Tag Archives: Rishi Sunak

4th June picture of the day…

04 Tuesday Jun 2024

Posted by in Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, West Yorkshire

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We’ve had another quiet day here at Bigland Towers due to the fact we’ve both had plenty of office work to keep us occupied, plus the weather’s been crap! Consistent it ain’t! There’s been no ‘flaming June’ here today. Instead we’ve had wind, rain and temperatures that make you want to wear several layers. It’s only this evening that the skies have cleared and the sunshine’s returned, but the temperature’s remained in single figures.

Still, I’ve had the latest general election fiascos and maneuverings to raise a smile. Honestly, what an absolute shambles for the Tories! I cannot think of another time when – instead of narrowing the polling gap, the party of Government widens it! Sunak’s an absolute disaster at hustings and his PR team want shooting (that’s metaphorical, OK – just before some people start to get wound-up). His campaign’s one disaster after another. Who in their right mind thought using an empty whiteboard in a Tik-Tok video was a good idea? Labour’s PR people were like greased lightning with their response, which got far more views than the original. Then the Lib-Dems (who seem to be having the most fun) photobombed Sunak from a boat.

Now, to add to the Tories sense of doom, Nigel Falange – sorry – Farage, has announced he’s standing for Parliament in Clacton! Admittedly, this is the ultimate in cynical opportunism by Farage. Originally, the UK wasn’t important enough for him. He claimed he was going to be a major player in getting grifter-in-Chief, Donald Trump back in the White House. Then Trump became a felon with 35 convictions, so the grifters gravy-train looked like it was going to hit the buffers. Suddenly, Farage did a reverse-ferret and decided that the UK election was worth his time. Well, grifters gonna grift.

Could he finally get elected on his eighth attempt? Possibly, Clacton’s very Brexity and if they’ve learned nothing since the referendum, voters may just be stupid enough to choose him. But it’s not guaranteed. Part of me hopes they will as it will finally expose the charlatan to UK public scrutiny in the way his previous role as an MEP never did. He’d make an absolute arse of himself in the House of Commons, if he could ever bother to turn up. He’d be a party of one. Can you imagine, just him and the other party of one (Jeremy Corbyn) having to share the end of a bench? His only hope would be that what’s going to be left of the Tories after the election will welcome him back – driving the Tory rump even further to the right and away from the political mainstream. Thinking about it, that might actually help put the final nail in the Tory party’s coffin…

Still, the whole circus will keep the media occupied for a while, just as the milk-shake throwing incident has today. Was it a set-up as some people claim? I’ve no idea, but I wouldn’t put it past Farage. He has form for these things. Either way, none of it is going to affect Labour’s standing in the polls, just as the hard-left shenanigans haven’t. Labour had a wobble over Diane Abbott standing, but it’s been a minor one that’s soon been eclipsed by other events. Meanwhile, there’s a debate twixt Starmer and Sunak in Manchester this evening, not that I’ll be watching as I’ve better things to do.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in London for a press lunch, so expect another rolling blog and pictures. In the meantime, here’s today’s picture. Yesterday Dawn and I had to pop over to Huddersfield to visit the dentists, afterwards we had a lovely lunch at Arcade coffee in the gorgeous Byram arcade before Dee had to call into her company office at the station water tower. That’s when I spotted today’s picture…

Wait? What?

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28th May picture of the day…

28 Tuesday May 2024

Posted by in General election 2024, Manchester, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Railways, West Yorkshire

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Apologies for the lack of blogging recently but I’ve been rather busy both personally and professionally, so something had to give. Plus, I’d have been tempted to indulge in some spleen-venting o ver the utter shit-show that’s the Tories election campaign, but more on that later!

The bank holiday weekend was rather sociable, partly because it was Dawn’s birthday on Saturday and we’d arranged to have a day out with her parents before going for a meal. We visited somewhere they knew well but I’d never been to before, Wentworth Garden Centre near Barnsley. It’s not just a garden centre (although that’s huge, and the cafe equally massive) but also an ornamental garden. I was impressed with both – especially the garden centre as it possessed a far greater variety of plants than any near us – and the prices were very reasonable too, which caused both Norah and I to come away with various green goodies. In my case a couple of colourful and unusual ornamental plants as well as herbs to replace some I’d lost last winter. Come the evening we adjourned to a favorite food haunt, Punch Tapas in Honley, near Holmfirth. The food’s always good, the atmosphere never too frenetic and the staff ever friendly and attentive.

