Tories Allow Foreign Governments To Make Billions From Our Vital Services

Giving Up Eating Crisps But Not Giving Up Persecuting The Disabled.

As a vicar’s daughter, Theresa May says she always gives up something for Lent.
But for those of you hoping it might be a Christian-inspired abstinence, like not persecuting the disabled back into work, or giving up stopping child refugees coming here, you’re wrong.
She’s giving up eating her favourite salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps.
Although what she didn’t say is she’s replacing those snacks by nibbling away at cabbages, plankton and chickens.
Otherwise known as putting down Tory ministers during Cabinet meetings.
( Brian Reade, 04.03.2017 )

Trademarking Your Child Is Controlling And Demeaning.

I don’t envy the Beckhams.
Sure they have infinite wealth and fame, but they also have struggles that most people will never face.
David, for instance, has to remember to breathe in and out every three seconds – something that comes so naturally to the rest of us but uses up the majority of his almond-sized brain’s processing power.

And Victoria, as well as the normal nightmares of bringing up children that she has to contend with, this week had to trademark her five-year-old daughter’s name.
Harper Beckham can sleep soundly in her VB jim-jams knowing that no one can stand in the way of her one day launching a handheld vacuum cleaner with her face on it.
That the law will assiduously defend her birthright to launch a brand of self-styled anti-fungal foot cream.
And that one day she can lay the foundation stone of the UK’s first Harper’s Poundshop.

This is conditioning a little girl, and seeing the dollar sign potential in her.
It’s the Chipping Norton version of selling your child off for parts, kidney by kidney, cornea by cornea.
But worse still, it’s denying them an opportunity to plough their own furrow.
Trademarking your infant is controlling and demeaning – no better than getting her a tattoo of the family crest for her sixth birthday.
( Adam Kay, 15.04.2017 )

George Osborne Had So Little To Do He Was Able To Take On Five Other Jobs.

Imagine being an NHS worker in Tatton who’s just been told your pay rise for this year is 1%, or, in most cases, a fiver a week.
Imagine realising this is the seventh year rises have been capped at 1% or frozen, meaning a real term loss of income of 17% since 2010.
Imagine realising that the pay of your MP has just gone up 1.4%, following a 10% rise two years ago, meaning in the past three years his basic wage has shot up by £8,951 to £76,011.
Imagine realising that he has to do so little to earn that salary he has time to take on FIVE other jobs including newspaper editor and financial advisor, and the government ministers who are freezing your wages can’t see a problem with it.
Then imagine how tempted you’d be to run a trolley over his foot if George Osborne hobbled into A&E suffering from an excess fine-dining bout of gout.
( Brian Reade, 01.04.2017 )

Fewer Prison Officers In England And Wales.
There are 7,000 fewer prison officers now than there were in 2010 on one definition.
This fall followed on from the 2010 spending review which reduced funding for the Ministry of Justice.
( Full Fact, 13.02.2017 )

Tories Allow Foreign Governments To Make Billions From Our Vital Services.

Why should we have any faith in government claims that they know how to take on foreign powers to protect British interests?
This week the Chinese bought South West Trains, meaning, along with the Italian, German, French, Dutch, Belgian, Singaporean and Qatari governments, foreign state-owned companies now run three-quarters of our rail routes.
It’s not just railways.
London’s major airports are all foreign-run, four of the Big Six energy firms are in French, German and Spanish hands, and only three of our ten water authorities are British-owned.
Oh, and the French are starting to build nuclear power stations here, with Chinese money.
So our political masters have allowed foreign governments to make billions from asset-stripping our vital services, diverting profits that should go back into our infrastructure to theirs.
( Brian Reade, 01.04.2017 )

The New Fiver Isn’t Quite As Indestructible As We Were Led To Believe.

In the quickest downgrading from “indestructible” to “erm, totally destructible actually” since the Titanic got intimate with an iceberg, it turns out the new fiver isn”t quite as bulletproof as we were led to believe.
Some of these lurid plasticky banknotes have already become so battered and bedraggled that police in Cornwall mistakenly assumed they were counterfeit.
Supposed security features on the fiver (now worth £4.23 since Brexit) have started rubbing off, and poor Winston Churchill now looks like the poster boy for facial psoriasis.
This is despite initial claims that the note would survive the most hostile conditions, such as going through the hot cycle in the washing machine or your partner realising that you forgot their birthday and you just slipped one into a card at the last minute.
The Bank of England has made excuses from “We never claimed it was indestructible” to “It must have been extreme use”, only just stopping short of “A big boy did it and ran away”.
( Adam Kay, 15.04.2017 )

The estimated cost of Trump’s Mexican wall is now £53.5billion when he said it would be £6billion.
Did he plan to build it with Lego?
( Brian Reade, 01.04.2017 )

A Record High Of Zero Hours Contracts.
The number of people working on zero hours contracts has soared to a record high of 910,000.
That figure is up 105,000 – 13% on a year ago, think-tank the Resolution Foundation said.
People on zero hours contracts are paid an average of £1,000 less than full-timers, with no guaranteed hours, holiday or sick pay.
( Jason Beattie, 04.03.2017 )

Amazon Workers Sleeping In Tents In Sub-Zero Temperatures.

