Chris Whiteside for the North

Possibly the most beautiful aria ever written for the human voice.  I have never quite got over the shock of discovering from the context when I got round to actually going to see the opera "The magic flute" that the singer and the song itself represent pure evil. Still wonderful to listen to. 

"We strongly oppose the means-testing of Winter Fuel Payment because our initial estimate is that as many as two million pensioners who badly need the money to stay warm this winter will not receive it." Age UK

"Is this Lab govt arrogant, incompetent or both?  You can’t say there’s no money left and rob pensioners of their winter fuel allowance while spraying money at train drivers and unions.  You can’t say your priority is growth but load employers with red tape and cancel road projects." ( Tim Montgomerie  this week on X formerly Twitter)

For the next five years, the main people providing an alternative to Labour in power in England will not be MPs from any of the opposition parties. They will be Conservative local government leaders. The most powerful non-Labour politician in England at the moment is Lord Ben Houchen, the Conservative metro-mayor of Tees Valley. The only people other than Labour able to deliver things and show what a party other than Labour can do in office will be the councillors or mayors who lead Conservative or Lib/Dem run local authorities. (Or the leaders of any authority to which the voters elect a mayor or a council working majority of any other party.) Who is elected to hold office in local councils matters, both for what they can do for a local area and because they are important to providing the alternative which is an important part of democratic choice.  The Conservative group in the Local Government Association has asked leadership candidates to back "A contract to back Conservatives...

  "Could Labour supporters please stop screaming   “But the Tories did it!!!”.  Yes, we know.  And you told us all it was an outrage they did it.  And you also told us that was why we all had to vote for Keir Starmer, because he’d make sure it stopped." (Former Labour and Trade Union staffer  Dan Hodges  on X, formerly Twitter.)

There are two Conservative leadership elections underway at the moment. Six MPs are standing to succeed Rishi Sunak as Party leader. After their fellow Conservative MPs have whittled them down to four, those four candidates will get to speak at Party Conference. The MPs will then vote on the final two who go to a vote of the whole membership. Voting starts tomorrow (28th August) in another Conservative election - to elect the national officers of the voluntary party who also sit on the party board. At the moment the people who hold these offices are elected by members of the National Conservative Convention - which mostly means constituency chairmen plus some regional and area officers. Some candidates for the party leadership have suggested there is a case of extending the franchise to a wider group, perhaps all party members for some Conservative elections including that of party chairman. I think there is a case for this and will follow the detailed proposals from leadership contend...

 

Under the Consumer Rights Act, anyone sold goods that are 'of unsatisfactory quality, unfit for purpose or not as described', can return them within 30 days and receive full reimbursement. Unfortunately, when a government wins an election on false pretences, there's no such protection. Voters must wait five long years for restitution – and even then, there's no guarantee they won't be out of pocket. Millions who voted Labour on July 4 may already be experiencing pangs of buyer's remorse. By tomorrow," (e.g. 27th August) "it will be crystal clear they've been sold a pup. In a doom-laden speech, Sir Keir Starmer is to warn that things in Britain 'will get worse before they get better'. "Blaming the Conservatives for all our social and economic ills, he will herald a new age of austerity." "Labour campaigned on a promise of financial prudence and swore there were no planned tax hikes other than on private schools, non-doms and f...

  If you oppose Labour's plans to clobber ten million pensioners by taking away their winter fuel payment, sign the petition here: Labour is leaving pensioners out in the cold - sign the petition!

Let me be honest - the argument that the people Labour have been trying to bring in as advisors and civil servants do not have anything to offer the country has not been proven. However, the charge that Labour have been cutting corners on due process for some of their appointments, and failing to follow exactly the sort of rule which they screamed blue murder when they thought the previous Conservative government was bending, has been proven. And the case that when you compare what Labour said in opposition about cronyism with how they have behaved in their first fifty days in government, the contrast displays weapons-grade hypocrisy, is cast-iron solid. Robert Colvile wrote this in The Times: He adds on X, formerly Twitter: "A quick recap: as @HenryNewman has been arguing, Labour's appointments are qualitatively different from most of those under the Tories. Labour people appointed without competition not to advisory roles but newly created, senior positions deep within the...

The former England men's football team manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who led England’s team to the quarter-final stages of two World Cups and a European Championship, having enjoyed a stellar club career that included 18 trophies, has died of cancer at the age of 76. He was a good man, and a gentleman, and did a better job for England than the press and some of the fans often gave him credit for. He met his final illness with great bravery and a positive spirit. Rest in Peace.

 

 

Labour is breaking so many pre-election pledges and manifesto promises that they must have made the strategic political decision to do all the unpopular stuff now and do the popular giveaways just before a general election and hope voters have amnesia. (Adam from the "Guido Fawkes" website on X/Twitter here .)

 

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the reason universities lobbied the Government to quash the Freedom of Speech Act is because they’re worried it will jeopardise their cosy relationship with various authoritarian regimes, particularly the People’s Republic of China. Bridget Phillipson should have told them to put principle before profit, not done their bidding.” ( Toby Young , directoir of the Free Speech Union) “There was clearly a fear that this Act would undermine China-related income streams for universities. “This was not mentioned when the announcements were made about the scheme being paused. It’s clear that there was a decision not to communicate these concerns about China-related income. It is not unreasonable to infer this has been covered up.” ( Sam Dunning , director of the UK China Transparency think-tank)

 

Labour promise during the election:         We'll cut your energy bills. Labour in government:         Energy bills up 10% - on top of taking Winter Fuel Payments away from ten million pensioners.