The rest of the bank holiday weekend was spent at home doing not very much at all due to the weather, which has resorted to being atrocious. We’ve had huge amounts of rain dropping from end of the world coloured skies – as well as regular claps of thunder. To be honest, Dee was glad of the rest as she’s been working at 110% recently. I was quite happy to be housebound too as it gave me the opportunity to clear the decks of all the pictures I’d taken over the past week and get them out to clients – and get paid! Now we’re in a new week and the end of yet another month. The weather’s showing no sign of improving – exactly the opposite. We’ve more yellow warnings of thunder and heavy rain so I’m thankful that I’ve another day at home, writing for a living.

Of course, I’ve been keeping one eye on the election, and I have to say I’ve never known such an utter shit-show. It’s hard to believe the Tories once had a reputation as a fearsome electoral machine because all we’ve seen since Sunak dropped the news he was calling it has been one disaster after another. Over the weekend he came up with another ‘brainwave’ no-one in his party had been consulted on – bringing back national service. In fact, the whole idea had only been dismissed by his Government in Parliament the week before! But that’s ‘Head Boy’ Sunak for you. He only listens to a tiny bunch of ‘think-tanks’ he’s surrounded himself with. To say the idea was greeted by almost universal derision and condemnation would be an understatement. Of course, the right-wing press and client journalists tried to cheerlead for the idea, but it’s shot full of so many holes it’s had the opposite effect to the one he was mad enough to expect. As usual, the devil’s in the detail (not that there’s much of that) but the interesting admission was that the hopelessly underestimated cost (£2.5bn) would be paid for by scrapping grants to the regions that were meant to make up for losing EU regional funding after Brexit! Yep, the regions get shafted again!

This madcap idea was meant to appeal to the ‘hang ’em and flog ’em brigade, which is mostly the old. But not too old, as you’d have to be at least 84 to have done National Service (my FiL did, he’s 90 this year). To reinforce this appeal to an older generation, Sunak came up with a second ‘brainwave’, which is the ‘triple lock plus’. What’s that you ask? It’s a ruse to stop pensioners having to pay tax on their pensions as the Tories have frozen personal tax allowances until 2028. That ‘fiscal drag’ is why more people are now paying tax, but pensioners will become exempt. It’s just another mad ‘back of a fag-packet’ idea.

To say this appeal to the elderly is misjudged is becoming more obvious by the day. It’s widely accepted that the old make up the majority of the Tory membership and that it’s the over 65s who’re most likely to vote Tory, but the very latest polling research from Redfield and Wilton has put the cat amongst the pigeons. Here’s their breakdown of voting intention by age.

Labour are ahead in every age demographic – even the over 65s! In fact, only 26% of over 65s intend to vote Tory! The bribes aren’t working…

Polling across the board shows that the Tories are toast. If the polls are moving, the majority show Labour’s lead’s increasing. Nothing Sunak is doing is moving the dial in his favour. Mind you, you have to wonder what the next batshit idea his friends in the right-wing ‘think tanks’ will come up with. Bring back hanging? Send kids too young for national service up chimneys? Ban something – maybe Gay pride, or the Notting Hill carnival? I wouldn’t put anything past these people. God help us – we’ve 5 more weeks of this crap to go. Meanwhile, Labour are looking more and more like the adults in the room, just waiting to take over the reins of power.

There is one massive omission in all of this. Any talk of the biggest elephant in the room. Brexit. You can see why Labour are staying schtum. As the Napoleon quote goes – ‘never interrupt you enemy when he’s making a mistake’. What’s amazing is that the Tories aren’t talking about Brexit either. After all, they fought the 2019 election under the slogan ‘get Brexit done’. They did (supposedly) so why are they not crowing about the ‘success’ of Brexit, and how they’ve delivered on all it’s promises. Y’know – the ‘sunny uplands’ and all that, where we’re now richer and more important in the world, having ‘taken back control’? Anyone who’s not a fanatical Brexiter knows the answer to that one, but for some reason, the mainstream media give the Tories a free pass on that question…

OK, that’s enough politics for one night. Now I’ll leave you with today’s picture, which is from Friday’s visit to Newton Heath Traincare centre in Manchester, not a place many people get to visit.

A trio of the oldest diesel train fleet operating on the national network – all of which are now operated by Northern (bar 3 they’ve sent to work the Bedford to Bletchley line). As an aside, did you know one of the world’s most famous football clubs started out as the depot’s own team? Nowadays they’re better known as…Manchester United, which was formed in 1878 as Newton Heath LYR Football Club by the railway’s Carriage and Wagon department!

