Private Schools and all that VAT

When I went to college, (it was free in those days), I hung out with a guy called Howard. We touched on the subject of class and I mentioned that I identified as being working class. Howard looked bewildered by this. "You're far to articulate to be working class!" He expostulated. 

I probably mentioned that many playwrights and authors also identified as working class too. Jimmy McGovern, a screenwriter and producer, was born in Liverpool in September 1949, the son of working-class parents. He was the fifth of nine children. He suffered from a stammer, for which he received no therapy and which affects him still. Jimmy, like me, also failed to get that memo. 

Private schools. That Labour Party has decided to levy VAT on private school tuition fees, damn their eyes! Don't they know that parents who choose to send their kids there, work extremely hard and even go without Sky TV! I know this because a bloke who's got more money than the King, said so. So it might be true. (I haven't yet read it in the Daily Mail, so if/when I do, I shall know that it must be true!)

The key word here, about these parents who send their kids to private schools, is choose.  As a working class man, I've never blown my entire income on scratch cards. I've never met any other people in my tribe who have done that either. 

To be fair to these parents, I have never, ever heard this hard done-by bleating from them. I have only heard it from very right-wing Tory acitivists, who are presumably, bleating on their behalf! I believe that these hard working people accept the sacrifices that they make gladly, the same as I did when I was in retail, working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, during the Christmas/Sale period. I also had to take a cleaning job at a school, because my company couldn't give me enough hours. I was also diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 17, in 1967. Did this stop me working. No. We could all complain that we're hard done-by!

Equally, I would never, ever have considered a private school route, purely because our family would have been financially crippled by the fees and I remain unconvinced that they deliver a superior outcome anyway. 

No, the brain-dead Tories who send their kids to private schools because of how all of the crumbling state schools they read about in their Daily Mail. What they don't tell you is that as soon as the Tories gained power in 2010, they quickly spent the money* that the outgoing Labour government had reserved for the repair of schools confirmed to have Raac. A total of 231 schools in England were confirmed to have Raac, or reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, in the most recent government list as of August 2023.

“They (the Tories) are prepared to tolerate for other people’s children something that they would not be prepared to tolerate if it affected their own family,” I couldn't have put it better myself. In fact, that was said by Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary. 

And now the positive. How about we Brits all get our sleeves rolled up and transform our state education sector into a national treasure, like the NHS? Remove the need for parents feeling the need to send their kids to a private school, for example, just because their boss does, or someone influential in their tribe does.  

Both our children went to state schools, comprehensives and then went on to university. They both went on to get good jobs and they both managed to get mortgages so that they could have choices. 

While I was at school, we had a couple of fantastic music teachers. Mr. Whitney and Mr. Upson who taught us to sing. We sang the "Agincourt Song" - very well indeed at the town's Corn Exchange, a quality venue, where we, I might add, wiped the floor with a posh school! 

That £350 Million

Running The NHS With "That £350 million"

NHS commissioning budget for 2022/23, excluding drawdown of previous years’ surpluses, is £153 billion. (Source: NHS England). So imagine most people's surprise when you tell them that, not only is that £350 million a week (£18.3 billion per year), 

(on the side of the Vote Leave big red bus* is not only not going to get to the NHS, but also Brexit is costing the UK an ongoing £100 billion per year in broken supply chain issues. (Source: Bloomberg). 

To add insult to injury, that £350 million per week EU subs (that we're not paying anymore) will not even cover the cost of the required hiring of 50,000 border customs agents that our new Brexited UK will now require, (Source: ONS). We require these agents as a consequence of leaving the EU Single Market and the EU Customs Union. (This assumes that we pay each border customs agent £26,000 per year before tax and National Insurance). 

Brexit Saga continues

The UK is still not policing the borders. Goods are both leaving and entering the UK unchecked. How come? 

This is not merely an EU requirement, but it is crucial to a treaty-based world trade on which fair trade has to depend upon. The EU has cut the UK some considerable slack. This is so that the UK could put into place adequate security and customs checks that are properly treaty compliant. The UK government does what it believes it is increasingly entitled to do. They enact a law at purely at UK level effectively saying they have a legal exemption from checking goods, which emphatically, they do not. 

I'm sure that it has occurred to many people in the UK that a huge flotilla of illegal goods could be imported into the UK without being checked. Drugs, lethal kid's toys, substandard food etc.

Will We Rejoin?

