Showing posts with label uk politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uk politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 April 2015
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Monday, 13 January 2014
William Hague Denies UK Torture
Sunday's cartoon. Regretted starting the crosshatching about five minutes...
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Yet another pointless debate about social immobility among the very people causing it
Listening to David Cameron talk about social mobility is like listening to Elton John discussing deep sea welding. I sense that he realises this himself but Cameron wouldn’t be Cameron unless he’s aligning himself with some popular opinion. He’s the consummate ‘me too’ politician of our day and will undoubtedly be the first sitting PM to get himself a tattoo sleeve when he deems it politically shrewd to do so. The latest popular trend will always have him spittling his lips with unctuous words. ‘Of course, the public have spoken and I for one am not going to stand here and say that red hot pokers aren’t a suitable punishment for the work shy if that’s what people in Britain have decided. As Prime Minister, it’s my job to support these public driven initiatives and that’s why I’m also throwing my weight behind Mumsnet’s campaign to ban all knives with sharp edges and any stick that doesn’t have a rubberised tip. Yes, it might mean that we chop down a few trees but that’s a price we need to pay if we want to protect our children’s eyes.’
Of course, ‘social mobility’ is a problem that goes to the very roots out of culture and, much as I hate to say this, I’m not sure that Russell Brand is entirely wrong in what he recently said about revolution. Just look at the Tory’s current motto: ‘For Hardworking People’. It’s code, of course, for ‘we’re no friend of scroungers’ but, as with all things, the reality on the ground doesn’t conform so neatly to their quasi-Thatcherite ideology. Are they for the disabled who might not be able to work? Are they for the old, the poor, or the underclass? Are they really for the person working every hour to live on something much less than the minimum wage? It’s easy to talk about social mobility from a position where social mobility is a given. It’s easy to be hardworking when there’s an abundance of work, especially though family connections, but are they also for people on zero hour contracts and writers who don’t get paid for their work?
In modern politics, the only game that matters is the game that brings in the most votes and the current Conservative plan is to cauterise the places where they traditionally don’t do well. That only increased the problem of social mobility in areas such as my hometown here in the North. After seeing investment under Labour, it’s places like this that are now taking the brunt of Tory cuts.
Of course, they try to argue differently. The whole thing has a bowel knot of familiarity about it and Cameron has already addressed social mobility by leaping to discuss the racial makeup of the Tory Party, as though social mobility is only synonymous with race. Indeed, this new awareness of social mobility will no doubt lead to the usual round of positive discrimination which pretty much ignores the majority of people suffering from the lack of social mobility. I sometimes think that the worst thing you could be in these enlightened days is a white, heterosexual male stuck in a no-name northern town and not suffering from any serious but TV-friendly disability. I’ve never been asked to stand behind any Prime Minister as he gives a speech. In fact, no Prime Minister ever visited this town. The closest we came was Michael Heseltine flying over in a helicopter and arbitrarily deciding where the local boundaries would be drawn, completely oblivious to the regional allegiances on the ground.
I don’t know any celebrities and I don’t know anybody who knows any celebrities, except perhaps for one person I’ve spoken to online who is from Oxford and whose children were friends with a star of the Harry Potter films. Look at the profile of the average celebrity and they will have been school friends with other celebrities or their families or connected through marriage or their parents would have been famous in their own right. Look at that Claudia Winklewoman and tell me that she deserved to host the BBC's premier film show.
The problem I’ve argued for a long time is simply that there are huge areas of the country where chances are few to none. The country is run from London, with nothing much of note happening outside the major cities. All the major newspapers no longer cover news outside London with much conviction. A year or so ago, we were ravaged by a huge storm which barely made the news. A similar storm hits London and it's 24 hour coverage. Entire regions of the country are now covered by (at best) a single reporter, a fact highlighted by the sadly unambitious plans mentioned in this article from earlier this year. Compare The Guardian’s push into North America with their plans for northern England and, indeed, the area where The Guardian originated as the Manchester Guardian.
And that's what all this hand wringing comes down to. If the most liberal media in our country can’t be trusted to care about social mobility, then is there really any hope?
Of course, ‘social mobility’ is a problem that goes to the very roots out of culture and, much as I hate to say this, I’m not sure that Russell Brand is entirely wrong in what he recently said about revolution. Just look at the Tory’s current motto: ‘For Hardworking People’. It’s code, of course, for ‘we’re no friend of scroungers’ but, as with all things, the reality on the ground doesn’t conform so neatly to their quasi-Thatcherite ideology. Are they for the disabled who might not be able to work? Are they for the old, the poor, or the underclass? Are they really for the person working every hour to live on something much less than the minimum wage? It’s easy to talk about social mobility from a position where social mobility is a given. It’s easy to be hardworking when there’s an abundance of work, especially though family connections, but are they also for people on zero hour contracts and writers who don’t get paid for their work?