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

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Oh, God. It’s only day 2 of the election…

23 Thursday May 2024

Posted by in General election 2024, Politics

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No, don’t worry – I’m not going to be commenting on every day of the 2024 general election. The past 24 hours are more than enough! This is going to be a long six weeks as Sunak has already set the bar low. So low he’s limbo-dancing! Yesterday’s fiasco outside Downing St was merely the start. Today we’ve learned that he’s managed to piss-off many of his own MPs and Cabinet – none of whom knew he was calling an election. Yep, in typical ‘head boy’ style he didn’t think it worth consulting (or forewarning) his own Ministers (and certainly not his lobby-fodder, the backbenchers) over his decision. Understandably, many are furious. They’re about to have their careers cut short and their holiday plans ruined in order to fight a kamikaze election they can’t possibly win. It seems the word on the Tory streets was they could expect an autumn election so had time to prepare one way or another. Instead, the shit hits the fan in 42 days. Mind you, Sunak has form for making big (bad) decisions off his own bat. The Covid enquiry is hearing how no-one (who mattered) was consulted on ‘Eat Out To Help Out’, just like they weren’t consulted when Sunak took it upon himself to cancel large chunks of HS2. Now there’s the general election. His sense of entitlement comes across when he’s being interviewed, hence his tetchiness when someone dares question his decision-making.

In the meantime, Sunak’s hit the campaign trail, and the gaffes are as regular as London buses. In Wales he visited a brewery (the jokes just write themselves really) where he asked people how they were looking forward to the European football championships. A punter pointed out that Wales wasn’t in them as they didn’t qualify – and not one of his army of PR people had thought to check that fact! Cue awkward looks…

It was even worse at a heavily controlled and choreographed visit to a biscuit factory, where a small groups of ‘workers’ were mean to feed him prepared questions. It turned out that two of the workers asking them were actually local Tory Cllrs cunningly disguised in high-vis vests to blend in. Needless to say, the were easily recognised and the event blew up in Sunak’s face. I said yesterday that he has no spontaneity and his team would do their best to keep him away from ordinary members of the public, but this was just as big a disaster.

To add to the farce, today two Tory Ministers announced they were standing down at the election. Will this become a stampede I wonder? One of them was the MP for Bexhill and Transport Minister for rail and HS2, Huw Merriman. I was extremely critical of Huw in this recent blog, ‘never trust a Tory’ due to his extremely ill-judged comments on HS2 funding being ‘diverted’ to the Hope Valley route. His claims did his reputation no favours at all. To his credit, he admitted his error on the ‘Green Signals’ podcast, although I felt his contrition should have gone as far as deleting his Tweets (which still remain).

However, there’s no doubt that Huw was a decent member and later Chair of the Transport Select Ctte and has done some good work in his job as a junior Minister which has earned him praise from parts of the rail industry. The big calls (like scrapping HS2) were made way above his pay-grade but he was still expected to defend the indefensible. Notwithstanding that, he has spent a lot of time listening to voices within the industry so will (according to informed sources) leave a positive legacy because of some of the calls he was able to make.

From my perspective, I’d say whatever’s left of the Tory party will be the poorer for the departure of MPs like Merriman. God knows, the Tory talent pool is shallow enough as it is. What it’ll look like after the expected bloodbath on July 4th should worry everyone, no matter what their politics are.

No doubt the gaffes will continue. Sunak just can’t help himself and the team he has around him are so hopeless and unprepared they’re unable to prevent them. I suspect his polling is going make interesting reading in a weeks time. At this rate we’re moving from the landslide to bloodbath scale of elections…

I’ll refrain from commenting until next week.

In the meantime, I’m back on the community rail trail tomorrow with the final day of Community Rail Week. Expect a rolling blog tomorrow.!

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If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Wet, wet, wet…

22 Wednesday May 2024

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That’s not just a comment on the weather but also the announcement by Rishi Sunak that he’s called a general election for the 4th July. We’ve had a thoroughly miserable day here in the Pennines. The rain has been unceasing. There’s been a real deluge here that makes summer feel even further away. I’ve spent most of my time glued to a computer screen as I’ve been busy editing all the pictures I’ve taken the past few days in order to clear the decks and get them out to clients and/or on my Zenfolio website as I’ve a packed calendar over the next few weeks.