Politically, it's impossible right now. The Conservatives have decided to become a Brexit Party. Labour, has avoided the subject. (Presumably, they don't want to be associated with "overturning the democatically elected result". I would like to rejoin in a heartbeat, but I understand the logic of this. Producing a poll saying that nearly half the people who voted Leave now believe this to be a mistake. 

That they were lied to. 

Because of that, as James O'Brien, LBC journalist/presenter says, "we should have compassion for the conned". Save our venom for the Brexit pushers, Nigel Farage, 

I Campaigned To Remain In The EU - And I Have The T-Shirt!

I took to the EU campaign trail for Remain. The people who told me they intended to vote Leave fell into two categories: 

1. They wanted to give the government a kick up the a**e.  
2. They wanted the £350 million per week to go to the NHS. 

I did meet some agressive people who couldn't wait to get their blue UK passport, which couldn't be made in the UK. The story is complex, like most Brexit news tends to be. 

However, you can read about this here.

Was There A Plan "B"?

Nope! The government believed "remain" would win.

Which Names Are Still Brexiteers?

These people were consistently in favour of Brexit and still maintain their Brexit habit to this day.

• Dominic Cummings - Vote Leave's equivalent of "The Master"
  

• Boris Johnson - Vote Leave's Joker-In-Chief
  

• Nigel Farage - Pre-referendun, in every fishing port. Post-ref. in no fishing port.
  

• Paul Dacre - Daily Mail Chief. Need I say more?
  

• Daniel Hannan - Irrepressible, Shakespeare-quoting MEP (former Daily Telegraph)
  

• Julia Hartley-Brewer - hosts the weekday breakfast radio show on Talkradio.
  

These people were Brexiteers but token campaigned for Remain.

• David Cameron - the twerp who tabled the referendum!
  

• Jeremy Corbyn - JC's Labour hoped it would all go away!
  

Various Ranting Going On

In 2016, the EU Commission offered aid from the EUSF totalling €60.3 million to deal with the consequences of regional floods occurring in the UK in December 2015 

This aid was rejected by the Cameron Government on the grounds that it was better that the UK Government should provide such relief on its own terms, rather than with the "strings attached" by the EU as to how flood relief funds should be spent. 

Perhaps the "strings" being that the EUSF money didn't find its way mysteriously into other folders, such as the "Nothing At All To Do With Flood Relief" folder. The EU know by now, that you have to be super-specific with the Tories! Some future Tory Prime Minister may need his or her Prime Ministerial abode redecorated with wallpaper that costs lots.

Needless to say, we know how David likes to put a bit of spin on all things EU. This rejection was spotted by at least one award-winning journalist of the time (Jon Danzig) as the "politics of pride" - which is certainly a matter of judgement, depending upon one's point of view. 

I think I more than agree with Jon Danzig. 

We were comprehensively lied to by the government about Brexit. Lower food prices, lower energy prices. Various Tory MPs had their trousers taken down by Jo Coburn, a BBC journalist on Politics Live. They claimed that the UK was growing faster, the economy was strong. In fact, the UK was "growing" by minus 0.4%. All the other EU countries had stronger economies and were growing faster than the UK. Still, easy mistake to make, if you have the graph displayed upside down. 

I expect that these MPs considered this action to be reprehensible. "Dont the BBC know that they forbidden to criticise the government?"

I wrote to my MP about the scandalous conditions facing the immigrant workers in Qatar who, if lucky enough to have not died, haven't made a single rial from their labours. They were conned, perhaps even more surely than I would've been had I sent my my bank details to share in a huge fortune from a Nigerian bank executive, (using a Yahoo e-mail address). 

The MP was obliged to send me the "we have confidence we can help reform Qatar, encouraging them to reform" letter. If I had taken the same stance when I was working in retail, I doubt whether I'd have had any stock left. 

Brexit

At the time of writing it's Wednesday 11 April.

Tomorrow, we would've been due to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Theresa May has asked the EU for an extension of the leave date for 30 June, 2019.

I would like to claim that prior to the EU referendum, that I knew all about the difficulties with dispensing with the EU Customs Union and the EU Single Market. That when the Leave result was announced I would say "Hang on a minute! What about the Northern Irish/Republic of Ireland border? Won't our exit from the EU cause a hard border? Won't that fly in the face of the Good Friday Agreement?"

Truth is, I didn't say anything about any of those issues, and I didn't even think of those issues. But then again, I am only a voter and not a politician.

What was noticeable was that many seasoned MPs and even Cabinet members were having the same struggles as me. One MP didn't even know what the Customs Union was. To be fair, I didn't hear of this term until about 2013, and even then, I wasn't really sure what a Customs Union actually did.

