The slow road to Benefits Central

Goodbye Symphony Hall, farewell the National Indoor Arena (or whatever it’s called this week). Goodbye Edgbaston cricket ground, farewell Villa Park. Au revoir New Street and the Bull Ring, it was good to know you.

Sadly, the coalition of chaos now in charge of Birmingham, under the boot of the people who really run the council, is succumbing to the fad for imposing 20 mph zones wherever a hated motorist might once have ventured.

The net result will not be full buses, trams and trains. It will be fewer visitors, fewer businesses, less money, more decline and dereliction. The city may become greener and cleaner but there will be less economic activity and Birmingham’s tragic decline will accelerate as drivers jam on the brakes.

The fanatics will have finally won their long-standing war on the motorist. Nobody will want to drive in or around Birmingham again if there is any alternative.

The city of a thousand trades is already the city of a thousand vacant shops. Unemployment in Birmingham is the worst of any big city, having hit 13.5 per cent of the workforce – almost three times the national average. In Handsworth it’s almost 20 per cent. Youth unemployment is 19.3 per cent.

Only two-thirds of Birmingham’s adults have a job compared with 75 per cent nationally.

Of course, speed limits are necessary and the city’s dire unemployment figures don’t have much to do with the war on motorists. But they do have some impact and forcing people to crawl along at 20 is bound to make the city economy worse than it already is.

It would be nice to think the coalition of chaos would do what it can to make the city more prosperous rather than doing its damndest to turn Birmingham into benefits central. But then the big cheeses are Lib-Dems and Greens so all is lost.

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/31966/unemployment_update_-_august_2026

Manchester Express? That’ll do nicely, thank you

The Mayor of Manchester and his gofers spent £56,000 on the combined authority’s credit cards in the second quarter of the year as the Cock of the North was strutting his way into Number Ten.

These payments include the obligatory £4,670 at Amazon, £1,027 to Facebook, £284 with Deliveroo and plenty of ‘subsistence’ at purveyors like Tesco, McDonald’s, Morrisons and so on.

They’re a well-travelled lot, these Greater Mancunians. They’ve even been to Birmingham where they spent £1,050 at a Premier Inn. They paid £675 to Lufthansa, £359 on parking at Heathrow Airport, £3,009 at Hampton by Hilton (in Manchester), £1,338 with Jet2 but a mere £146 with Ryanair. Another £1,485 went on ‘travel training’ with the University of Essex.

They generous, too, spending £1,830 with One4All, who supply multi-store gift-cards, and £215 with Huggg (yes, 3Gs) who supply ‘gifts your team and clients will actually want’.

Some people remember the old metropolitan county councils. They were axed as a waste of space in 1986.

They were replaced by regional development agencies in 1999. These, in turn, were designated pointless and abolished.

Then we had local enterprise partnerships, which were an even greater cunis. Now we have elected mayors like our national saviour.

The Cock of the North is to give us more of pointless, provincial, pettifogging panjandrums and wants to throw more money at them as if, by some miracle, they will transform their regions into economic powerhouses if only the taxpayer would cough up a bit more blood from the stone.

Or they can just use the nation’s credit card. Until we can’t keep up the monthly payments any more.

How the Cock of the North likes to spend your money

The Cock of the North’s spending spree as Mayor of Manchester may have come to an end but the bills are still coming in. In the three months to the end of June, the glorified quango forked out £316 million. This splurge included:

• £70,000 on a ‘green summit’;

• £6.6 million on consultants and professional fees;

• £240,000 on agency staff including one payment of £21,940 (plus £90,000 on recruitment);

• £5.8 million on traffic lights;

• £170,000 on private medical care including £6,000 on counselling and psychotherapy;

• £267,000 on research.

Other spending went on such vital schemes (with some explanations of what they do taken from their guff-laden and impenetrable websites) as:

Work

• Mantra Learning £1.2 million ‘We are providing Government-funded HGV Skills Bootcamps to address the driver shortage’;

• Back to Work Training Ltd £692,000;

• Bright Direction Training £315,000;

• Standguide Ltd £232,000 ‘Standguide has supported individuals and employers for over 35 years, helping over 13,000 people across the UK in the last 12 months to retrain, find new careers or grow their own businesses’;

• Ingeus UK £621,000 ‘Every day our teams across the UK help people improve their skills, employment, health and wellbeing. We’re purpose-led, passionate and proud to work with customers and communities to drive social change’;

• Learning Curve Group £62,000 ‘Gain new skills and confidence with an accredited online course. Study for free with Government funding.’

