My puny efforts to get passenger trains and stations reinstated on 38 miles of existing, double track rail lines in Birmingham and the Black Country. Some, such as the Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall rail line has its middle section reserved for trams that forever prevent passenger trains returning.
Dear Laura, Linda and Deborah - and, copied to Anne Shaw (who leads from the front I have noticed and gets a big tick from me) and bcc'd to other key players who might share my concerns.
I would like a response, please from Laura on behalf of you very top women who might be able to do better than the men. Apart from Johnson and Jack, below!
On Wednesday 7 Sept at 0710 hrs on the Radio 4 'Today' programme, I heard Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, say:
"The reason gas prices are so high is because there is less gas around. If the world doesn't use less gas over the next year, we are going to run out."
"The entire economy is at risk here", said the BBC Business Editor, Simon Jack, later the same day on the 'Jeremy Vine Show'.
I believe what follows is basic ecology/economics. For me, HS2, Metro, Sprint are symptomatic and the reality of the fact that we are living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet. Living unsustainably. Somewhat dangerous and foolish! All three transport projects are self-indulgent and greedy at a time when the nation is even more awash in debt. We need to tighten our belts and not splash out on wasteful, extravagant and totally unnecessary projects. We insist on business as usual, with not even a nod in the direction of the multiple crises - climate, energy, inflation, cost of living and, funding of the Ukraine War amongst others - confronting the nation and regions.
I have tried to make this accurate but light-hearted, in the spirit of British pompous pricking and satire:
With Metro WBHE Phase 2, you are putting the "bus on rails" trams on the UK's very last, ready built but unused railway "of national strategic significance".
You have now done so at the Wednesbury end. As you are keeping the sedate trams on the Phase 2 section of another 2 Kms of this nationally important railway, perhaps now keep it on the same railway to allow it to connect to the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct. In this way, at Merry Hill, you:
save my magnificent guerrilla garden from being wiped out;
save the only public open space at Merry Hill;
save nature - of which we are part and depend on for our very existence;
save the view of five lovely hills from the canal towpath and from the boats on the high canal embankment; and
save all the 10,000 sq metres of land designated for housing - after some decades still available for very low cost energy apartments for the poor.
Why are so many people "gaslighting" Boris Johnson?
Many people are raising concerns about Boris Johnson’s dreadful premiership.
Mr Johnson’s three year premiership was marked by negotiating the economic partition of the UK, an unlawful attempt to prorogue parliament, persisent government attempts to break the law, a police fine, a botched attempt to save the career of a disgraced MP, a failed attempt to rig the chairing of the intelligence committee, among the highest number of Covid deaths in Europe, numerous resignations from his Downing Street operations, the most number of ministerial resignation in a single day ever, the resignation of two ethics advisors and the first prime minister to overrule the Lords appointment committee.
Elected by the party membership for his campaign and vote winning skills, Mr Johnson chose to resign because of his collapsing government. Mr Johnson will never lead his Conservative party ever again.
To watch: the Conservative party’s post mortem on the reasons for electing and backing Mr Johnson as their leader.
Would he lie to you? Of course he would! Boris Johnson is a stranger to the truth. Take Partygate as one example. First he told parliament no parties had taken place in Downing Street and that he would be furious if there had been. Then that he had not been to any parties personally. Only work events that looked like parties. Now he's been fined for rule-breaking in Downing Street. And guess who made the rules in the first place and was on the TV most nights persuading everyone to obey them?
But would I lie to you? Definitely not! I have become near enough a transcription service in the ongoing Johnson embarrassment of parties, Covid and Brexit. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. Thank God I am not a news reporter trying to make sense of it all.
The UK is simply the best, the greatest, superior to all others, is unrivalled in every field. We stand head and shoulders above all others. We just cannot help our excellence and brilliance in every field of endeavour throughout the world. Wondrous Boris Johnson & his Cabinet.
The popularity of the party leader is all-important when it comes to elections.
Voters like Johnson and fondly call him Boris or Bojo. They can forgive him for Covid mistakes and just remember the success of the vaccination rollout that they thanked the Prime Minister by voting for him.
They overlooked the bad Covid past after so quickly being vaccinated.
More feelings than facts in voting for HMG.
Don't know what's best for them.
The electorate is right-wing and Labour is regarded as left-wing.
Remainers are more left-wing than Leavers who are more right wing. Anti-foreigner feeling is more likely to lead you to vote for Brexit and the Conservatives. International London voted for Remain, as did Scotland and N Ireland.
Rough, tough areas like the bleak, backward Black Country are very pro-white, typical traditional English culture and harking back to the good old days of Empire and white, English power around the world.
