Chris Whiteside for the North

  Extracts from the letter from Rosie Duffield MP to the PM resigning the Labour whip over what she described as "sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice." “Dear Sir Keir, I can no longer stay a Labour MP under your management of the party, and this letter is my notice that I wish to resign the Labour Party whip with immediate effect." "You repeat often that you will make the “tough decisions” and that the country is “all in this together”. But those decisions do not directly affect any one of us in Parliament. They are cruel and unnecessary, and affect hundreds of thousands of our poorest, most vulnerable constituents. This is not what I was elected to do. It is not even wise politics, and it certainly is not “the politics of service”." "You also made the choice not to speak up once about the Labour Party’s problems with antisemitism during your time in the shadow cabinet, leaving that to backbenchers, including new MPs such as me." ... "You have ...

Do remember who said that means testing Winter Fuel payments would be the “single biggest attack on pensioners in a generation in our country”. I can't blame you if you've forgotten, since Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves apparently have too. Well, it wasn't the Conservatives, or the "right-wing press" or any of the other people the Labour party like to blame for everything. It was the Labour party themselves in a report published in 2017 when they were in opposition. The same report also suggested that means-testing this benefit could cause an extra 3,850 deaths among pensioners in that year alone as you can read for yourself by clicking on the link below Winter fuel payment cut could kill 4,000 people, Labour research suggests | The Independent If you want to sign a petition calling on the government to reverse this cruel adn damaging decision, you can do so at: http:// keepwinterfuel.com

"Unpopular opinion.  The Prime Minister of the UK should have a salary and expense allowance to enable him and his family to present themselves to the world without having to accept freebies." Douglas Carswell I think Douglas has a point. But to be honest, what really irritates me about out new government is not the freebies but the double standards.. As I don't want to look like a world-class hypocrite, I'm not going to slag off members of the Labour government for doing things which I would have defended Conservatives for doing. But I do think it's legitimate to point out that a surprising number of the most senior ministers of the new government seem to be behaving in ways that they spent the last fourteen years vehemently denouncing members of the previous government for doing.

When Guardian columnists are describing a Labour conference as a "Zombie Apocalypse" it's a pretty good indication that a government recently elected with a huge majority is nevertheless managing to get itself into such difficulties that even it's own activists are not all happy with it ... "Ever get the feeling you’ve woken up to the zombie apocalypse?   When you left the conference on Tuesday afternoon, the place was buzzing. Delegates talking about Keir Starmer’s speech. Trying to get on the guest list to the hottest parties. Then on Wednesday morning, you find that half the conference has disappeared. Just vanished. And those that remain appear to be wandering round in circles. Hungover, trying to work out what’s going on. In search of some existential meaning. Most striking is the lack of queues for food. Though that could be down to the fact there is no food in the food concessions. Even the conference staff have given up. It’s every man and woman for thems...

  "Those expensive glasses that Lord Alli brought him clearly aren't very good, are they? On the autocue, clearly hostages and sausages perhaps look a bit similar." Cristo Foufas , after the prime minister accidentally called for the "return of the sausages" instead of hostages.

 

 

This photograph of  the King and the Deputy Prime Minister has appeared in a number of newspapers, and I think it is worth a caption competition: Entries are suggested in the comments below for a caption for what King Charles might be sating to Angela Rayner. If the entries are good enough to merit it I will have to think of a suitable prize for the best one - though sadly I'm afraid we can't run to thousands pounds worth of free clothes!

And this version of "In the Navy" in which the Village People helped Kelsey Grammer spoof  both the film and their original music video, was the end credits scene for the nautical comedy "Down Periscope." 

  'Don't compare Keir to Boris' pleads minister. Headline in the Independent, summarising comments by Labour party chair Ellie Reeves. Indeed not - it would be most unfair to Boris Johnson to suggest that he is remotely as big a hypocrite as Sir Keir Starmer.  

 

 

"Sir Keir Starmer doesn't like free speech, he just likes free clothes." Caller quoted on the Jacob Rees Mogg show on GB News this evening.

"The high court ruling which quashes permission to open Britain's first dep coal mine for  30 years is both damaging and deeply illogical." Daily Mail article on Saturday. I disagree only on one point - this decision WAS taken be elected politicians, in the Labour government but they used the court to do their dirty work for them by not defending the previous government's decisions against a judicial challenge. Had their been the political will to take the right decision, not the politically expedient one, the mine could and should have gone ahead and would have done less damage to the environment than the extraction of the coal it would have replaced, from places like Poland, Russia and the Appalachians with much lower environmental standards.  