Whilst doing so I’ve kept one eye on the rain outside and the other on political news and the speculation that Sunak was going to announce an election. We’ve been here before as this isn’t the first time we’ve heard Sunak was going to make an announcement only for it to prove to be a damp squib. This time it was true. Finally! In typical Sunak fashion it was all rather farcical. Not only was it wet here, it was chucking it down in London too! So, what did Sunak do? Plonked his podium outside number 10 and make his announcement in the pouring rain, which led to him looking an even bigger drip than usual. To add to the farce, Steve Bray, the indefatigable pro EU campaigner had got wind of what was happening and played D-ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ at such a volume he competed with the weather as to who could drown Sunak out more! Those with long memories will remember this tune as Tony Blair’s Labour anthem in the run up to their 1997 election landslide victory! You can view his speech here on the BBC website. Here’s a screenshot.

Wet, wet, wet. And it’s not just the rain I’m talking about…

It really was classic ‘head boy’ Sunak. He knows best, everything’s going to plan and we just have to forget the past 14 years of the Tories running the UK into the ground and trust him. Only no-one in their right mind does. No-one with any critical faculties falls for it, including many of his MPs, who’re jumping ship to find other jobs before all’s lost. It was blather. Here was the one announcement people actually wanted to hear him make and it turned it into a metaphor for his whole time in office and provided social media with a rich seam of memes. Hardly the kick-off to an election campaign you’d plan, but someone did. Someone thought him going out without an umbrella to stand in the pouring rain in front of an equally wet and miserable press pack was a good idea, which tells you everything you need to know about who Sunak’s surrounded himself with. Can you imagine what he’s going to be like at the hustings? How many more disasters there’ll be? Sunak is incapable of relating to ordinary people in any meaningful way, but then – he’s never mixed with ordinary people. His whole life’s been one of privilege and entitlement. He makes Teresa May (famously nicknamed ‘The Maybot’) seem almost personable.

We now have 43 days of electioneering before we see the light at the end of the Tory tunnel. The Tories are so far behind in the polls they’ll need a miracle to save them. But don’t think that doesn’t mean they won’t put up a fight. I fully expect them to run a very dirty campaign. I’m also slightly concerned that people will think the result is such a foregone conclusion that they don’t bother voting. Please, don’t make that mistake. We’ve been here before and apathy helped foist Brexit on us.

Let’s not waste this opportunity to get rid of the Tories kakistocracy – and not just for one term either. With tactical voting they could be reduced to less than 100 in number. Such a crushing defeat is likely to lead to the party splitting, with the real swivel-eyed loons taking them even further to the right (and the wilderness) but with the possibility of a new centre-right part emerging from the ashes, which would be a good thing for democracy. I’ll be watching how things unfold with interest…

UPDATE.

I was right about the farce continuing. This evening Sky News was thrown out of the PMs election announcement to the party faithful! Oops! And it’s only day one…

Social media has been quick to rip the pee out of Sunak. Here’s two of my favourites from Twitter.

Meanwhile, ‘Cold War Steve’ came up with this gem…

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Schadenfreude…

03 Friday May 2024

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It’s a lovely German word that has no equivalent in English. It means pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune. Not something to boast about most of the time, but looking at the election results that have come in so far I’m going to indulge myself! Not only have the Tories lost their Parliamentary seat in Blackpool North, they’re getting hammered across the country in the local elections. Here’s the scores on the doors at the time of writing.

The cherry on the cake was Boris Johnson, the architect of the voter ID gerrymandering scheme hoist by his own petard. He was turned away from a polling station for – not having the correct ID! Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s a perfect metaphor for the shambolic incompetence of the modern Tory party and its leaders.

The Tory’s agony isn’t over. This election is a long, drawn-out affair. Results will continue to come out until Sunday when the results of Mayoral elections will be announced. I’d really like to be a fly on the wall at Conservative Party Headquarters at the moment as I expect the atmosphere is akin to the last days of the bunker. No amount of spinning can disguise how bad these results are. Oh, their might be a couple of positive results where they don’t lose seats, but the trend is clear. They’re doomed.

In this report and video from ITV Anglia the leader of the Tories on Harlow council desperately tries to spin losing as ‘we’ve bucked the trend’. Err, the party’s majority was cut from nine to a single seat! That IS the trend!