We already know its contours: a barely-there treaty that will make trade harder and destroy jobs. Labour should oppose it.
‘The main impediment to a better deal is not the EU but hardline Tory ideology.’
Boris Johnson always expected news of a deal to be greeted with jubilation. It was to be his moment of triumph after three decades of climbing to the summit of British politics by railing against Brussels. The rightwing press dutifully rallied. Even Nigel Farage declared: “The war is over.”
But with Britain in a state of crisis because of the government’s botched response to the pandemic, most people will react with relief or perhaps indifference. For all the triumphalist claims of the Brexiters, the sunny uplands they told us to expect are no more than another cold, dark, wet winter’s day. The 11th-hour antics means there will be little scrutiny of a trade deal that could shape Britain’s economic destiny for a generation.
As for Trump, no, I don’t believe he is a conservative. His essential message is “Trump first”. The only thing I like about him is his refusal to be cowed by the self-righteousness of his opponents.
On climate change, I resist what I see as a political viewpoint masquerading as “the science”. The aim of the large numbers of alarmists is unprecedented government control and the relative impoverishment of western societies. (SELF: Charles' impoverishment will come once all the very finite fossil fuels are in short supply and becoming too expensive to pump out of the ground.)
CHARLES:
Cheap energy is one of the greatest emancipations produced by our civilisation. (SELF: a pretty short-sighted, foolish, grab what you can while the going is good, sort of society. In fact, a one-off geological inheritance we are blowing in 300 years. And, in the process, with the downside of turning earth into uninhabitable venus with its runaway greenhouse effect!)
ROWAN MOORE:
Yes, I do take the Leave vote seriously. But it was a narrow vote after a flawed campaign (SELF: "sharp practice" - Cameron on prorogation; Cameron should have initially announced the best of three if no one side got 55% or, advisory for MPs to make the final decision) that has been taken as a licence for whatever Brexiter politicians want it to mean. The missed opportunity was to unite the country around a way of leaving the EU that most people would be happy with. I believe Boris Johnson argued for such a thing at the time.
Re climate: if conservatives like yourself don’t want the issue used against you, perhaps you should try harder to show how capitalism can be reconciled with protecting the environment. Thirty years after Mrs Thatcher raised the issue the noises from the right seem to be saying “it’s not really happening” or “it’s not that bad” or “we’ll muddle through”.
What I find really striking is how strongly you feel that the world is against you and likeminded people, and unfairly so. What I see is 40 years in which the Conservatives have mostly been in power (without ever winning a majority of the vote, thanks to our electoral system), in which Thatcherism has been hugely influential, and in which the Daily Telegraph has, with an amazing blurring of editorial and news, helped to put your fellow columnist into Downing Street.
Of course, if you think you are wrongly oppressed anything is allowable – Cummings’s rulebreaking, Johnson’s lies and betrayals – but I would ask you, too, to check your privilege.
However, you have given me a clearer idea of how liberal assumptions can sound from the outside. I intend to watch myself when I fall into the lazy habits that can go with my worldview. I hope you – or anyone else who feels like it – will point them out to me.
"On the 7th day of her illness Mary Wakefield accompanied her son to hospital in the ambulance. I understand her feelings about her child, but would it not have been appropriate for one of her nieces to take the child to hospital rather than risk the lives of NHS staff and patients. We are told that the reason for Cummings making the trip to Durham was so that his neices could take care of the child if required. Surely this would have been such a situation."
"The government have updated their Covid19 slogan:Stay EliteControl your storySave your career"
"66 mile roundtrip to a place of beauty with his wife and toddler in the car to check his eyesight, which btw happens to be his wife's birthday - all classed as legal and reasonable. Does this govt really think the British public is that thick??"
"The public had a choice, elect a caring, thoughtful and righteous man or elect an adulterous, lying(proven) racist; you reap what you sow."
"So let me get this right. A man and his wife who live in London a highly infectious area of the UK, who both think they have COVID decide to drive 200 miles taking the virus with them ?"
"The letter from Eton College must have been released by a Johnson family member, who else could it have been? Nobody knows Johnson better than his family and they know as PM he's way out of his depth."
