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Oct 14
At least Starmer’s English Labour has been honest. It has repeatedly said who they are and what they planned to do in office, so we shouldn’t be shocked at what’s transpired since July.
Rachel Reeves boasted that her economic plan had big business’ fingerprints all over it.
That’s why she’s genuflecting to the City of London, the world’s dirty money laundromat that contributes nothing of value to the UK, rather than order the government’s own bank to create the money needed to protect and enhance people’s wellbeing.
Her ‘fiscal rules’ are invented to justify cutting spending and investment which harms everyone but especially the most vulnerable. The UK has had seven different set of fiscal rules since 2010, the onset of austerity. Do you think there’s a correlation?
Now Starmer vows to bin regulations to “rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment,” but will instead strip more protections from consumers, workers and the environment. Does Sir Keir recall the Grenfell towering inferno, the Post Office/Horizon scandal, the 2008 financial crisis, or shit-filled English waterways?
To bring investment up to the level of its major competitors, the UK would have to spend £100 billion a year for several years. But rather than revive the moribund economy with badly needed public investment in health, education, housing, transport and energy that would attract private investment into these areas, Starmer’s foolishly chasing foreign behemoths like Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, P&O, Blackstone, BlackRock and Macquarie which loaded Thames Water with unsustainable debts.
All are experts at asset stripping and rent extraction, as if the ailing UK economy needed more of what has been destroying it since the 1980s. It’s insane to think they’ll deliver good jobs and self-sustaining growth. English Labour seem intent on destroying what little remains of the UK’s shrinking asset base by flogging it to these vulture capitalists who are laughing all the way to the bank.
The UK’s going down. Unless we get out, Scotland’s going down with it.
Oct 16
Errand boy for private healthcare Wes Streeting has hit the streets running. His magic bullet for getting overweight people back to work is to shoot them monthly with Zepbound, an Eli Lilly weight loss drug costing $1000 per month.
Streeting has agreed with US-based Eli Lilly, in partnership with Health Innovation Manchester, that it will invest £279m in a 5-year clinical trial on 3000 overweight and unemployed people in the low-tax, low-regulation Manchester Special Enterprise Zone (SEZ).
Streeting presumes obesity is the reason people aren’t working, when the real problem is decades of government policies that have deprived large areas of the UK of investment in industrial capacity, transport and skills training, as well as failure to regulate an industry that pumps out vast quantities of sugar-filled ultra-processed foods, policies English Labour seems intent on continuing.
Zepbound’s side effects include nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux, pancreatitis, gallbladder disease and worsening of diabetic eye disease. Its active ingredient, tirzepatide, can cause thyroid C-cell tumours in rats and could cause medullary thyroid cancer in humans. It’s not clear whether the drug causes depression or suicidal ideation. To keep weight off, users need to stay on the drug forever.
That’s a nice little earner for Big Pharma and puts a huge strain on the shrinking NHS budget. But that’s all part of the plan. Since 2023, Starmer’s cabinet has received more than £500k from lobbyists, hedge funds and private equity firms with links to the private healthcare industry. Global PR firm Weber Shandwick that represents Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Roche, provided free staff to Anneliese Dodds, the Minister of State for Development.
(BTW, Swiss firm Roche, which recorded a 2023 profit of $4.1 billion, refused to offer drugs to treat cancer and neuromuscular conditions at NHS prices.)
Rachel Reeves got a free campaign advisor from lobbying firm FGS Global between February and June 2024. The firm’s clients include Optum Healthcare Solutions, a subsidiary of US-based United Health and Ernst and Young, which has charged the NHS £2,343 per day for its consultants. A former FGS client was Accord Healthcare, a UK drug company that was fined £155 million in 2021 for overcharging the NHS for hydrocortisone tablets between 2008-2018.
Streeting received free hospitality from FGS to attend the Glyndebourne opera in 2023 and £2,100 from Craig Legiton, a FGS Global partner. Now Streeting is bringing back the dreadful ex-Blairite Health Minister, Alan Milburn, who has made over £8m from private health consultancy work.
For those who don’t remember, Milburn championed NHS outsourcing and the disastrous Private Finance Initiatives that have cost Scotland nearly £30 billion. Milburn will be a Non Executive Director (NED) in Streeting’s department.
English Labour’s ‘change’ is to heap more of the same neoliberal crap onto the failing UK, rather than address the root causes of that failure.
How much more of this will Scotland take?
Oct 18
Today’s Scotsman editorial declares that universal benefits such as healthcare, dental care and education are folly and that the Scottish administration must “take bold, radical action - whatever the political cost.”
In other words, make more people pay for essential services, dividing the haves from the have-nots, stigmatising the poor even further, and creating a costly extra layer of bureaucracy.
That begs the question - what is government for if not to care for its people? I’m not talking about the Scottish ‘government’ because we all know it’s not a government but a devolved administration kept on a tight fiscal leash by its Westminster master. It can’t create money or make basic economic decisions.
So, my question is for Viceroy Murray and his English Labourites who now rule Scotland from Westminster. What are you going to do to ensure all Scots can access these vital public services?
We know the answer. Nothing, but they will criticise Holyrood for any deficiencies. After all, they owe their positions to corporate and special interest money.
They’ll deliver nothing for Scotland but will take more away, like the Labour Council’s £4m cut to the Edinburgh education budget that will axe one third of special education support staff.
They’re allowing the shuttering of Grangemouth which the Viceroy recently visited. The Unite representative gave his verdict: “We’ve had confirmed - this Labour Government will do nothing to protect jobs in Scotland.”
Unite’s General Secretary Sharon Graham blasted English Labour’s inaction: “Unite will not stand by and allow a jobless transition and the creation of yet another working class wasteland. Not to save Grangemouth is a dereliction of duty.”
But what can she realistically do other than complain loudly? Absolutely nothing.
As for Scotland’s supposed representatives in Westminster (really, what ARE they doing there???), I was sent a copy of a tweet by comfy slippers Peter Wishart, MP, moaning about Labour not reserving any places on Select Committees for smaller parties:
“We are effectively barred from cross party scrutiny”.
I can’t access the tweet directly because Wishart has blocked me, clearly not wanting to be held up to any scrutiny from the hoi polloi back home.
So, Scotland’s fate in this faux union is to accept routine beatings from and powerlessness in Westminster. Accept the plundering of our resources. Accept a quarter of our kids living in poverty. Accept the destruction of our public services.
The folly is Scotland remaining in this union prison. Where’s our outrage?
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