Another amusing thing is Reform PLC, the limited company that pretends to be a political party. Despite their polling numbers (they almost beat the Tories into 3rd place in Blackpool South) they’ve not won a single council seat. The only thing they’re good for is abstracting votes from the Tories.

I’ll watch the rest of the results with interest, but today’s a good day…

If you want an intelligent and informed analysis of the results so far (and later) I’d recommend following Britain Elects on Twitter. Here’s a link to their early analysis of performances across the country.

https://publish.twitter.com/?url=https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1786286607232106528#

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Huw Merriman MP. Never trust a Tory…

10 Wednesday Apr 2024

Posted by in Hs2, Huw Merriman MP, Politics, Railways

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I’ll be honest, when I first heard that Huw Merriman the Tory MP for Bexhill and Battle since 2015 had been appointed Minister of State for Rail and HS2 back in October 2022 I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, He’d been a member of the Transport Select Committee since September 2017 so was well versed in the issues. Then, in January 2020 he’d been appointed Chair of the TSC and seemed to make a pretty good fist of it. He was intelligent and balanced, grasped the issues and managed to keep idiots like his fellow Tory MP Greg Hands (the virulently anti HS2 MP for Bucks) under control.

Sadly, as soon as he was appointed to the Government, the Tory Borg chip was implanted and he was assimilated.

Merriman in 2022. Enthusiastically backing HS2 all the way right until his boss did a volte face – and so did Merriman…

Telling the truth gave way to Owellian ‘Truthspeak’ – as today’s example shows. Merriman attended the opening of the rebuilt Dore and Totley station on the Hope Valley line which has being rebuilt. Here are his utterly BS tweets.

Jesus, where to start? Success? The December timetable has been delayed. There are no extra trains. When there are they’ll be limited to one extra train per hour because further work needs to be done at Manchester and Sheffield to provide capacity. The irony? Both of those locations were due to have capacity added by the very thing Merriman’s boasting about funds being diverted from – HS2.

Oh, the diverted funds bit is utter horseshit too (and Merriman knows it). You see, the Hope Valley upgrade was given funding in 2021, something that seems to have slipped Merriman’s mind – despite his time on the TSC. Here’s the DfT’s press release from that year announcing the work.

Claiming this is a ‘Network North’ project is complete bollocks. A fag packet would be embarrassed to have had this so-called plan drawn up on it. A ‘plan’ which dates from November 2023 – when Rishi Sunak unilaterally decided to cancel HS2 phases 2a and 2b. Y’know – the bits that were meant to deliver ‘levelling up’. The claim that this fictional money (which wasn’t due to be borrowed until 2029) has funded a project started in 2021 shows how Merriman and his boss (Sunak) are gaslighting people – and how Merriman is happy to promulgate a lie. Yeah, I know – he’ll pull the usual pained face he does when he’s caught out. But make no mistake, this is a lie.

Oh, I forgot. Electrification of the Hope Valley? Dream on! That was never a priority in anyone’s plans. It was added to ‘Network North’ ‘cos whoever wrote on the back of that particular fag-packet hadn’t checked real priorities. Of course, it’s pure co-incidence that some of the projects that did get a mention (like the Stocksbridge branch) go through Tory marginals and ‘red wall’ seats, honest! By the way, remember, this is written on the bottom of page 24 of the NN fag-packet plan.

So, what’s the business case for Hope Valley electrification? There isn’t one. And, if there was, it’s been hopelessly compromised by the scrapping of HS2 East and West.

How are any of Merriman’s boasted about improvements going to be delivered before the next general election? They’re not. Nothing’s going to happen at all. The Tories are taking you for fools. Are you going to fall for it again? I won’t. I gave Merriman the benefit of the doubt. As the old saying goes, ‘fool me once’…

A pair of East Midlands Railway DMUs pass through the Hope Valley in September 2023

I’ll leave you with this famous quote from a Russian writer and dissident which sums up the state of Tory politics right now.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Some political spleen-venting…

02 Tuesday Apr 2024

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I don’t do this very often nowadays, mainly because British politics is in such a dire state that once I’d started I’d never stop! There’s only so much invective I could use before one can come up with before you’re tempted to resort to some good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon verbal shorthand!