LETTER TO BORIS JOHNSON. You have managed to turn the Nation from a laughing stock into one that other Nations view with pity and disbelief. You and your hand-picked government of yes men (and women) have presided over and directly caused the deaths of many thousands of British people. You are a man of straw who opportunistically changed your politics to suit the mood of the majority that you yourself, unintentionally or otherwise created and influenced to become anti-EU, with your relentless, fabricated ridicule of the EU for years. You and your policies are directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of precious NHS workers, each one of whom is worth more than you will ever be, what of them? Another empty round of applause, even a memorial or a minutes silence? That should take care of things, huh? Or is it "dulce et decorum est pro-patria Mori" eh Boris? After all, they are just minions, the ones who have to obey the rules. I was a life long conservative, I just hope I live long enough to see Keir Starmer take back control, and start to make Britain live up to its title of "Great" Britain, instead of trailing even the Third World with the "greatest" death toll.
"Cummings is on the SAGE committee and is chief advisor to the government.Their handling of the Covid-19 crisis has been consistently catastrophic..That alone should be reason enough for him to be replaced but no, apparently he is too important."
"Thank you, James. Cumming's was responsible for the herd immunity policy at the start of this crisis and the UK lost 5 precious weeks. I still believe the hidden agenda is herd immunity, so long as the health service isn't overwhelmed. No one knows the true numbers of infected or recovered and we'll never know. All we can do is monitor the excess death rate. Cummings should be in court."
"This man lied during the EU Referendum and never even acknowledged his lies. He supported Theresa May by stabbing her in the back. He has consistently avoided taking responsibility for anything that he was responsible for. He says that he didn't see the email from the EU inviting us to join together to obtain the necessary tests and PPE. He has appointed so many incompetent people to senior positions because those who are competent do not agree with him. He quite literally talks Greek and/or blusters when asked to respond to questions. The latest action in defending a self-centered fool for doing something that he expects everyone else in the country to do makes me feel sick to understand how he has managed to fool so many people for so long. I feel gutted that I do not believe that he will suffer for his misdeeds, incompetence, and selfishness other than to go down as the worse PM in the history of the UK. It is tragic indeed that he still has sufficient support within the conservative party to remain PM."
I thought that Corbyn was articulate, with well reasoned arguments and more substantial answers than Johnson's thinner comments with more doubtful content; even a foolish answer about crawling down the gangway of the House of Commons. I thought Jeremy Corbyn looked and sounded prime ministerial. Boris Johnson appeared hesitant at times and boringly repeated, often the misleading, illusory and empty slogan, 'Vote for me to get Brexit done.' (SELF: the wrong priority; the wrong issue to make the right issue even worse)
During this election campaign that I have followed on radio and TV, Nicola Sturgeon was easily the most impressive party leader. Very able, knowledegable; and, every difficult question thrown at her was taken fair and square and turned to her advantage to actually heighten her stature! She should be the First Minister of all the UK, in my opinion.
Therefore, I would like to see a hung Parliament with a coalition of Labour and SNP. It would be on a confidence and supply basis, it seems. A Corbyn/Sturgeon first minister team - one can but dream!!
Sunday, 27 December 2015
The opening of the debate over whether Britain should bomb Isis targets in Syria may have been uninspiring but it later picked up and the backbench contributions have generally been impressive. Here are 10 of the best. Benn: Benn’s speech was hotly anticipated, as he would be speaking in opposition to his leader, Jeremy Corbyn. He did not disappoint, and it was an electric moment. Benn began by saying that although he would vote differently from Corbyn, he was proud to be in the same party as him. He says Corbyn is not a terrorist sympathiser, referring to remarks made by David Cameron on Tuesday “He is an honest, a principled, a decent and a good man,” he said.
Here is the final section of the speech, which was greeted by (a very unusual) round of applause in the chamber.
Mr Speaker, I hope the House will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues on this side of the house. As a party, we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility, one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road.
And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight and all of the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy – the means by which we will make our decision tonight – in contempt.
And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated and it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists were just one part of the international brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It’s why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice and my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion tonight.
Farron:
In a debate that has involved a lot of dry discussion about strategy and the composition of opposition forces in Syria, Farron’s speech stood out because it was unashamedly emotional and passionate.
“The spectre of the Iraq war in 2003 hangs over this house and hangs over the whole debate that we’re having in this country,” he said. The late former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy had called for intervention in Bosnia and opposed the “counterproductive and illegal” Iraq war – both principled stances, Farron said. “I am proud of Charles on both counts.”
I can give you anecdote after anecdote that would break your heart but one in particular is a seven-year-old lad being lifted from a dinghy on the beach at Lesbos and my Arabic interpreter said to me: ‘That lad has just said to his dad: “Daddy, are Isil here?”’
I cannot stand in this house and castigate the prime minister for not taking enough refugees and for Britain not standing tall as it should do in the world and opening its arms to the desperate like we have done so proudly for many, many decades and throughout our history, if we do not also do everything in our power to eradicate that which is the source of those people fleeing from that terror.
