Sitting London ducks

Just reading up on ‘what the Tory election win means for your money‘ and find it has little to do with the practicalities of current financial realities.

There are these red specks in seas of blue. London is like an out-landish Labour bastion amidst the blue rural regions.

It seems to be the land- and property owners elections. Yet the young people, who want to get a fair outlook on life, voted Labour, those people who cannot count on their land-ownership and have to look at University fees and interest to be paid on those.

It doesn’t even bring much relief to think that the Living- or Minimum wage will rise and get allocated to younger people because the rents are too high and the housing costs and also commuting costs swallow up all earnings, making people reliant on food banks.

I personaly shouldn’t really complain, my pension is set to rise and I get free travel in London.

This election win, will mean little change to our current infrastructure. The same old class tensions will exist and probably be intensified through problems created in Scotland – who want to strive for Scottish independence and Northers Ireland, which is predicted to become part of the Irish nation within the next few decades.

Perhaps that is the reason why the visit of Boris Johnson to her Majesty the Queen took so long because is there really any way to explain to the Royals that the age of discontent has really only begun, rather than healed off?

Obviously – in terms of Brexit – the Brexitiers have won for England and Wales. Perhaps that will shape the future of the United Kingdom, in that it divides the nation and split off Scotland and Ireland from the Union.

Boris Johnson’s bariton voice can of course soothe emotional alarms instantly but rationally and analytically looking at this mess will simple not heal anything.

Those who are fobbed off by Boris Johnson’s calming effect really miss out on the reality of the situation.

Yes, the election results will calm foreign investors, will ensure that business knows how to prepare for the next few years but very little is resolved in terms of infrastructure and the one-nation agenda.

 

2019 general election

On reflection it was very risky of the Liberals to choose Jo Swinson as leader when her seat East Dunburtonshire is located in Scotland, a home nation, with gains for the SNP. I reckon she would have been much more likely to win a seat in an English contituency.

SNP gained 48 seats compared to the 35 in 2017.

The overall voting pattern, giving the Conservatives a clear 47 seat majority, was probably the voice of the people trying to end the uncertainty and make it easier for today’s business to invest and to make some certainty for jobs clear.

For the long term, I still think that the Labour Manifesto was better suited. In a climate emergency business cannot make good decisions other than those that lead to monetary rewards for individual investors. I don’t think that climate change will be profitable for anyone.

Yet the world cannot imagine change and business cannot change.

It will be interesting to see what happens to those arch Labour supporters up in North England who voted Conservative.

 

 

At the polling station

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

He couldn’t remember his address, he gave the clerk various versions and she could not find any of them. The guy in front of me in the queue finally produced his polling card and was ticked off against the information on the polling card.

Then it was my turn, cleverly I thought, if I give her my polling card from the start, she won’t have problems finding me. She asked me whether I can confirm my name and address.

Yet the guy in front of me couldn’t even remember his address and was accepted.

Wow, what different measures are applied to different people. There was so much in the press about voting fraud. Doesn’t surprise me at all.

collapse of public accountability

I have just received an email from the chair of the Tower Hamlets Safer Neighbourhood Board (SNB) asking me to meet him for coffee to see if I can be of use. He copied in 3 serving police officers at the Met too.

I refused. It is abhorrent to think that one person can decide who gets the local voluntary positions. That is not democratic and there is no accountability.

There is now a collapse of democracy evident so far as the voluntary sector is concerned.

I used to be the chair of the Tower Hamlets Neighbourhood Watch Association. That was a post created out of a network of elected local Neighbourhood Watch panels, who democratically elected the chair of the local Association, which in turn worked in partnership with the local Metropolitan Police.

The then Mayors Office for Policing in Crime (MOPAC) funded the Tower Hamlets Neighbourhood Watch Association.

When my daughter became a successfull performance athlete in her sport, I needed to spend a lot more time to bring her to training sessions, starting at 6am, ending at 9pm and in between there was schooling.

I had a good relationship with local Safer Neighbourhood Teams and Neighbourhood Watch was set up through the SNT officers verifying the residents who registered as Neighbourhod Watches. I helped establish over 100 Neighbourhood Watches in Tower Hamlets.

Now my daughter has grown older and no longer needs as much help to get to and from places and I have more time to commit to the community again.

Unfortunately my successor in Tower Hamlets dissolved the Association. A new system called OWL was established, which is in fact just a communication system that works one-way. The police use it now to communicate with registered users only to give information on current situations and distribute news letters and invites to events.

I have been in communications with the national Neighbourhood Watch Network and attended one of their seminars. The former London Neighbourhood Watch Association has also been dissolved and there is no infrastructure left as it was previously.

Local people now often use WhatsApp to communicate among themselves, which is quite effective. Meetings with police are held via the SNT network and take place 4 times per year.