 

Water supply has been restored in Moor Row and, I presume, the rest of the Egremont area previously affected earlier today..

A problem with low or nonexistent water pressure in the Moor Row and Bigrigg area and parts of Egremont has been reported to United Utilities today., They have reported that this is due to a water leak and are working to fix it. Here is their latest update: Postscript - water pressure has now been restored.

 

 

 

This is Gareth Snell, as Labour candidate for Stoke on Trent Central in the 2017 general election, promising to vote against any cut in pensioners' winter fuel allowance. Yesterday as MP for Stoke on Trent Central, Gareth Snell did vote to "means-test," e.g. cut, that allowance, taking it away from ten million pensioners including thousands of his constituents.

Labour's own previous published research suggested that means-testing winter fuel payments for pensioners could cause 3,850 extra deaths a year among pensioners. Today at Prime Ministers' Questions (PMQs,) Rishi Sunak asked Sir Keir Starmer to publish the Labour government's current impact assessment, and whether the number of expected deaths as a result of this policy is higher or lower than 3,850.  Starmer dodged the question and didn't answer it.  What a surprise.

  Things that don’t seen to be part of creating a ‘£22bn black hole’ according to Labour:     💷 £11.6bn for international climate finance      💷 £9.4bn for above-inflation public sector pay rises     💷 £8bn for GB Energy to duplicate the £22bn UK Infrastructure Bank     💷 £9bn in lost tax receipts from shutting down North Sea oil and gas Things that do:     ♨️ £1.5bn Winter Fuel Payment for ten million pensioners.

Today is the 23rd anniversary of a day of infamy, when we should remember heroes and villains. On the 11th September 2001 a group of murderous fanatics, acting in the name of a perverted form of a great religion, hijacked planes and flew them into buildings. They killed thousands of innocent people of all ages, all races, both sexes, people of all religions and none including the faith on behalf of which they claimed to be acting. But in remembering this terrible crime, and the victims, we should also remember the heroes of 9/11: the firemen and other rescue workers  who ran into danger to try to rescue those who were in danger.  

I originally had another quote planned for today, but the passage below from Robert Peston, which is the first half of a tweet about Labour's policy on Winter Fuel Payments, was too powerful not to use.. He describes Labour's explanation of why they had to do this as "laughable" and "absurd" and adds that if Treasury officials really told her that she had to do it - which his Labour contacts all say they did but his treasury contacts deny, saying it was "all her" - then that would mean that   "Its market intelligence is rubbish and it is not the institution it once was." So this is what Robert Peston had to say. "Governments get into a mess when pragmatic decisions that go wrong become tests of authority and principle.  This is the tragi-comic fate of Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer following their decision to abolish universal pensioner entitlement to the winter fuel payment.   The chancellor announced the controversial welfare sav...

A certain number of the braver Labour MPs and their more fanatical supporters have gone on the offensive to justify Labour's policy on the winter fuel payment. A few of these have made quite offensive attacks on older people, must most have sought to justify what they describe as a decision to "means-test" the benefit. One of the very few nuanced comments I have seen on either side of the debate came from Whitehaven resident David Morton, who tweeted back to me as follows: "The real issues are Labour have  ( a ) used a cliff edge not a taper.  (b) that cliff edge is far too low and will throw up millions of hard marginal cases.  But that critique doesn't fit the political spectrum." David's comments are very sensible, and if Labour had actually done what they are wrongly pretending to have done, and means-tested the benefit so rich people don't get it but those who need it do, then the criticisms being thrown at them from the press, the unions and th...

My opponent at the last election, Fabian Hamilton, MP for Leeds North East, has just voted to remove Winter Fuel payments from 13,102 local pensioners in Leeds North East.   The MP for Selby, where I was living last year, has just voted to remove winter fuel payments from 18,438 local pensioners in Selby  The MP who is supposed to represent my current home in Moor Row, Josh McAlister, has just voted to deprive 18,000 local pensioners in Whitehaven and Workington of the winter fuel payment. I could go on for another three hundred and forty five, I will stop at one more: the MP representing the area where my kids went to school, Markus Campbel Savours, just voted to remove Winter Fuel Payments from more than 22,500 local pensioners in Penrith and Solway.

   " 'I felt so strongly I abstained'.   The ultimate definition of a politician without a backbone." Iain Dale  today on X, former Twitter, in regard to the Labour MPs who abstained on the proposal to take Winter Fuel Allowance from ten million pensioners. Just one Labour MP - Jon Trickett - did have the backbone to vote against the measure. Fifty three abstained.

