Off Topic News & Current affairs

“With an unlimited budget I would always go to M&S, they cannot be touched.“
Especially by you if they were on the top shelf

 

That was genuinely funny, now take this

 

Thames Water on the brink of collapse

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66039170

One by one the Thatcherite privatisations are coming unravelled.
One by one vital services are coming back under Government control at the tax payers' expense, because in private hands they have failed.
Transport.
Energy.
Water.
No strategic planning. Just dividend payments year after year and a chronic lack of investment.
Greed and bonuses over proper service provision.
Four decades of this under Conservative (& New Labour) Governments.

 

I thought dividend payments were a way of sharing profits, not increasing losses. Privatisation without competition is a licence to print money.

 

Now that the government's Rwanda policy has been declared illegal they can turn on judges and "lefty lawyers".

 

I am furious about the whole water situation. I read that when Thames Water was privatised it was debt free. It now owes around 14bn, but in the meantime has paid something like 10bn in dividends. As @The Penguin says, dividends are supposed to be a share of the profits so a loss making business has no business paying dividends, so my feeling s that the owners have broken the law there for starters. They appear to have spent almost no money maintaining the infrastructure they inherited, but there are rumours that bills will increase around 40% next year to help sort out the problems with sewage (and let's remember that the Tory solution to the sewage problem was to vote to allow the water companies to carry on).
Best of all, as the company is now on the brink of insolvency, the solution appears to be to 'temporarily' renationalise it and then sell it back off later, so that we can get to the same situation again. Madness.
My feeling is that the governmenet (obviously not this one as they are corrupt) should take it back, leaving the company that owns it withthe debts it has run up, and run it as a national resource, which it is. And the remaining water companies should be given huge fines for any further breaches of public safety, such as dumping sewage in the sea at Blackpool allowing e-coli to proliferate, with the intention of sinking the other companies as well- The alternative is a one time offer to buy back the water companies, minus their debts, for a pound.
But sadly, Sunak is a millionaire, so all that runs in direct opposition to his and his governments policy of grabbing as much money as possible and passing laws to make it legal. Send the lot of them to Rwanda, along with the water bosses.

 

If Thames Water collapses it could start a 'domino effect' and the Government may have to re-nationalise the entire industry.
So much for private enterprise doing a better job.

 

Chums of Boris might be guilty of Contempt of Parliament...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66051280

Back in 2018/19 I was furious with Parliament for stalling Brexit.
But what happened in January 2021 in the USA (the Capitol riots) made me think twice.
Respect for our Parliamentary process must be maintained.
No Politician is above the law.

 

The guy for the SNP got thrown out for calling Boris Johnson a liar. retrospectively he was right. The likes of Rees Mogg and the desteable Dorries should all be out by now. Still, at least Sunak is showing fine leadership by,...err... hoping it'll all blow over,

 

PS: Looks like France is no longer a safe Country either...

 

Zak Goldsmith picks a fight with Rishi Sunak about the environment and resigns - one day after Goldsmith is singled out for trying to undermine the Committe investigating Boris for lying to Parliament.

Integrity, transparency, accountability, eh Rishi?

 

I think we came close to a breakdown of law and order during the few months after the lockdown in Spring 2020.
What we saw at supermarkets was a fore-warning.
Then for a while it was touch-and-go whether the NHS would collapse.

If it had, I think there would have been widespread disorder on the streets.
Seems silly now maybe, but I gradually stocked up on tinned food & battery lights, and bought a short-wave radio.

The NHS must be strengthened for the future, and its utterly demoralised staff given more help.
Strikes have worn them down even more. Sickness rates due to burn-out and post-traumatic stress are now higher than ever before.
It's awful to think how much those brave people are suffering.

 

I think it's 100% inevitable, question is when? In the near future when the economy collapses under the weight of the national debt, or in the long term when the mass migrations start due to the effects of climate change. It's true that Labour doesn't have the answers, that's because there are none, unless the human race comes to its collective senses.

 

I wonder what the SNP Government in Scotland has to say about this?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-66066448

Surely they will be supporting any action the Orkney Islanders decide to take.
An Independence referendum?

 

The public votes with its wallet, and woe betide any politician who tries to make them see beyond it.

 

Part of the problem is that the public have been lead to expect that every problem has en easy 'quick fix' solution, which is rarely the case.
I remember watching Saddiq Khan being grilled by Piers Morgan about knife crime. Khan said over and oer that a lot of community projects and youth centres in London had been closed due to austerity, and what was needed was to get back in touch and start reaching into the community, and rebuild those things. Cue Morgan the phone tapper, yelling 'the public can't wait for that for a solution'. No solution from Piers, but a yelled demand that the solution should be instantaneous. And no interest in looking into what might have caused the rise in knife crime.
And that is applied everywhere - climate change, immigration, rising costs. The solution needs to be either cheap or free, make no change to how people live, and provide instant results, and all that against a backdrop of morons on the right who deny climate change, say that immigration should involve the old NF slogan 'send em back' and god knows what for rising prices.

 

You can see their point of view. Norway is a far wealthier country than Scotland or the UK. They have used their oil bonanza money much more wisely than we did.

 

I didn’t have any community projects nor youth centres in the area that I grew up in, in the 60’s and 70’s. Not one. But I didn’t engage in knife crime.

What I did have was a Dad who was ever present and gave me guidance and discipline in equal measure when needed.

Blaming knife crime on austerity cuts to these services is complete rubbish and just an attempt by Khan to blame the government and is done for political purposes.

It is the change from the basic family unit of a Mum, Dad and children which is responsible for the vast majority of crime in this and other countries. The answer lies in the change in culture and diversity, not how many counsellors and youth workers we have.

But that view probably makes me ‘hard-right’.

 

However I do take and agree with your point about short term and cheap fixes.