The SNT panels have a representative with the local Safer Neighbourhood Board.

Citizen’s Assembly on Climate Change

30.000 people around the UK will get letters inviting them to workshops on Climate Change. The initiative has been brought by a cross-party MPs to determine what members of the public can do to reduce CO2.

That will produce a final panel of 110 people to meet in Birmingham. This will restrict the people who can actually come to this as a lot of people will be working and can’t make this.

It is always difficult to assemble panels of people to physically meet at the best of times. I  have been on many groups and availability to meet was always an issue.

If the group only discusses personal CO2 use by the public is a little too restrictive as what is important is what is on offer to actually purchase and use made available by producers, business and public services too.

Zero Carbon by 2050 is a lame approach, we need action now and we need it real and not just by speaking about it.

But the principle of Citizens Assemblies I welcome very much in more subjects than the environment.

The worst outcome

Seeing the mood in parliament it seems to become a Home nations and Labour supporters versus the Conservatives.

But we do need certainty as business investment will rely on it.

As stated previously with a new election Boris Johnson wants to rid the Conservatives of those Members of Parliament who lost the whip and who voted against the government.

Experience shows that those standing as independents rarely win elections.

Perhaps those independents will find other mainstream parties to put them up as candidates.

I am in an unusual position. I am a pensioner and as such benefit from the triple lock Conservative policy, that raises pensions guaranteed but I am also solely in contact with young people all the time and get a good idea what young people and working people do not like about this government.

With all those new parties springing up and the Liberals getting a lot more support than before, which they lost due to the previous stint of collaboration with a Conservative government, I wonder whether we are going towards a repeat of exactly the last scenario whereby Liberals prop up the Conservatives again.

I think people want genuine change, better jobs protection, better housing and less crime.

Education has become a sore point because so many schools close and many others spring up with not enough regulation to ensure quality.

On one hand this government wants to tear education away from local authorities to get direct government funding for Academies but on the other hand the local authorities get more responsibilities to raise their own finance. So why do schools get taken out of the equation?

We do see the gentrification of local communities in the social sense but local councils are supposed to get more responsibilities running their local communities whilst the poor are moved around like pawns on a chess board.

The low tax, high wage economy is not working because crazy, unstable policies have driven business out of Britain and the home nations are in the mood to cry independence.

Our charities rely on individual donations and those attracting more money can care better for their needy but those failing to attract donations cannot provide services. This leaves whole swathes of needy people uncared for, hence a rise in crime.

Leaving things to sort themselves out is obviously not working.

 

 

photo id

Couoncillors Hussain and Golds at the Mile End East by-election, unfortunately won by Labour

How does photo ID prevent postal voting fraud? The argument Peter Golds from Tower Hamlets brought forward was  – on the Sunday Politics program – that there was massive voting fraud, to do with postal voting fraud, which happened in Tower Hamlets.

Photo ID does not prevent postal voting fraud as you do not need a photo ID to send in a form.

Photo ID has been introduced in Northern Ireland and it is working fine.

Perhaps getting a photo ID should be made more user-friendly, to accommodate those who are dyslexic or have time-constraints. A British passport for example now allows the up-loading of selfies for the picture, marvellous. Perhaps they could also consider allowing other forms of photo ID like a bus pass.

 

You spin me right round baby

At least the childish games of Boris Johnson are up now as he wrote to the Court of Sessions in Scotland to explain that he will ask the EU for an extension is no deal could be set by 19. October 2019.

Boris of course thought that the EU could not see through the bluff. Everybody with only half a wit would know what was happening.

There is a demonstration on 19. October 2019 called

People’s Vote March – Let us be heard!

That is for another referendum to close the discussion once and for all.

Honouring Jo Cox

Boris Johnson actually said: “The best way to Honour in Jo Cox’s memory is to get Brexit done”.

There it is again, the sheer repetitive intellectual poverty of those privately educated Tories who say the same thing again and again and again.

For years we heard as standard answer to all queries: “Yes but we improved the employment rate”. That was the one for all answers of all answers and it always worked. Whatever the opposition said, this one answer solved all problems.

Now Boris is the standard bearer for repetitive, almost notorious answers by saying, we need to get Brexit done, to every query put.

If an old person keeps on saying the same thing over and over, they get diagnosed with Alzheimers, Dementia and the like but if a politicians keep on repeating themselves in parliament, then it is a good thing. It doesn’t surprise me that Margaret Thatcher suffered from extreme Dementia in old age that is because of her working schedule and working methods. It cannot be healthy for anybody, having to repeat the same process over and over again.

Not being able to show compassion for people must affect your mental health.

We have automation for repeats even in production but for politicians they actually repeat the same phrases over and over again.

shoot yourself in the foot

is an expression that people use to describe if a measure you take, turns out detrimental against yourself.