However, Easter has given me time to think about what’s happening now that Sunak has bottled out of calling a May election. Truth be told, his utterances give the impression that he’d like to not call one at all. I’m beginning to think the unthinkable, that he may actually try and hang on until the last possible moment, which would mean a general election in January 2025. The more I see of the man the more I feel his absolutely no idea what he’s doing, other than desperately hoping things might pick up with the economy, the weather might stop a few more boats, and that he just might manage to get some people on a plane to Rwanda. I’m also suspecting one of the reasons he’s not keen on calling an election is he’s no idea what to put in an election manifesto. He and the Tories are so out of ideas they’ve nothing positive to sell to people. It’s no wonder Labour are keeping their policies and initiatives close to their chests as chances are the Tories are that bereft of ideas they’d nick them.

Every time I see Sunak on TV or hear him on the radio I cringe (and resist the temptation to throw things). His inane laughter and cheesy perma-grin just grates. No matter how serious the question he’s asked he laughs – as if the whole thing’s a joke. Not that voters are laughing. Judging by the polls it seems most people gave up believing the Tories quite some time ago. Here’s one from pollster Redfield Wilton, who are (themselves) regularly more optimistic about the Tories polling numbers.

From this it’s clear that Labour are holding their vote, but the Tories are hemorrhaging, with support draining away to Reform. This makes for some interesting scenarios – none of them good for the Tories. Mind you, they’re not good for Reform either because their polling numbers aren’t going to translate into seats won. Reform aren’t polling quite as well as UKIP did in their heyday. And how many seats did UKIP actually win before they crashed and burned? One (for a year).

What Reform are doing is help destroy the Tory party by dragging it further to the right. They’re not alone in this. The Tories (having lost the plot) are also influenced by another echo-chamber – GB ‘News’, the TV channel that’s really little more than a money-laundering operation that allows its millionaire owner to syphon off money in ridiculous salaries to Tory MPs on his books. The Tories, caught up in this hothouse, are falling for the idea they only way they’re going to win is by tacking ever further to the right to fight ‘woke wars’ as a smokescreen to avoid talking about what a shitshow they’ve made of the economy. As history has shown time and time again, the winning ground is neither left nor right, it’s in the centre. Still, if the Tories want to continue down this road, that’s fine by me. I can see where it’s leading even if they can’t. Some projections put the Tories on as little as 98 seats after the election, with many prominent Tories losing their seats. Notice I say prominent, not talented? After the shenanigans of the Johnson years, when the party was defenestrated by him with many of the intellectuals and ‘One nation’ old guard being thrown out, they were left with talentless horrors in their place – especially some of the ‘red wall’ intake (Gullis, Cates and Anderson) to add to the likes of Braverman, Patel and Jenrick. I wouldn’t trust some of these people to run a whelk stall, never mind a country.

I’ve a strong suspicion that the Tory party will split after their election hammering. No-one believes they can win (even many of their own MPs) the only question is just how bad a drubbing they’ll get. The ‘lucky’ ones who hold onto their seats will fight over the soul of the party (that’ll be difficult, it hasn’t got a soul: Ed) and the likelihood is the swivel-eyed right-wingers will win and drag it ever rightwards, making it untenable for any moderates who may survive. To add to the fun. If the remnant of the Tory party does split there’s every chance that the SNP would become the official opposition through sheer weight of numbers! This recent Survation polls for the Times/Sunday Times put the cat amongst the pigeons by outlining a possible seat scenario. But remember, these polls can’t take into account tactical voting, which has the potential to make the numbers even worse for the Tories.

How is Sunak going to pull this back? No-one believes he can. All he can do is hang on and pray. The longer he does, the more dosh he and his friends make as they wreck and asset-strip the country. What will be interesting to see is the result of the Mayoral and local elections on May 2nd when 107 local authorities across England go to the polls with just over 2000 seats up for grabs. If this turns into another Tory rout, will the Tories turn on Sunak?

Whatever happens and whenever he calls it, the next general election is going to be a popcorn event. I’ll certainly be ensuring I have a well-stocked fridge and the next day off – and I won’t be alone! The Tories are a dead man walking. The only question remaining is just how much more damage they’re going to do and how many more £bns they’re going to trouser/waste before they have their cold, dead hands prised away from the door of No 10…

All of which means Labour are going to have a mountain to climb once they’re in power. The Tories seem determined to leave scorched earth behind them. They don’t give a shit (literally) about the state of the country – all they care about is clinging on to power and a ticket for the gravy train. We may rejoice at them getting kicked out and adults being back in charge, but that’s when the hard work begins…

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

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11th March picture of the day…

11 Monday Mar 2024

Posted by in Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Yorkshire

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Some days it’s difficult to take this country seriously anymore. Today’s been one of them. One section of the media has been hyperventilating over a badly photoshopped picture of a member of the royal family and her kids, whilst another has been following the latest political psychodrama as a former Conservative deputy Vice-Chairman (Lee Anderson) defects to the Reform party, giving them their first MP.