 A Tory move to stop the Labour government's plan to take away winter fuel payment from ten million pensioners has been defeated by 348 to 228 votes - a majority of 120. Labour has a working majority in the Commons of 167. The division list showed Labour MP Jon Trickett supported the Conservation motion while no vote was recorded for 53 other Labour MPs.

 

 

  What a good question - why is he forcing it through now?

 

 Not often that I quote a Labour MP, but there is an exception to every rule. It will be interesting to see who has the guts to vote this way next week. "The mitigation put in by the government is insufficient, we have to go back to why Gordon Brown introduced this. He was emphatic that he didn’t want people to go cold over winter. We absolutely should uphold those values." Rachael Maskell MP

Cognitive dissonance is believing two or more completely incompatible things at the same time. If you type it into a search engine, they could do worse for an example than to take you to a headline in this week's Independent with a quote from Tony Blair. He is presented as saying "Brexit failed - and it triggered mass immigration." Now it's perfectly possible for a well-informed, intelligent and reasonable person to hold either of those views in isolation, although I personally think one of them is broadly right and the other is broadly wrong. But anyone who believes both those things is suffering from a textbook case of cognitive dissonance. It just makes no sense at all to argue that Brexit made things worse in this country and at the same time that it triggered more people to come here.

The Barron Knights were a band who specialised in musical parodies - think of them as a British 1970's to 90's version of Weird Al. Here is their version of a "Top of the pops" rundown followed by their parody version of the theme from the medical comedy "MASH" with lyrics on a subject which most people in Britain wouldn't dare take the mick about then or now - the NHS. Fascinating to see which of the jokes have, and which have not, dated since the 1980's.

Congratulations to Cllr Stephen Crane who gained the Longbeck, Redcar and Cleveland seat form Labour yesterday in a by-election.  

Pressure from senior citizen's groups, Conservatives and others has obtained a vote in Parliament next week to stop Labour’s cut to Winter Fuel Payments. It’s our first big opportunity to stop Labour from depriving millions of pensioners vital support this winter.

  "The jury is still out on Prime Minister Starmer. But one thing we now know for certain. No-one can trust a word he says." Former Labour and Trade Union staffer  Dan Hodges , writing in the Mail this week.

"Asked afterwards why Sir Keir had called Mr Sunak 'PM' five times, a No10 spokesman said 'old habits die hard'." (No 10 spokesman quoted by James Tappenden, writing in the Mail about Prime Minister's Questions this week.)

This is the dignified and positive statement released by Dame Priti Patel as her run to be leader of the Cosnervative party finishes.

"The numbers may be a little worse than they thought at the time, and I think there were some things that were hidden from view, but the overall picture over the next four or five years is very, very similar to what we knew before the election." (Paul Johnson , director of the Independent IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies)  dismisses the Labour government's suggestion that when they got into office they found things dramatically worse than they should reasonably have expected.) 

 As I wrote a few days ago, there are two Conservative leadership elections at the moment. Six MPs are standing to succeed Rishi Sunak as Party leader, and their fellow Conservative MPs will vote shortly to select four of these candidates to go through to the next stage, which is a hustings at Party Conference. The MPs will then vote to whittle those four down to the final two who go to a vote of the whole membership. Voting has also started 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.  As I have written before, 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 chair...

 As all residents of the village will have noticed by now, and all motorists trying to drive through the village found out the hard way, road resurfacing work started today for two weeks, and  all routes through Moor Row in Cumbria are closed to vehicular traffic. The area closed to through traffic during resurfacing work includes a large chunk of the East end of Scalegill Road, all the area of Church Street which would normally be open to vehicles, and a strip of Dalziel Street at the Church Street junction near to the Pearson Close junction. The effect of this is that you cannot drive through Moor Row in any direction - not from the A595 North of Bigrigg to Keekle, or vice versa and not from Wood End to Keekle. This is one of a large number of road works affecting major and minor routes through West Cumbria at the moment. If you are trying to drive anywhere in West Cumbria at the moment, particularly in the vicinity of Cleator Moor, Frizington or Moor Row, I strongly advise ...

"We are now onto the 3rd leadership election of my chairmanship, This is a record I want to keep as it should not be one ever beaten." Valedictory message from (Lord) Peter Booth , who shortly finishes his term as Chairman of the National Conservative Convention. This position, which effectively makes him the head of the volunteer/member side of the Conservative party, is held for a single five-year term.