British establishment and conservationists always want to help promote the establishment, of which the Church of England is an important cornerstone.

St James the Less church

Church of England schools were long seen as the ultimate part of the pro-English upbringing of those wanting to serve Queen and country.

The church being the glue that holds the social fibre of English society together, educated mind and spirits. Yet an essential part of English society was the emergence of unions, which branched out of working-class environments and became an integral part of life.

Along comes our latest bout of Conservative government seeking to destroy the stronghold unions have on the confidence of the working classes. This of course includes the pocket so Muslim immigrants who follow special social rules culminating in Sharia law.

Easy peasy things thinks the government, we just shake it all up, we get rid of the unions and the radical Islamist scourge at the same time.

There then followed a strong rule change, making working compulsory, forcing people to accept any job on offer and reducing work security through a change in working contracts law.

Also, to throw into the mix came the idea to “increase the quality of schooling” by allowing free schools and by tearing schools away from councils and getting them directly funded by government e.g. through the academy system.

Whilst previously we saw a shortage of school places, we now see an oversaturation of educational provision. Schools open everywhere but people generally have less children because of working law and benefit changes.

All the uprooting of social connections, suitably assisted by changes in housing law and provision thoroughly shook society to the core.

In Tower Hamlets just about the only traditional education available was through Church of England schools. Yet academies and free schools have mushroomed out of nowhere, leaving Muslim children to attend non-church schools with often 85-95% Muslims, whilst the Catholic kids, cram into the few Catholic schools.

The Church of England, through its Liberal approach suffers from a loss of church attendance and general lack of draconian church discipline, is not very attractive to Muslims who experience much more pressure to follow strict religious rules and enjoy the feeling of being forced to adhere to a religious life-style.

That makes Church of England schools less attractive to those who want to experience dogma.

Tower Hamlets has long been the source of constant political controversy and is run by more or less left-wing factions of the Labour Party and similar constellations of political movements like Aspire, Respect or Tower Hamlets First.

The current Mayor of Tower Hamlets, John Biggs, who was seen as a moderate leader by many, is however very keen to rid Tower Hamlets of one of the oldest Church of England schools at the earliest opportunity. It is just another weapon to stab local society into the heart of traditional values and help undermine the Monarchy.

Had this Conservative government not sought to change society to the core with a flurry of legal changes, we would not be in this situation that English traditional education is being disbanded in this part of London.

Any benefit that may have shown through ‘better’ academy schools is wiped out by disturbance constant change brings. Children need to feel safe not only physically but also mentally by being able to rely on those services, adults around them, knowing they can grow up into society and contribute to that society at a later stage.

Raine’s Foundation, C.o.E. Secondary in Bethnal Green

The children of Raine’s Foundation school in Tower Hamlets are being torn apart from their brand-new school, strewn into the wind of education and lost the ability to concentrate on their GCSE and A-levels because their school is threatened by closure.

The last thing, kids want to worry about is finding a school or changing school when they need to concentrate on years of course work to get the best results. The travesty is that the education and teachers at Raine’s are very good and pupils can achieve best results, they do run a Year 11 High Attainment Program in conjunction with Stem. Why do they want to close a school that produces top class achievers, just because it is a Church of England school?

Most parents choose schools wanting peace of mind, being able to leave their children there till 6. Form and then go onto university or into a working life.

Yet the chopping and changing politics by this current government has thrown everything around into a big mixing bowl of social change and nobody is any the wiser of what is happening.

Of course, being able to plan ahead has become a luxury and that is what this government wants, they do not want people to get too comfortable because happy people are dangerous people who can start to demand even better than they have.

So, this Conservative government in fact chips away on conservative values and education by creating a whirlwind social environment that destroys all conservative values and creates anxiety and fear among our young people.

That is one of the reasons why kids now feel they need to demonstrate about the climate emergency instead of going to school, why school kids feel they need knives to protect themselves as they no longer feel safe as nothing can be relied upon any longer. Parents aren’t even at home after school any longer to calm down any fears, parents are forced into working instead of being there to parent.

Everthing is being eroded for working people, starting by housing, to working contracts and schooling. The reduction of policing services has another detrimental impact onto society.

Getting rid of everything known and comforting is perhaps the biggest mistake this government makes.

There are no particular problems at Raine’s Foundation, yet over-crowded popular schools often attract the most problems. But the per-pupil funding will prefer big problem schools before smaller, high quality schools because of the funding formulae.

Just today, the World Economic Forum published figures to show how stress severely affects our University Students, which means the format of education needs to change, to become more user friendly rather than production belt style.

Raine’s provides that friendly but high quality education, that is of excellent quality.  Universities must follow a model that produces happy students.