Try as I might (and I’m really not trying very hard) I can’t get excited about the photograph. There’s an awful lot of things to be bothered about in the UK right now – and this isn’t one of them. Watching the Conservative party falling apart however, is becoming quite a spectacle.

Lee Anderson (or ’30pflee’ as he’s known to many) was always a disaster waiting to happen for the Tory party. Supremely unfitted to be an MP, he was elected in to represent Mansfield as part of the 2019 ‘red wall’ collapse of Labour seats. He could have remained in political obscurity until he was booted out in this years general election but Rishi Sunak had other ideas and (over)promoted him to the job of Conservative Party Deputy-Chairman. This says little about Anderson but a huge amount about how useless Sunak’s judgement is.

Needless to say, Anderson was a disaster and got himself suspended from the Tories after refusing to apologise for Islamophobic remarks he made about the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Now , having originally defected from Labour to the Tories, Anderson’s jumped ship to Reform, where he’ll no doubt provide plenty of popcorn moments before the voters of Ashfield have chance to eject him at an election. He’s already gone full fascist at the press conference, saying he wants his country ‘back’. I almost feel sorry for Reform. They’re cock-a-hoop at having recruited him (don’t you mean ‘bought him’? Ed) as they now have an actual MP, their problem is they’re got yet another ego the size of a planet competing for attention with Tice, Farage and Habib (who failed to get elected in Wellingborough recently). I predict this will not end well! On the bright side, it’s going to cause just as much consternation in the Tory party as Sunak will come under even more pressure to drag the party further to the right – which is only going to end in tears (and electoral oblivion). Will any other Tory MPs follow Anderson to Reform? Possibly, but it won’t save them. Remember Chuka Umunna and the other breakaway MPs who formed ‘Change UK’? That went well. Or Douglas Carswell, the only UKIP MP? He’s now playing his banjo for a right-wing ‘think-tank’ in Mississippi, USA!

I have a feeling that the next round of political polls could be very interesting! The Tories have already sunk to 18% in one recent poll whilst YouGov has seen then regularly poll around 20% (27 points behind Labour). As for Reform, sections of the media are really trying to big them up but the truth is they’re nowhere near hitting the polling heights UKIP did at their Zenith – and they still didn’t win a single seat at a general election! This polling tracker in the Guardian shows the extent of the Tories woes…

My advice? Go buy some popcorn to enjoy whilst you watch the state of UK politics. Really, it’s no laughing matter, but at the moment there’s not a lot else to do but watch the Tory infighting until Sunak finally plucks up the courage to call an election. I still think it might be May. If so, we’ve only got 16 days left to find out as March 27th is when the announcement has to be made by. If not, then this farce will likely drag on until the autumn at the earliest – God help us!

Away from politics and despite the gloomy weather it’s been a productive day here at Bigland Towers. We’re gearing up for the Community Rail Awards which will take place this time next week. Plus, the pair of us have booked a four night break in North Yorkshire shortly afterwards for some ‘down-time’. In the meantime I’m hoping to say ‘sod the weather’ and get out with the camera tomorrow. For now I’ll leave you with today’s picture, which is a view of one of the places we’ll be revisiting soon. Whitby. Here’s the first glimpse of the town you get as you approach over the moors…

I’ve a small favour to ask…
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The Rishi Sunak ‘released funding from cancelling Hs2’ con – part 6.

23 Friday Feb 2024

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, RAIL magazine, Rishi Sunak, Wales

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Today, the Department of Transport tweeted this ridiculous claim.

I actually feel sorry for the civil servants at the DfT. They know this is a con but their political masters are using them to push Government (read Tory) propaganda out in an election year. This is a naked abuse of what the civil service is there for, but there’s no low this Government won’t stoop to – including politicising the civil service.

Why tweet this? There’s no supporting press release or announcement of anything happening on the DfT website, or through the DfT’s normal press releases, there’s just this tweet. So why put this out now? Oh, wait. Rishi Sunak was in North Wales yesterday on his pre-election campaign ‘grand tour’. What a co-incidence!

So, what’s happening with North Wales electrification, announced as being funded by scrapping Hs2 phase 2 by Sunak last years and included in the risible ‘Network North’ not even the back of a fag packet plan?