Remain was where we remained in the EU. If Remain had won, then it would be business as usual and we could focus on things like the NHS, education, police numbers, affordable and social housing, Mental Health and employment. How exotic that sounds today. It's called running the country.

Leave was where Britain would leave the EU. At the time, it was made to sound as simple as giving your notice in at work. You'd start your new job and within two months everything would've been sorted out for good.

Leave required a plan "B".

We had then and have now - NO plan "B".

Today, pretty well everyone, whether they voted leave or remain understands very well that not only is Brexit hideously and impossibly complex, but we will be worse off, rather than better off.

I've always subscribed to the notion that if I change my bank, my insurance or my internet -  the deal that I cancel has always got to be inferior to the one that I am signing up for. The one that I am signing up for has to be better than my previous arrangement. I know of no-one who thinks it's a good idea to do otherwise.

How will Brexit affect me?
Sadly, I have no Irish relatives, so Brexit will affect me. Otherwise, I would be off to the Irish Republic for a year and become an Irish citizen. This would be because remaining a British citizen will become inferior to being an Irish citizen. As an EU/Irish citizen, I will retain the same freedom of movement as I have now (until Brexit day, whenever that is?) and I will continue to have visa-less travel to the USA as well. (EU Britain currently has a visa waiver arrangement with the USA which takes just 20 minutes to complete online).

The post Brexit blue UK (non-EU) passport (You know. The one that's made in France!) will hopefully:

• include a description of your nationality as a ‘British Citizen'
• be an ePassport with the internationally recognised symbol on the front cover

What remains unclear to me is how visa-necessary travel is superior to visa-less travel.
I fail to see how restricting my passport privileges benefits me, or anyone else.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stop Press:

UK together with the EU27 have agreed an extension for 31 October.
Donald Tusk has told Britain "Please don't waste this time" - so sad that
we need to be told.

I wish we were better than this. 









 

I've Been Wrong Before

It's horrible when you're wrong. People say that it takes real character if you're strong enough to admit you're wrong. So how come I don't feel fantastic?

In September 2015 Jeremy Corbyn became elected leader of the Labour Party with a huge 59.48% share of the vote. I had voted against him. My main problem was that I believed that Jeremy Corbyn was not leadership material, and was not electable.

After the EU referendum, Labour MP's passed a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn. In September 2016, Jeremy confounded the pundits by not only winning his second leadership contest in a year, but also securing a higher 61.8% share of the vote. During this contest I had been in a Labour Party meeting speaking up for his opponent, Owen Smith, to be elected as leader of the Labour Party.

So I had voted against Jeremy twice. I can't have been proved more wrong.


Over the last few weeks of this snap election, Jeremy Corbyn has proved that he is, in fact, a leader and capable of great statesmanship. He never raised his voice and he has always adhered to attacking policy decisions by the Tory government rather than personalities. Little wonder he has been and is now doing well in the polls. People now seem to be seeing his 'politics of hope' message.

It's a strange outcome for a general election where neither party has won. The Tories have won, in respect of the amount of votes cast. However, Jeremy has achieved 41% of the vote, which would have, in normal circumstances, delivered him to Number 10 with a comfortable majority. It gets more bizarre in that Theresa May actually won more votes than was won by David Cameron in the 2015 general election, which delivered a small majority of 5 seats.

So what has happened is a disaster. Theresa May sought to increase her majority by gambling on a snap election. She clearly didn't take into account how people might react to an exercise that seemed less than genuine in seeking a mandate. Judging by the growing popularity of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, people don't buy Theresa May's desire for continuity as a reason for staying at number 10. Add a very frightening manifesto for older people and it's easy to see why the result is a no-score draw.

It gets worse. Theresa May is now obliged to form a government with the DUP. A party which is extreme. Opposed to gay marriage, climate change and equal rights. Their thuggish, bigoted views have no place here in a much more free and liberal Britain. Even more serious than that, the DUP is one of the involved parties in the Northern Ireland Peace process. This Tory/DUP partnership explodes the UK government's impartiality that is crucial if it is to continue to broker the Northern Ireland peace process.

What is so important about Theresa May's government that it needs to flirt with both a circumvention of democracy (however temporary it may be) and also risk inflaming the DUP's political opponents?

No. This is simply a price that is not worth paying. We not only prostitute our democracy, our core principles, our ethics but we also gravely risk our continuing peace.