pageant that brought the nation together to bask in director Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, with its pastoral vision of merrie England and cavorting NHS nurses, just 13,000 homes have been built on and around the Olympic site. Of these, only 11% are genuinely affordable to people on average local incomes. Meanwhile, in the four boroughs the site straddles – Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest – there are almost 75,000 households on the waiting list for council housing, many living in desperate poverty. Thousands of former residents have also been rehoused outside the area since the Olympics took place.

Grand plans to grandly plan everything turn out to be grand fuck ups.

We’re all very surprised that this is the result of letting government loose with £20 billion, right?

Former civil servants, teachers and NHS staff are expected to get a 10pc increase in payments from their final salary schemes, equal to an average £1,000 a year. This will be paid in addition to a £1,000 increase in the state pension.

It comes after the Government pleaded for working people to accept a real terms pay cut to prevent price rises from spiralling out of control.

Ministers earlier this week confirmed the return of the “triple lock” for state pensions, meaning they will increase by September’s inflation figure, which the Bank of England expects to be around 10pc.

The Government is legally required to increase public sector pensions by the same amount as benefits.

Because they’re also just changed the calculation for RPI on inflation protected bonds. You know, the way that private sector pensions try to beat inflation.

Hmm? Yes of course the calculation change screws creditors, you’d not expect anything else now, would you?

We are saved, saved!

This week has left the country drained after government ministers reverted to divisive political playbooks last seen in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The Liberal Democrats are against the rail strikes and if a summer of discontent is not to turn into a winter of discontent and full-on stagflation, ministers must step back from the brink.

The position of lower-paid workers across our country should be at the forefront of ministers’ thinking – not that of the highest earners in the City, whose pay and bonuses the government announced this week would not be limited in any way.

For back in the real world, I’ve heard this week of anguished people unable to visit their elderly and vulnerable parents. I’ve heard of nurses now forced to take multiple buses, struggling to get to their 12-hour hospital shifts. And I’ve also heard from dedicated public sector workers, scraping by on low or even minimum wages, unable to afford to pay for even basic necessities, as prices spiral out of control, leaving wages far behind.

Good analysis! So, Ed, whaddawegonnado?

The solution to such distressing stories is clear: instead of strikes, there should be dialogue between government ministers and union bosses.

Oh, right.

Claims Boris Johnson tried to hire Carrie as chief of staff ‘ripe for investigation’, says Lord Geidt
MPs raise allegation in Parliament that Prime Minister tried to appoint his future wife to key role when he was foreign secretary

Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he had tried. Or thought about it at least. But there’s a difference between thinking about something and doing it.

“Whachu think, eh? Appoint Carrie and…..” “Boss, that’s stupid,”…..”Ah, Ok, so I’ll not do that then”……

After all if we jailed politicians for having stupid ideas then we’d have them all in the right place, wouldn’t we?

The adapted Fiat Ducatos have been rolled out across the country as ambulance services standardised their vehicle procurement following a report by Lord Carter of Coles in 2019, which led to a national specification.

In it, he stated “it is simply unacceptable that trusts purchase different ambulances and stock them with different equipment and medicines”.

Yes, yes! All must be the same!

One emergency medical technician told the BBC: “I was told that anyone over 5ft 9in (1.75m) would be unable to drive it as they would not be able to achieve a comfortable and safe driving position.

All ambulances must have the same problem!

Entries from the trust’s risk management system – and obtained via the Freedom of Information Act – reveal how taller staff in particular experienced difficulties fitting into the cabs of the modified Fiat Ducatos.

Sigh.

The funding needed by UN climate disaster appeals has soared by more than 800% in 20 years as global heating takes hold. But only about half of it is being met by rich countries, according to a new report by Oxfam.

Use an organisation more efficient than the UN then.

He said: “Removing this link is about ensuring that we’ve left no stone unturned when it comes to working with our Scottish counterparts to find a solution that will best serve the great people of Scotland.”

Just look at the language being used. It’s bullshit. The TCW guide to political PR. The more you waffle about “no stone unturned” and “great people” the more your statement is bullshit.

ScotRail will cancel 50 per cent of its trains this Sunday, bringing a “hammer blow” to Scotland’s tourism and hospitality sectors.

Just 556 out of its normal 1,088 services are expected to run after drivers rejected a 4.2 per cent pay rise in the latest round of talks with the newly nationalised rail operator.

The state of the place at a certain time:

The deadline for the Scottish census has been extended again after it recorded the lowest-ever response rate in the modern era.