Sometimes you read stories about red carpets being rolled out to undeserving people that leave you gobsmacked.
Take the news that Amazon has received £3.6million in Scottish Government grants since 2007 to set up “fulfilment centres” in places like Dunfermline.
Before Christmas it was reported that workers there were so poorly paid they couldn’t afford the commute, so were sleeping in tents, in sub-zero temperatures, by the side of the M90 motorway.

This from a company worth £290billion, which paid only £9.8million tax on profits in the UK despite raking in £6.3billion from sales.
Yet our politicians go cap-in-hand to them, turning a blind eye to their tax affairs and treatment of their zero-hours contracted workers.
And you can be assured it will get worse after Brexit, when, without the “red tape” of EU labour laws, our politicians will seduce even dodgier firms here in order to show we are “open for business” as an off-shore tax haven.
( Brian Reade, 08.04.2017 )

The Oscars Churned Out Fake News Which Sided With White People.

It’s not been a great week for luvvies, what with them turning up for the most high-profile opening of an envelope, only to find it was the wrong one.
And in doing so, giving their biggest comedy target Donald ‘lying, racist’ Trump the last laugh as the Oscars churned out fake news which sided with white people (La La Land) over blacks (Moonlight).

We had the standard self-obsessed speeches, with Viola Davis thanking God for making her an actress “because we are the only profession that celebrities what it means to live a life”.
And there was I thinking God put frocks on priests to do that job in churches, when it was designer frocks on actresses to do it on Hollywood sets.

Then there was Emma Watson telling Vanity Fair that she’s banned fans taking selfies with her because they immediately post them, which lets the world know her exact location.
“I just can’t give that tracking data,” she said, sensationally forgetting she’s a former child actor from Harry Potter films – not a nuclear missile from North Korea.
( Brian Reade, 04.03.2017 )

Michael Gove Transformed Our Children Into Angry, Disaffected Young People.

Courtesy of a Michael Gove-inspired pressure cooker regime, our kids are now automatons, constantly under stress from exam bombardment.
I have to admit I shed a tear over one message in particular.
Straight from the coalface, Gary, head teacher of a Middle School in West Yorkshire, wrote to thank me for high-lighting the effects that the battery hen-type education of our kids is having on their mental health and happiness.

“The pressure we have to place the children under is immense,” he says.
“We are forced to push them as hard as we can, otherwise we are judged to be failing.”
He attached a letter from a parent, which, he said “greatly pains me”.
It’s from a mum at her wits’ end because her 10-year-old son, “for the first time ever in his school career attempted to feign illness so that he could be absent”.
She says: “A happy, fun-loving, kind, empathetic human being has been transformed into an angry, disaffected young person who frequently describes himself as thick, stupid or dumb.”

“He is none of those things,” she states, “But why does he believe it to be true?”
She concludes: “The answer for him, and presumably many others, is of course KS2 SATs.
“The pressure to succeed by passing these tests is tantamount to abuse. Training and cramming is not education. Introducing GCSE-standard work to a 10-year-old brain does not make them 16. It just produces frustration and anger.”

She adds: “To see our son, a happy bright light only a few months ago, try and make himself vomit in order to skip school has been a real shock. How many other lights will be extinguished before their 12th birthday?”
Many I fear, if the current regime, described by head teacher Gary as “the pernicious environment in which pupils and teachers have to work”, persists.

He says education should be “a thing of beauty and joy, not an exam factory which reflects self-satisfied glory on our politicians” or is used to “hold teachers to account for simply trying to open the eyes of our children to the amazing world in which they live and to encourage them to make a positive difference”.
Gary very kindly thanked me for being “one of the few voices in the media who regularly stands by teachers”.

It is my pleasure to stand beside a profession which is hugely overworked, underpaid and under-appreciated.
As Gary heartbreakingly told me: “Teaching can be a very lonely place.”
For their hard work and forbearance, their dedication in the face of government ignorance, for providing our precious kids with the essential building blocks for rich, creative, fulfilling, happy lives, teachers deserve to be lauded, not lambasted.
( Fiona Phillips, 25.03.2017 )