In modern politics, the only game that matters is the game that brings in the most votes and the current Conservative plan is to cauterise the places where they traditionally don’t do well. That only increased the problem of social mobility in areas such as my hometown here in the North. After seeing investment under Labour, it’s places like this that are now taking the brunt of Tory cuts.
Of course, they try to argue differently. The whole thing has a bowel knot of familiarity about it and Cameron has already addressed social mobility by leaping to discuss the racial makeup of the Tory Party, as though social mobility is only synonymous with race. Indeed, this new awareness of social mobility will no doubt lead to the usual round of positive discrimination which pretty much ignores the majority of people suffering from the lack of social mobility. I sometimes think that the worst thing you could be in these enlightened days is a white, heterosexual male stuck in a no-name northern town and not suffering from any serious but TV-friendly disability. I’ve never been asked to stand behind any Prime Minister as he gives a speech. In fact, no Prime Minister ever visited this town. The closest we came was Michael Heseltine flying over in a helicopter and arbitrarily deciding where the local boundaries would be drawn, completely oblivious to the regional allegiances on the ground.
I don’t know any celebrities and I don’t know anybody who knows any celebrities, except perhaps for one person I’ve spoken to online who is from Oxford and whose children were friends with a star of the Harry Potter films. Look at the profile of the average celebrity and they will have been school friends with other celebrities or their families or connected through marriage or their parents would have been famous in their own right. Look at that Claudia Winklewoman and tell me that she deserved to host the BBC's premier film show.
The problem I’ve argued for a long time is simply that there are huge areas of the country where chances are few to none. The country is run from London, with nothing much of note happening outside the major cities. All the major newspapers no longer cover news outside London with much conviction. A year or so ago, we were ravaged by a huge storm which barely made the news. A similar storm hits London and it's 24 hour coverage. Entire regions of the country are now covered by (at best) a single reporter, a fact highlighted by the sadly unambitious plans mentioned in this article from earlier this year. Compare The Guardian’s push into North America with their plans for northern England and, indeed, the area where The Guardian originated as the Manchester Guardian.
And that's what all this hand wringing comes down to. If the most liberal media in our country can’t be trusted to care about social mobility, then is there really any hope?
Thursday, 27 June 2013
Republican Talk
I’m not exactly a republican but neither could I be called a monarchist. I don’t want to be ruled over by anybody, so if somebody is going to presume to do so, I guess I prefer it if that person isn't some vampish celebrity troll voted in by the British people. I’m not happy that our ruler is the descendant of some brutish psychopath who in the dark ages of English history used their might to seize power and oppress the people but, when the alternative is Vernon Kay, it really doesn't seem that bad.
Yet I read this morning that HMQ is about to come into some money. The Times reports that the Queen is to receive ‘£37.89 million from the State, a 5 per cent increase on this year’s Sovereign Grant of £36.1 million.’
Yesterday our Chancellor changed the rules so that jobseekers would have to wait seven days, not the previous three, before claiming benefit. It seemed spiteful, mean, and calculated yet typical of the man who once belonged to the Bullingdon Club where an entry requirement was supposedly to burn a £50 note in the face of a tramp.
The disparity here is of course a matter of scale. In terms of government spending, even £37.89 million is a sniff whereas Osborne will no doubt say that the changes to the rules will save the country hundreds of millions. To give it some scale: in 2006, the British Army bought 67 Apache helicopters for £2.5 billion, which works out at about £37 million each. So, one year of monarchy costs the same as one gunship.
It all makes me deeply angry, of course. As austerity bites the poor around the ankles, those at the top continue to get even more. Here in the north, we feel austerity more because the Tories know that locally their votes don’t matter. St Helens (which is my electoral constituency) has voted in successive Labour candidates since 1983 when the constituency was first created. Tories can squeeze us until we no longer have the energy to squeal and they know it won’t affect their vote in the rest of the country. In fact, it might make them even more popular among many who increasingly think that London and the South West should declare independence from the poorer parts of the UK.
Fractures like these become more obvious when times are tough. We’re all told to tighten our belts because a few pounds saved here and there will make a difference. Yet, a few million extra slipped to the Queen isn't supposed to count…
But there is, of course, an obvious solution.
We could simply replace the Queen with an attack helicopter. Not only could an Apache hold its own flyovers, it has a certain natural awe attached to it, plus it has more firepower than an 87 year old lady. Not only that, at £37 million a year, we could have a brand new Apache each year. And it’s surely a truer representation of what monarchy is about: an artificial sense of belonging imposed by a privileged few whose ancestors were at one point willing to back up the force of their arguments with the sharp end of a stick.
