the maverick mp,s keep quiet as they,ll lose the party whip and then there voice will never be heard. its all a pointless game in the end for anyone with an opinion that the party line has not. might as well give the job to an unthinking automatic machine.

But would Ed Sillyband want the job.

there,s going to be a riot. or a new chant at clubs with older fans, have you come on your bus pass and on a warm day, you,r not freezing anymore.

Just seen a recording of him three months ago defending the WFA from the Tory’s…oh dear.

WFA only affects a minority of the population, some will now be applying for Working Tax Credits now, in general the majority think pensioners are well off. Increasing taxes affects every one, there might be a bigger kick off, put a tax on mobile phone usage, there would be hell on.

i,m all for that tax as i,d be a real winner for once.

We could cancel all other taxes too…except maybe we could tax tattoo’s as well as they’re bursting out al over and e scooters.

i,ll take that one as well plus one for those who shave their heads including blokes doing it.

Let’s sum this up tax people with tattoos, e-scooters, mobile phones usage and shaved heads and a tax on the barbers who do it, I am up for all that, forgot e-cigarettes as well, they stink.

Still waiting for a reply to my email, it's alleged that he went on holiday straight after being elected, must have know what was coming and gone into hiding.

wines and spirits too with treble on scotch whisky.

Obviously your tee total, it wouldn’t bother me as I am practically tee total myself.

i am now but certainly not always. i have the odd pint now but whisky never and cannot understand people going on it after a few pints or just drinking it as there choice even when they try to hide its taste with mixing something in it. thats like poaring sauce over the part of your dinner just to eat it to keep your parents quiet.

I remember coming out of Tesco and a couple passed us with a trolley with just 4 packs of beer and a cabbage…nowt else, the wife told me stop staring, I told her to……………..

I can never get my head round people adding mixers to spirits to make them more palatable.

if they have to do that its obvious they do not like the taste in the first place. mixes hide the full taste like sauces do on food where its the sauce and nothing else you can taste. i,m sure those who love a curry that blows their head off cannot tell whats inside it.

Speaking of Curry, when my dad was home from seas he’d bring curry powder from the Indian or Yemeni crew in the engine room and that stuff was well toxic…remember coming home with the wife when we were courting and he was in cooking his curry, a khaki swamp with bay leaves and hard boiled eggs on top.
The only people who’d eat it was him and Prince our border collie.
Never understood the idiot macho dependency to try the hottest of Curry’s, even the old man scowled at it.

even asians find this odd as they do not eat curry,s like that and they are made to western, or pissed up, western tastes. bit like chop suey and chow mein from the chinese who have never heard of that in their homeland. possibly if it was authentic indian and chinese food they,d never sell it even if they advertise it as such. even food enrichment for us has a catch.

The old fellers grub that we called ‘curry’ looked like no curry you’ll ever see and actually never looked that appealing, but he never referred to it as ‘curry’.

bet it didn,t smell the same either compared to the ones served up now.

Well there's another kick in the teeth to the pensioners who've lost the wfa, huge pay rises for train drivers now. What happened to the fi ancillary black hole? Are pensioners going to lose free prescriptions and bus passes to pay for them next?

This attack on ordinary people must stop and the winter fuel payment was a step too far.
In October if money needs raising it must come from the high earners and asset owners.

I think a lot of pensioners switched from Tory to Labour, More fool them.
But Labour will pay in the end.

Do they actually not realize pensioners have grown up kids who will see their parents suffer, Not all i know, but enough.

Works out at a 10 to 15 % pay rise. No wonder they gave nothing away in the election run up.
Funny how the junior doctors and railway workers have found Nirvana with Starmer in charge…so they got their reward.

Makes common sense why would the Conservative government give them what they wanted, nope wait till Labour get in and let them take the flak for ‘giving in’, if the Conservatives had won the election they would have possibly rolled over as well.

Try applying logic…the Tory’s had been negotiating for two years with the Railway Children so why roll over now….nah , Labour rolled over with indecent haste and gave in. They didn’t have to.
Your undercover Starmer lapel badge is showing.

Tory's new every Union in the country would be at it if they conceded too much to Dr's and Railway workers, and that can only continue and send inflation rocketing again. Watch out for Police, Fire Brigades, teachers, civil servants and council workers striking for pay rises of 15% and more in the near future while Rachel Reeves tells us difficult decisions have to be made to fill the black hole. Think the black hole might be between her ears.

