RANDOM THOUGHTS

We must not leave £770 billion debt for our children, said the Tories in 2010 when they introduced austerity

Instead, let’s leave £2.67 trillion.

That probably seems like less in the barely formed minds of the current Tory government.

We've had 5000 days of Tory Rule today 😳 I've done some maths
🔹Since May 2010, the
NATIONAL DEBT HAS INCREASED,
on average,
by a staggering
£380 MILLION A DAY
– EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR #5000DAYS

Which begs the question….
Where has all our money gone?

I wouldn't trust the… pic.twitter.com/d8DjtF71Dn

— Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders) January 18, 2024

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A decade of renewal? Really?

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves says Labour will embrace Thatcher’s economic policies.

She says that Thatcher delivered a “decade of national renewal”. Labour will deliver “wide-ranging supply-side reform” and “reform” public services.

Does she have any idea of the devastation Thatcher delivered in her decade of renewal? How she closed factories and threw 3 million people on the dole, and then complained about them being unemployed because she had opened call centres to re-employ people who had spent their lives in mines, factories, foundries and ship yards.

And then she sold everything that she could, telling people that she was creating a shareholder society… which it may have been for a few weeks until the people sold their shares for a big profit to whomsoever would buy them.

And now what was once “the family silver”, as Harold Macmillan called it, is owned, in a large part, abroad.

Electricity, gas, telecoms and, in England, trains and even water are run not as services, but as profit generating companies with so little government regulator oversight that the story of Thames Water doesn’t surprise anyone.

It’s also no surprise that our gas, electricity and trains* (in England) are the most expensive in Europe, and pretty much the worst in most other ways. *Railways were privatised by Major, not Thatcher.

And are any of these privatised companies any good? Are any of us satisfied with the service we get or the price we pay?

So, I’m not sure that Rachel has been well advised to use Thatcher’s model to talk about a decade of renewal.

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The Lovely Lovely Labour Party

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There’s more to Trump than meets the eye

Just out of interest, as I don’t ever pray, nor am I ever in a situation where I see people pray, do adults ever put their hands together like that to pray. I know we were made to put hands together and close our eyes at school, but I thought that was so we wouldn’t be poking our mates.

I wonder what he would pray for… more money maybe?

Or perhaps just a shorter jail sentence?

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