National Records of Scotland said it would continue to accept returns until June 12 after admitting that more than 400,000 households had failed to fill it in, even after a previous four-week extension.

Stretching it a bit, no?

According to one appraisal document, seen by The Telegraph, an official was told they were expected to spend 20 per cent of their “corporate objective” time working within “corporate identity networks”. According to a source, a corporate objective is defined as a “work objective that contributes to building an inclusive Civil Service”.

The official was told to spend five per cent of their corporate objective time participating in a “non-binary” network which included attending a “gender non-conforming book club” and celebrating “Non-Binary Awareness Week”. The official told The Telegraph: “I was hired to do trade policy and yet the taxpayer pays me to waste 20 per cent of my corporate work time on this crap.”

If 20% of time is spent mumbling about pronouns then we need 20% fewer civil servants, don’t we?

A one-off £400 discount on energy bills will be too little, too late to offset vast price rises, middle-class families have said.

Homeowners have told Telegraph Money that they cannot afford to wait until the autumn to receive a penny from the Chancellor’s £15bn cost of living support package announced on Thursday.

Previously households stood to benefit from a £200 energy bills loan, but this sum has now been doubled and will not have to be repaid.

Subsidising demand in a time of dearth might not be the most sensible thing ever. To put it mildly.

‘£400 won’t touch the sides – the squeezed middle class needs £4,000’

Also, the middle class might like £4k but they don’t need it.

‘It’s a bribe’: the coastal areas that could become the UK’s nuclear dump

Quite so, it is. We’d like you to take one for the team – in the same way that richer folk have to pay higher taxes to support the poorer, contribute to society and all that – and here’s the compensation we’ll offer for your doing so.

Damn right it’s a bribe – now, how much would suit?

Figures here.

On Saturday, Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, blamed years of Tory cuts to capital spending on schools and said the current problems ranged from dangerous roofs to asbestos.

He said: “All children deserve to learn in high quality, safe and comfortable buildings. But in 2022-23, capital funding is £1.9bn less per year in real terms than it was in the last years of the Labour government. If the government had not cut Labour’s school rebuilding programme, £27bn more would have been spent on school and college buildings. So, while any money spent on school buildings is welcome, the scale needs to be judged against what has been cut, which is 50 times larger.

That is to assume that the level of spending at the end of the last Labour Government was the correct one. Something that needs to be proven, not assumed.

But no prime minister has looked at the tax burden – which as a percentage of GDP has reached a 71-year high – and thought, this simply won’t do.

We are actually in that high tax, high spend, social democracy desired by so many. And they’re not satisfied, are they?

The chief executive of Tesco has urged ministers to change “outdated” laws to allow insects grown on food waste to be fed to fish, pigs and chicken.

Writing in The Telegraph, Ken Murphy argued that by removing “regulatory barriers”, insect protein could be used as an alternative feed to animals and strengthen the UK’s food security as the war in Ukraine hammers supply chains.

Why not just feed the food to the pigs?

Yes, I know, foot and mouth. But isn’t this just a lovely example of how one bureaucratic decision and mistake then cascades through the system? Government then having to do ever more work to deal with its own consequences?

The 96-room hotel, with a spa, gym, two restaurants, two bars and a rooftop pool is one of the most famous in Havana, and a popular retreat for government officials and celebrities.

Beyonce, Madonna and the King of Morocco are all known to have stayed at the venue, in a prime location in Old Havana, just across from the Congress building.

Where the state controls the economy then the Minister for Paperclips hangs out at the top venues with Beyonce.

Sweden’s Covid death rate among lowest in Europe, despite avoiding strict lockdowns

Because, it’s because.

New WHO figures show pandemic wrought ‘staggering toll’ of almost 15m fatalities, but harsh restrictions were not the key to beating virus

If only we’d actually followed the pandemic plans that they had prepared rather than being argued into lockdown.

The WHO analysis includes deaths directly linked to Covid but also indirect fatalities – including those unable to access healthcare for other conditions while services were overwhelmed or suspended.

Or, to be entirely fair, it way well be:

Raw sewage ‘pumped into English bathing waters 25,000 times in 2021’
Liberal Democrats condemn ‘environment scandal’ as party releases figures compiled from Environment Agency data

Private companies, capitalists and all that.

“Some 80 per cent of sewage overflows are monitored south of the border… In Scotland just 10 per cent are monitored by Scottish Water,”

Oh. So we don’t actually know how bad the state owned Scottish Water is then?