  “Now it transpires Starmer himself can’t even define the working class. He thinks it has something to do with people who work. But King Charles works, you idiot." ( Jeremy Clarkson,  article in The Sun this week.) 

 

  “For a Remainer like myself, it’s painful to admit — but when it comes to AI regulations, it’s far better we chose to   'take back control' ”. "Sadly, in the face of overwhelming evidence that their top-down approach" (to digital and AI regulation) has failed, EU leaders haven’t tried a different tack, such as market-oriented reforms to reduce barriers for digital businesses. Instead in 2022, Brussels introduced the draconian Digital Market Act, which has clobbered tech companies with fines worth tens of billions of euros. But the pièce de résistance is the EU’s AI Act, hastily drafted and passed this year in response to the public debate sparked by the launch of ChatGPT. Breathlessly heralded by European leaders as “the world’s first AI legislation”, it’s genuinely hard to overstate how dreadful for innovation and growth these rules will be. For starters, the legislation thickheadedly clamps down on AI models in general (which can be used in all kinds of ways), rat...

 

 

"The world is dividing up into Hawks and Ostriches. The Autumn budget will show which we are." Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt , former defence secretary, on the need to build up defence spending, in the Independent at the weekend.

  "Don't shoot, we're conscripts!" ( Surrendering Russian troops  as they gave themselves up to the Ukrainian army, according to an account published in today's Sunday Times. There are two equal and opposite mistakes the West could make about Putin's Russia. The first would be to forget that this lawless rogue state is extremely dangerous. The second would be to imagine that Russia is invincible. It is not, particularly under a leader as utterly incompetent as Vladimir Putin has now proved himself to be. At last, incompetent at everything except murdering any potential political opponents and any other innocent people who get in his way.) 

"No great party can survive except on the basis of firm beliefs about what it wants to do. It is not enough to have reluctant support. We want people’s enthusiasm as well".   Margaret Thatcher in 1968. Hat tip to Iain Dale for the quote. He added, "56 years on, it's something for all Tory leadership candidates to mull over."

  The MoD also posted that, "For the past three months Russian military casualties have been averaging more than 1,000 killed or wounded soldiers a day.  Poorly trained Russian soldiers are being used as cannon fodder in an attempt to overwhelm strong Ukrainian defences." #StandWithUkraine #SlavaUkraini

"I don’t normally agree with the Telegraph. But Labour policy on taxing private education is bonkers. It will raise little money (about £1.5bn) for maximum disruption to the education system. It is vindictive class war politics." ( Andrew Sentance on X, formerly Twitter He was replying to Kelvin MacKensie who had posted this: "The Telegraph reports that privately educated pupils in England were almost three times more likely to pass at  A* and A grade in their A-levels this year than their peers in state comprehensives.  So why does Labour want to blow up the system with a  20% VAT increase on fees and force an estimated 1,000 pupils into a system which is bulging at the seams and which gets much worse results. It’s class war or nothing."

According to figures released today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) GDP is estimated to have grown 0.6% in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2024, following growth of 0.7% in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar). Far from having had a uniquely bad economic inheritance as they dishonestly claim, the new Labour government has inherited an economy in which one of their election promises has already been delivered by the Conservatives - the fastest growth in the G7. And a far better inheritance than the previous Labour government left the Coalition in 2010: remember this?

 

"One thing is already clear. The Starmer government is not at all libertarian." ( Andrew Rawnsley , in an article which you can read in full at QOSHE - Call off the search to discover Starmerism. It is already beginning to reveal itself - Andrew Rawnsley )

Hat tip to Simon Myerson KC for pointing out this rare example of a judge saying exactly what he really thinks about the two criminal thugs he was sentencing ...

 

 

 

  “Calm Down.”   ( Sir Michael Caine gives a two word response to the riots, and cautious against giving a few far-right nutters the satisfaction of allowing them to rattle us. And in case someone wilfully misunderstands, the fact that I agree with and have quoted Sir Michael on this does not mean that I in any way challenge the view that there is no excuse for riot and disorder, whoever does it, whether  they are on the right or left, whatever religion they follow, if any, and regardless of the colour of their skin.)

 The UA and German governments faced an agonising decision on whether to agree the prisoner exchange which released sixteen innocent US and German citizens and Russian dissidents, one of whom also has British nationality in exchange for a Russian state assassin and seven other Russian spies or criminals. Let's be quite clear about what has happened here. The present government of the Russian Federation - like the so-called "Islamic Republic of Iran" is a gangster regime. Both of these regimes lock up people who are either entirely innocent, or would be innocent under any civilised code of laws, in order to crush dissent or as an act of hostage diplomacy to obtain leverage against other countries by imprisoning their citizens on trumped-up charges. I have the gravest reservations about this decision by the US and German governments but President Biden and Chancellor Scholtz are not the bad guys here, they were faced with an impossible choice - whether to leave their citize...