Margaret Beckett, former Labour cabinet minister
Beckett’s speech was impressive for opposite reasons; while Farron appealed to the heart, she calmly and rationally challenged the arguments against airstrikes, speaking with the authority her experience gives her.
A former Labour deputy leader, she was briefly foreign secretary at the end of Tony Blair’s time in office. Until the debate, it was not known how she was going to vote.
She insisted it was wrong to do nothing.
Some say simply that innocent people are more likely to be killed. Military action does create casualties, however much we try to minimise them. So should we on those grounds abandon action in Iraq, even though undertaken at the request of Iraq’s government and it does seem to be making a difference? Should we take no further action against Daesh, who are themselves, killing innocent people and striving to kill more every day of the week? Or should we simply leave it to others?
She said bombing could make an impact.
There are those not opposed in principle to action who doubt the efficacy of what is proposed. A coalition action that rests wholly on bombing, they say, will have little effect. Well, tell that to the Kosovans. Don’t forget, if there had been no bombing in Kosovo perhaps a million Albanian Muslim refugees would have been seeking refuge in Europe.
She also said the UN had urged states to combat Isis “by all means”.
And she said it was important to back the French.
Moreover, our French allies have asked us for such support, and I invite the house to consider how we would feel, and what we would say, if what took place in Paris had happened in London, if we had explicitly asked France for support and France had refused.
Sir Gerald Kaufmann, Labour MP
Another Labour veteran, Kaufman struck a note of moral certainty as he explained why he was voting against expanding airstrikes into Syria.
He said Isis did not represent Islam and people were right to loathe it, but that was not the issue. Instead, the issue was what could be done to get rid of it, and he said he was not convinced by the government’s case. He said bombing would lead to the killing of innocent civilians.
The issue today is about what practical action can result in some way in damaging Daesh, in stopping their atrocities. If what the government were proposing today would in any way, not even get rid of Daesh but weaken them in a significant way ... I wouldn’t have any difficulty in voting for this motion.
But there is absolutely no evidence of any kind that bombing Daesh, bombing Raqqa, will result in an upsurge of other people in the region to get rid of them. What it would do, it might cause some damage – it won’t undermine them. What it will undoubtedly do, despite the assurances of the prime minister, is it will kill innocent civilians.
I am not going to be a party to killing innocent civilians for what will simply be a gesture.
Alan Johnson, former Labour home secretary
Johnson was straightforward and unpretentious as he set out his reasons for voting with the government. His speech also included a sharp dig at Labour’s anti-war MPs.
The former home secretary said he backed airstrikes because he thought they would allow Britain to attack the Isis unit organising attacks abroad.
I believe Isis/Daesh poses a real and present danger to British citizens and that its dedicated external operations unit is based not in Iraq, where the RAF is already fully engaged, but in Syria. This external operations unit is responsible for killing 30 British holidaymakers on a beach in Sousse and a British rock fan who perished along with 129 others in the Paris atrocity a few weeks ago.
It is true that this unit could have moved out of Raqqa, but that is not what the intelligence services believe. In fact, just as al-Qaida needed the safe haven they created for themselves in Afghanistan to plan 9/11 and other atrocities, so [Isis] need their self-declared caliphate to finance, train, organise and recruit to their wicked cause.
He admitted it was a difficult decision and took a swipe at the Corbyn followers who have been attacking Labour MPs over this issue.
Is it a just cause, is the proposed action a last resort, is it proportionate, does it have a reasonable prospect of success, does it have broad regional support, does it have a clear legal base? I think it meets all of those criteria.
I find this decision as difficult as anyone to make, I wish I had frankly the self-righteous certitude of the finger-jabbing representatives of our new and kinder type of politics, who will no doubt soon be contacting those of us who support this motion tonight, but I believe that Isil/ Daesh has to be confronted and destroyed if we are to properly defend our country and our way of life and I believe that this motion provides the best way to achieve this objective.
Alex Salmond, former SNP leader
Salmond spoke against airstrikes with his customary force and clarity, and was more effective than Jeremy Corbyn at setting out alternatives.
He said the UK makes up 10% of the current flights in Iraq and will not make any conceivable difference in Syria, where there are “too many planes already chasing too many targets”. He said we spent 13 times as much bombing Libya as was spent on reconstruction.
He called on the government to instead focus on “interrupting and dislocating the internet strategy which they pursue”.
For one of our fast, smart bombs, we could have a whole squadron of people taking down [Isis’s] websites and stopping the communication and contaminating the minds of young people across Europe and the world. And here I very much agree with the leader of the Labour party about the interruption of the financial resources without which this evil cult could not function... Finally I would say this: we are being asked to intervene in a bloody civil war of huge complexity, we are being asked to do it without an exit strategy and no reasonable means of saying we are going to make a difference. We should not give the prime minister that permission.