Yet I read this morning that HMQ is about to come into some money. The Times reports that the Queen is to receive ‘£37.89 million from the State, a 5 per cent increase on this year’s Sovereign Grant of £36.1 million.’
Yesterday our Chancellor changed the rules so that jobseekers would have to wait seven days, not the previous three, before claiming benefit. It seemed spiteful, mean, and calculated yet typical of the man who once belonged to the Bullingdon Club where an entry requirement was supposedly to burn a £50 note in the face of a tramp.
The disparity here is of course a matter of scale. In terms of government spending, even £37.89 million is a sniff whereas Osborne will no doubt say that the changes to the rules will save the country hundreds of millions. To give it some scale: in 2006, the British Army bought 67 Apache helicopters for £2.5 billion, which works out at about £37 million each. So, one year of monarchy costs the same as one gunship.
It all makes me deeply angry, of course. As austerity bites the poor around the ankles, those at the top continue to get even more. Here in the north, we feel austerity more because the Tories know that locally their votes don’t matter. St Helens (which is my electoral constituency) has voted in successive Labour candidates since 1983 when the constituency was first created. Tories can squeeze us until we no longer have the energy to squeal and they know it won’t affect their vote in the rest of the country. In fact, it might make them even more popular among many who increasingly think that London and the South West should declare independence from the poorer parts of the UK.
Fractures like these become more obvious when times are tough. We’re all told to tighten our belts because a few pounds saved here and there will make a difference. Yet, a few million extra slipped to the Queen isn't supposed to count…
But there is, of course, an obvious solution.
We could simply replace the Queen with an attack helicopter. Not only could an Apache hold its own flyovers, it has a certain natural awe attached to it, plus it has more firepower than an 87 year old lady. Not only that, at £37 million a year, we could have a brand new Apache each year. And it’s surely a truer representation of what monarchy is about: an artificial sense of belonging imposed by a privileged few whose ancestors were at one point willing to back up the force of their arguments with the sharp end of a stick.
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
What Difference Would The Alternative Vote Make To UK Politics?
[singlepic id=75 w=600 h=450 float=center]
Friday, 15 April 2011
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
The Hilarious Budget-Day Cartoon
[singlepic id=33 w=600 h=450 float=center]
Here you go. I admit I’ll be the only person who finds this cartoon funny. But that’s just the nature of this blog. Sometimes I draw cartoons with which I intend to amuse you. Sometimes I post things that I know only tickle me. And I accept: unless you’re as hopeless in life as Yours Truly, you probably didn’t spent this beautiful spring afternoon sitting watching George Osborne rattle off economic figures so you could depict it in humorous terms later in the day. A one penny cut in fuel tax doesn’t excite me in the least. I don’t own a car and have no plans to invade an oil-rich Middle Eastern nation in the next year, though I am thinking of taking Saudi Arabia by force but not until 2014.
So, there you have it: the cartoon which only I find funny.
But don’t go away thinking this has been a pointless exercise. There is an important lesson in all of this. Work hard at school and get yourself a good job in the private sector, possibly involving spread-sheets and a young secretary whose very existence excites you every time she bends over to take out the Standish accounts from the bottom of the filing cabinet… You won’t thank me now but you’ll certainly thank me later, or, at least, you will once you have settled with the young secretary out of court regarding her sexual harassment case which she now agrees was an innocent misunderstanding about the tendency of Ryvita crumbs to gather in your crotch of your pants.
Here you go. I admit I’ll be the only person who finds this cartoon funny. But that’s just the nature of this blog. Sometimes I draw cartoons with which I intend to amuse you. Sometimes I post things that I know only tickle me. And I accept: unless you’re as hopeless in life as Yours Truly, you probably didn’t spent this beautiful spring afternoon sitting watching George Osborne rattle off economic figures so you could depict it in humorous terms later in the day. A one penny cut in fuel tax doesn’t excite me in the least. I don’t own a car and have no plans to invade an oil-rich Middle Eastern nation in the next year, though I am thinking of taking Saudi Arabia by force but not until 2014.
So, there you have it: the cartoon which only I find funny.
But don’t go away thinking this has been a pointless exercise. There is an important lesson in all of this. Work hard at school and get yourself a good job in the private sector, possibly involving spread-sheets and a young secretary whose very existence excites you every time she bends over to take out the Standish accounts from the bottom of the filing cabinet… You won’t thank me now but you’ll certainly thank me later, or, at least, you will once you have settled with the young secretary out of court regarding her sexual harassment case which she now agrees was an innocent misunderstanding about the tendency of Ryvita crumbs to gather in your crotch of your pants.
Friday, 18 March 2011
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)