If Keir Starmer is stuck for a few topics to have discussions about this week perhaps he can address a few of these issues instead of worrying about how "God Save the King" will pan out at a Labour party conference...
Levelling up. Still London centric. Despite Johnson’s and Tory Party rhetoric we still have the ever-widening North/South divide.
NHS. Ambulance 999 Emergency waiting times off the chart. A & E admission times evolving into two days on a gurney. The north of England is experiencing extraordinarily long waiting times for clinical operations. Access to NHS Health provision is just a Postcode Lottery. We have gone from being able to see our GP in 48 hours under a Labour government to a fingers-crossed two weeks under our new Health Secretary. We have been told patients could move to another GP who also wouldn’t be able to see them if they had no luck with the first one. Failing that, they could just do everyone a favour and die.
Cost of living crisis. Quasi Modo (or whatever is name is), is not just gambling on a new strategy, he is betting the ranch and mortgaging the house. While Tory tax cuts empower the rich, children whose parents earn less than £7,400 a year are eligible for school meals, but 800,000 children living in poverty are totally missing out, according to the Child Poverty Action Group. It really does come down to one rule for the rich and one for the poor and Truss does not give a fig. It looks a lot to me like neither does Starmer.
Energy price hikes. Instead of a borrow, borrow, and borrow some more strategy why not just cap energy prices at 4%? It is not exactly rocket science is it, unless you are pocketing millions in “nice little earners”.
Tory money borrowing is now completely out of hand. Quasi Modo the new Chancellor of the Exchequer just announced more than £400bn of extra borrowing over the next few years to fund the biggest giveaway since Tony Barber’s ill-fated 1972 budget. Get a grip dude!
Bankers’ bonuses. Quasi Kwarteng scrapped the 45% rate of income tax paid by those earning more than £150,000 a year, abolished the cap on bankers’ bonuses, simply reversed the rise in national insurance contributions and brought forward by a year the reduction in the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19%, which was controversially pencilled in by his predecessor Dishy Rishi for 2024. Those lucky enough to be earning over £1,000,000 will see their take-home income increase by more than £40,000, and the poorest will see barely any increase at all. I would call this out as being an incredibly stupid gamble, with regular people’s livelihoods being held as the collateral. The pound has totally tanked in value following Quasi’s statement, plummeting to depths not seen in decades and further deepening the disastrous impacts of the Liz Truss enable the rich strategy.
Northern Ireland - Protocol/Brexit legacy. No trade deals with EU or US until resolved.
Royal Navy - they can pull the Queen’s gun carriage but can hardly float a boat. Our Unable Seamen forgot to grease a propeller shaft rendering a £3 billion aircraft carrier into scrap iron. Defence spending under Liz is set to soar, perhaps we can now afford some axle grease and a couple of new frigates?
HS2 – Scrap the lame duck. A train to nowhere is not what we need right now.
Crumbling Commonwealth - the Leavers are assembling. Sound familiar?
Ukraine interference. Why are the Tories still working on the assumption Great Britain is a global superpower? Why not try leaving it to the UN, NATO and the counties who have a coterminous boundary with Ukraine to sort it?
Inequality - King Charles will not pay tax on the fortune he has inherited from the late Queen. How can this be right?
Universal Credit – the difficulty of access of this “benefit” and its paucity is creating immeasurable child poverty.
Racism. It’s still alive and kicking in the UK as well as the good old USA! The latest Met Police’s victim Chris Kaba's family say the "whole world" needs to see footage of his death after the unarmed black man was shot in the head by a firearms officer following a police chase in South London. On Wednesday, Mr Kaba’s grieving family saw body-worn footage from officers in two police cars who boxed in his Audi Q8 late on September 5 in Streatham.
Shot dead for being black? What a country we all live in.
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