When inflation was running at 10% you can understand why people were asking for wage rises in-line with inflation, the government should be looking at the massive profits the supermarkets are making year on year, inflation comes down but prices don’t. If prices do come down the it should be inline with inflation, the supermarkets attitude is people are coping with the price rises so why reduce them.

Never wear anything which advertises anything including badges Snowy, as I said before Starmer is a laughing assassin.

Shrinkflation.
Especially in chocolate bars.
Shop workers on NMW while these burgling bastad CEOs take the piss paying themselves a fortune.

Oaps get them Leccy blankets in now before they double in price in Winter.
UTP.

The one thing that infuriates me is how the Media at times of wage increases always use the teachers, nurses, police etc as being poorly paid which is absolute bollocks …there’s an awful lot more out there on shit wages and hours who the lazy, out of touch Media just ignore with contempt.
With the care workers being brought into the country, I understand they are paid20% less than other workers, how is that possible, shouldn’t they be paid the same wage as the rest of the staff…? Also it brings down wages for homegrown staff…this is a race to the bottom.

High wage rises bode well for the pension increase next year (triple lock)

Might well do, but the high wage rises are in the public sector, the private sector won’t be splashing the cash on rises….plus ….I want my Winter fuel allowance as well thank you very much.

I said before the election that if Starmer got in the unions would expect payback time and it looks as if they are going to get it.

Aye …turbocharged.

Of the £21.5m in cash received by the Labour party in 2023, just £5.9m came from the trade union movement, compared with £14.5m from companies and individuals – a huge increase on the previous year, and indeed more than in the three previous years of Keir Starmer’s leadership combined.
Of the £21.5m in cash received by the party in 2023, just £5.9m came from the trade union movement, compared with £14.5m from companies and individuals – a huge increase on the previous year, and indeed more than in the three previous years of Keir Starmer’s leadership combined. As trade union contributions have dipped slightly, from around £6.9m in 2020 and 2021 to £5.3m in 2022, donations from businesses and individuals have soared: they totalled £2.3m in 2020 and rose to £3m in 2021 and £7.6m in 2022 before nearly doubling last year.

Around £10m of this total comes from just four sources: Gary Lubner (£4.6m), David Sainsbury (£3.1m), Fran Perrin (£1m) and Ecotricity (£1m), the green energy firm owned by prominent eco-activist Dale Vince. This means that just two individuals gave the Labour Party more money last year than all the trade unions combined.

Must just be in their dna to roll over for the unions then eh?

Night have done years ago when all the donations were from the Trade Unions, different scenario now, the Labour Party is not the left wing party it used to be.

No, it’s worse, they just cave in …Tony Blair gat elected because he was different…this lot are cardboard cut outs of any Labour Goverment I‘ve voted for.
Out of touch with the working class because they’re middle aged, middle aged ex Uni naive idealists who are orbiting another planet….. Cardboard cut outs with a vindictive streak.

Think they are there for a reason myself.

Such a massive financial black hole that the pensioners had to be robbed to help close it. Yet huge inflationary pay rises for any striking group, none of which were costed or funded within their manifesto so must be increasing the size of the black hole.
But unions have no influence!

Whilst I agree with what you're saying, and furthermore think that Supermarkets are conniving/duplicitous/greedy twats, surely prices "coming down inline with inflation" still means that prices will keep going up? Just at a slower 2% rate?

Everybody is out to make a killing these days. I have a friend who has a LPG tank to heat his home. He's used the same company for decades, when it needs filling a truck comes out and he gets billed whatever they say, he doesn't shop around. But now they want to charge him @£120 plus a year to "hire" their tank. The same tank as he's always had!

When you find out the reason, give us a shout.

Sometimes i think are Governments actually Governing or just doing others dirty work.

Whatever it is, they’re part of it and guilty.
It’s being done in their name.
The only chink of light was watching labour supporters of my acquaintance realising their WFA was ‘leaving port at speed’ and not yet feeling that kicked in the bollocks pain which is about to arrive.

blair got elected because most of the voters wanted a labour government. starmer got in by less votes because people didn,t want another sunak run tory one.

I reckon it wasn't really Sunak. Cast your mind back to Liz truss incompetence and Partygate.

Apparently to a good number of voters, it was the lies surrounding Partygate that were simply unacceptable to them, middle of the road people* were previously/normally Conservative voters.


* not the band.

actually partygate was the least interesting or relavant to me in the 5 years they were in power. if that was the worst thing they did they,d have been a success.

Today's papers saying unions have donated to more than half of all Labour MPs. No wonder they're handing out huge pay rises left right and centre.