Saturday 17 June 2017

Playing politics? I don’t buy it. The people of the UK are angry and will no longer be ignored.

One cant help but look at the Grenfell Tower inferno and ask why.  Why was this allowed to happen?  Both sides of the political spectrum have had their input although with the Conservatives being the ruling party for seven years theyre obviously fighting a difficult battle.

Labour, on the other hand, are the ones that are able to point the finger at their political opponents when it comes to looking for blame.  In fact, some say Labour may have gone too far and are now entering the realms of gaining politically for this.

I refuse to accept this argument from anyone that blames Muslims for terrorism and looks to automatically put that responsibility at the door of every single Muslim.  The Suns front page following Hillsborough looked for blame, trouble is it looked in the wrong areas.

Following a disaster, it is a natural reaction to look for someone to blame.  Its also the best time.  Right now, since when it was first safe to do so, I shall imagine police and fire officers are raking through the debris looking for clues as to how the fire got to be so bad.  Theyre looking for blame.  Investigative journalism should be the same.

I like everyone else first heard about the fire when I woke up on Wednesday morning.  I put the radio on at 7 am Central European Time and heard that there was a fire at a tower block in West London.  It sounded like they were giving it wall to wall coverage. 

I drifted in and out of sleep but when I finally woke up properly I took a look at Twitter and it was full of the news.  One thing that I saw being shared a lot was screenshots of a blog called the Grenfell Action Group.  The post in action was dated on 20th of November 2016.

The first sentence reads thus It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the  KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders. How prophetic.

The strong language goes on, you can read it for yourself if you wish but the last words of the blog are They can’t say they haven’t been warned!” True enough.

If there are any positives to come out of this it is that the media arent telling the people what is going on, this is run by the people and you cant hide from them, they are everywhere.
The people that youre seeing on social media sharing their anger are the people that live in the area.  I saw Andrea Leadsom being heckled, at least she had the guts to go there, by a local resident.  These are the people who have every right to be getting angry over this.  Theyre politicising it and quite rightly.

Theresa May has handled this appallingly.  Oh, how I bet she wishes she could go back a week when she was only a laughing stock for giving up her parliamentary majority.  Now shes a laughing stock for refusing to meet survivors due to security concerns.  Hold my crown joked one Twitter correspondent as he commented on how the 91-year-old monarch showed no such cowardice.

Obviously, Jeremy Corbyn has come in for a bit of stick for also politicising it.  The people of that area are feeling like no-one is listening to them.  Corbyn visiting them at the very least has given them hope.  He has only echoed their concerns.  People have died, the survivors want answers.  Corbyn telling them that he will strive to find those answers is what they want to hear.

Corbyns record speaks for itself, hell support these people and hell get the answers they seek.

Early indications show that the cladding is responsible for why the fire spread so quickly.  The reason why the cladding was necessary is because the building looked ugly for those that had to look from their £2 million “pad”.  I wonder if they’re enjoying the view today?

Someone has already done a bit of investigative journalism on this and apparently each piece of this cladding cost £2 less than its less flammable equivalent, making a total saving of £5,000.


£5,000? Is that the price of safety? Is this the price of life? I wonder how much per person that will work out to be once the final death toll is announced. The death toll currently stands at 58 so at the moment it’s a saving of about £86.20 per person.

Saturday 10 June 2017

Ruth Davidson will be leader of the Conservative Party by the end of the year.

So the Tories will join with the DUP, and the number of seats for the government is 328, a majority of just six.

Labour and anyone that is anti-Tory are celebrating, yet some people are pointing out that this is silly as the Tories won.

First lets look at the positives for The Tories.

They gained seats in Scotland.  It seems like, right now, that the referendum 2.0 on Scottish independence has been cancelled.

I think this is on hold. They had a ref in 2013, the SNP lost but in the GE in 2015 they made massive gains winning, what, 56 seats?

Even pre-Brexit there were calls for another ref, Brexit hasn't happened yet so if it doesn't go the way the Scots want there called be calls for a second ref.

For now the Tories will have taken the gains they made in Scotland had they been offered them pre the result.

In the election overall the Tories did increase their share.  The collapse of UKIP plus the gains in Scotland and collecting a few gains in England helped with this.

There are positives for the Tories in this.

However when you stack them up against their negatives they're insignificant.

Going into this election the Tory share of seats was 331.  If your share is 325 you only need one more seat to be the majority in the house of 650 seats.

Labour had a share of 232, 99 fewer.

Why this is significant is because Labour would never have been in with a chance of been able to gain power to make a challenge had the Tories lost some angry dissatisfied rebel MPs.  Labour were in a weak position.

May called this election because she deemed Labour to be weak so she wanted to increase her share, give herself five more years of power and have the mandate of delivering whatever type of Brexit she wanted.

She gambled and she lost.

So let me explain why this is bad for her.

Within the Tory Party you have traditional Tories who are pro-fox hunting, anti-gay right wing, probably a little bit racist.  This is a minority. Most Tories are fairly liberal in comparison.

In Scotland the leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davidson, is herself gay.  It really must stick in the craw for some Tories to have a homosexual running their campaign north of the border.

Not quite winning enough seats means the Tories have to look to the other parties, offer them a chance at helping them form a government.

In 2010 they had the same situation and did a deal with the Liberals. There are many liberal supporters in the Tories so it isn't too hard to find common ground.  

The Liberals ran a campaign appealing to the younger vote and those that took that bait only to see them betray those who voted for them.

As I have already alluded the Tory Party is a broad spectrum, there are some liberals in there but there are also your traditional Conservatives.

The party most likened to the Tories are the DUP.  Completely believe in the union, the Northern Irish Conservatives fully support Brexit from a further right wing point of view than some Conservatives will feel comfortable with.

The best thing you can say about them is they're evangelical christians....  no, that really is the best thing.

They're homophobic, they make no secret about that, are they happy about Ruth Davidson, is she happy about them?

The DUP are answerable to their voters, they can't ditch their manifesto pledges.

If the Tories shift too far to the right and the opposition Labour offers a fairer Brexit for the country you could see some Tories leaving the party, becoming independents just to prop-up Labour and getting a better deal.

This General Election has unquestionably made Theresa May weaker.  Her leadership is being propped up by the most right wing party in British Politics.

Step forward Ruth Davidson.  If her ambition was to ever be leader of the Tory Party she will get no better chance.

She has shown she can deal with the SNP, shown she can lead and will have a lot of support within the left of the party.

She can get a good deal with the EU for Scottish supporters and nullify any future referendum threat.

She is left wing enough that she can claim the now deserted centre ground of British politics.