Nothing. Zip. Bugger all. Last month RAIL magazine carried an excellent article detailing why nothing is likely to happen before 2030. You can read it here.

For a start, the £1bn is a con. There’s no HS2 money to ‘release’. It doesn’t exist. It wasn’t due to be borrowed for years yet. It sure as hell isn’t say in a pot in the Treasury labelled ‘for HS2’ that’s just waiting to be rebadged. It’s classic ‘jam tomorrow’ politics. Cancel something you *were* building that had a business case, planning permission and even spades in the ground and announce utter vapourware for sometime in the future instead.

Before a spade enters the ground in North Wales there needs to be a business case for the work. That doesn’t exist. There *was* one, but that dates from 2015 and is hopelessly out of date. That £1bn figure is assumed to be based on that now-defunct business case. Since then, construction costs have increased by roughly 7% per annum – meaning that there’d be no spare change from £1.5bn.

As you can see, the project exists on in the imagination. It’s not included in Network Rail’s future plans and budget which is known as CP7. Control Period 7 runs from April 2024 to March 2029.

The truth is, there’s not a cat in hell’s chance of ANY work planning/consultations being done before the next General Election, which could come as early as May this year. As for actual spades in the ground – don’t make me laugh…

This is nothing but a dishonest and deceitful election con by Sunak and the Tories. Don’t fall for it – or him.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
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Economics 101. The difference between Capex and Opex, why you don’t spend the former on the latter – and why Rishi Sunak is perpetuating a con…

07 Sunday Jan 2024

Posted by in Economics, Hs2, Politics, Railways, Rishi Sunak

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This is a rewrite on a much earlier blog which is now out of date due to a changing financial world, but where the basic economic rules still apply. Rules that our (hopefully soon to be Ex) Prime Minister – despite his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer – seems to be unaware of. More likely? He’s gaslighting you. Let me explain…

What are Capex and Opex – and why does the difference matter?

Capital expenditure is an expense incurred to create future benefit, such as buying new assets for a business – like buildings, machinery or equipment. Doing so generates profits for the future over several tax years. Hs2 is a very good example of the principle. It will generate jobs (which generate tax revenue), kick-start regeneration in some of our major cities and make the UK a more attractive place for businesses (which generate corporation tax). Capital investment on decent infrastructure is well understood as bringing economic benefits. This BBC article sums up the situation. As capital expenditure will generate tax revenue year after year it’s not just a one off. That income stream would enable the Treasury to spend money on many different things, from the NHS to social welfare, to more modern infrastructure and even tax cuts if it so chose.

Operating expenditure covers the day to day functioning of a business, like wages, utilities, maintenance and repairs. It also covers depreciation. It’s money needed every year. It’s not a one-off – and it doesn’t generate any extra income the way Capex does.

The UK has a poor record for capital expenditure on infrastructure. It’s why so much of the countries infrastructure is old and outdated (like the railways) and why our productivity is so low.

The OECD (Organisation Economically Developed Countries) recommends that baseline infrastructure investment is 5.5% of GDP annually for an economy with aspirations to growth. We’ve only spent this amount twice since WW2. This is especially relevant now as the UK desperately needs to invest in ‘green’ infrastructure to both tackle and be resilient to Climate Change. HS2 was one of the projects that ticked all these boxes. The importance of such investment has been thrown into the spotlight by the recent storms that have closed railways and flooded large parts of the country. We need modern infrastructure designed and built to cope with them.

Now to the present. Rishi Sunak has announced he’s ‘scrapping’ HS2 and diverting the capital expenditure to operating expenditure, like filling potholes and subsidising bus fares. It’s economic madness, but it’s also a con as the ‘diverted’ money doesn’t exist. There’s no pot of money sat in the Treasury labelled ‘for HS2’ that’s waiting to be diverted elsewhere. HS2 is funded from Government borrowing and the money for the sections of HS2 Sunak has cancelled isn’t on the Governments books as it wasn’t due to be borrowed for many years yet. It’s fantasy money, as real as the stuff you play Monopoly with. Sunak knows this, but he’s taking voters for fools as he also knows most people have no understanding of either economics or Government finances.

Sadly, much of the media is helping him perpetuate the con by lazily copying and pasting his claims and not once asking any awkward questions, informing people of economic basics (like Capex and Opex) or doing any analysis of his claims.

Don’t be fooled.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312