John Woodcock, Labour MP
One of the most hawkish MPs on the Labour benches, Woodcock’s speech was notable for the bravery/recklessness/disloyalty (choose according to your preferences) with which he attacked his own party.
I will do everything I can to stop my party becoming essentially the cheerleader, the vanguard for a sort of angry, intolerant pacificism which sets a myriad of conditions which they know will never be met, and will ultimately say no to any military intervention. I think that some of the people on the front bench now, and the people heckling behind me, need to think very carefully about the way in which they have conducted themselves over recent weeks. And we need to do better than this to be a credible official opposition.
Shabana Mahmood, Labour MP
She said she knows how hard it is to vote in favour and against military action, and that it is impossible to say in hindsight that a decision was 100% right or 100% wrong.Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood and former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said she will vote against the government. But her speech included a subtle rebuke to some of her anti-war colleagues, including perhaps Corbyn himself, who have suggested that they can avoid blame by voting against airstrikes.
She said she is a Sunni Muslim and that Isis is not representative of her faith. “In Isil, I am well aware that a Muslim like myself would be killed. So please believe me when I say that I do not simply want to see Isil defeated, I want them eradicated ... But I believe that the action proposed will not work.”
But, she said, that her instinct tells her that military action will not make the UK more of a threat. She concludes:
There has been some suggestion in the last day or so that when the time for apportioning blame comes, those who have voted in favour will have to step forward and there will be nowhere to hide. If you vote against, as I will, the implication is that you can avoid the blame. To those who think this way, let me say this: if only the world were that simple. There are consequences and innocent people will die through action and in-action. Whatever we do tonight we will all bear a measure of responsibility.
Jim Dowd, Labour MP
Dowd gave a pro-airstrikes speech striking for what it said about his own side but, unlike Woodcock and Johnson , he managed to berate his anti-war colleagues with jokes and good humour.
I will certainly not be voting for the amendment for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the weasel words and the sophistry it employs in saying ‘the case has not been made’. That’s the kind of thing the Liberals used to say before 2010 when they had to face up to responsibility.
He also criticised those opposing airstrikes for thinking they were morally superior.
It is almost the impression that those who say the case has not been made have a higher moral standard, a transcendent judgment superior to those who disagree with them.
Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP
Calmly, forensically and without rancour, Tyrie gave a speech explaining why he could not support the government which contained one of the most comprehensive critique’s of Cameron’s case heard all day.
Tyrie said that the west has been intervening in the Middle East for more than a decade, and it has brought down odious dictators. He said, however, that acting as a reflex is not enough. Military action can be effective, but military action without an effective strategy is “folly”, he said, and that is why he will not be supporting the government .
The ruling out of western ground forces is very significant. It tells us that, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the west appears to lack the will, and perhaps the military strength, to commit the resources that might be needed to construct a new order from the shaken kaleidoscope of Syria. As in Libya, it would be relatively easy to remove a brutal dictator from the air, and perhaps also to suppress Isil, but it would be extremely difficult to construct a regime more favourable to our long-term interests.
We do not need to look into a crystal ball to see that; we can read the book. The result of over a decade of intervention in the Middle East has been not the creation of a regional order more attuned to western values and interests, but the destruction of an existing order of dictatorships that, however odious, was at least effective in supressing the sectarian conflicts and resulting terrorism that have taken root in the middle east. Regime change in Iraq brought anarchy and terrible suffering. It has also made us less safe.
Above all, it has created the conditions for the growth of militant extremism. We should be under no illusions: today’s vote is not a small step. Once we have deployed military forces in Syria, we will be militarily, politically and morally deeply engaged in that country, and probably for many years to come. That is why the government’s description of the extension of bombing to Syria as merely an extension of what we were already doing in Iraq is misplaced. We simply have not heard enough from the government about exactly what the reconstruction will mean.
The timing of this vote has everything to do with the opportunity to secure a majority provided by the shocking attacks in Paris. Everybody feels a bond with the French, but an emotional reflex is not enough. Military action might be effective at some point, but military action without a political strategy is folly. We have yet to hear that strategy, so I cannot support the government’s motion tonight.
One happy old man climbing 1,000 major hills in the UK and planting 1,000 trees - both since 1980 and now achieved but continuing!
Full-time cycle commuter since October 2003. My family of six bikes; four humans with four full driving licences; three vacuum cleaners; one pet rat; and, ONE 12.5 year old car.