Media

• Carbon Creative £25,000 ‘We aim to be at the intersection of art, technology and sustainability where we combine pure imagination with digital engineering to create engaging dynamic and effective work.’

• Carbon Trust Advisory £30,000 ‘We partner with leading businesses, governments and financial institutions to accelerate their route to Net Zero. We are your expert guide to turn your climate ambition into impact’;

• Best Asian Media £18,000;

• Media coaching £17,000;

• Doodledo Motion Ltd £30,000 (they make videos);

• Jaguar Press £15,000.

Research

• Brand Edge £20,000;

• DJS Research £191,000 ‘We’re an employee-owned, B Corp Certified™, mid-sized market research agency with a proven track record of delivering actionable insight for clients across the UK and internationally’;

• Little Lion Research £56,000 ‘We undertake research that helps our clients to understand and demonstrate the impact of their plans and projects.’

Transport

• New and refurbishing traffic lights £5.8 million;

• Cyclescheme Ltd £30,000 ‘The UK’s number one, free to join, Cycle to Work scheme provider’;

• Prestige Chauffeurs £8,700 (they will be sorry to see Andy rolling about in his state-sponsored limo).

IT

• Dell Computers £192,000;

• Phoenix Software £1.5 million ‘We don’t just supply technology – we listen first, then work alongside your teams as part of the solution, not just the supply chain’;

• 6B Digital £6,300 ‘We deliver intelligent digital and technology solutions for critical applications across complex and innovative sectors’;

• Kaleidoscope Consultants £50,000 ‘has worked with national, regional and sub-regional bodies to create data management frameworks and governance arrangements that work to deliver data-enabled public services to citizens’;

• Shaping Cloud Ltd £17,000 ‘Azure. Done brilliantly. For organisations that can’t afford mistakes’;

• Telent Technology Services Ltd £197,000 ‘Telent designs, builds, manages and maintains the UK and Ireland’s critical digital infrastructure, helping to keep the country connected, moving and safe’;

• Accenture £50,000 ‘Our wide range of capabilities, ecosystem partnerships and unmatched industry expertise can help your business become the next best version of itself.’

General do-gooding

• Catch 22 Charity Ltd £228,000 ‘For over 200 years, Catch22 has designed and delivered services that build resilience and aspiration in people and communities’;

• Collaborate Out Loud £18,000 ‘Creating Surprising, simple and social spaces for social change and innovation’;

• Creating Effective Generations £10,000 ‘We specialise in supporting those vulnerable to Child Criminal & Sexual Exploitation’;

• Stitched Up Community Benefit Society Ltd £13,000 ‘Promoting creative expression through clothing + textiles + working to make sustainable clothing choices more accessible’;

• The Big Life Company £1 million ‘Fighting for equity in health, in wealth and in life’;

• Talk to Sara £15,000 ‘We exist to support survivors of sexual violence through trauma-informed care, advocacy, and community connection’;

• The Pankhurst Trust (incorporating Manchester Women’s Aid) £187,000 ‘We have 3 strands to our work – a Suffragette museum contributing to the city's heritage offer, a number of equalities projects promoting and supporting women, a number of domestic abuse services positioning us as the city's largest independent specialist provider’;

• Greater Manchester Immigration Unit £49,000 ‘Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit is a voluntary organisation supporting people subject to immigration control for over 35 years. We offer free legal advice, representation and support services to people seeking asylum, refugees, children and vulnerable adults’;

• Greater Manchester Women’s Support Alliance £217,000 ‘The Alliance is committed to funding and providing high-quality services to support, safeguard and empower all women’;

• Hideaway Youth Project £46,000 ‘Dedicated to the welfare of young women and men in Moss Side and surrounding areas’;

• LGBT Foundation £50,000;

• Manchester Camerata £108,000 ‘The world’s first orchestra with a mobile phone section.’ (Ode to Joy, the EU anthem, naturally). Introducing the AO Simphony | The UK's First Mobile Phone Orchestra;

• Manchester Rape Crisis £64,000;

• Rochdale Women’s Welfare Association £10,000;

• Soil Association £14,000 ‘We are the leading food and farming charity. We're on a mission to fix food and farming for all, the nature-friendly way’;

• Mosscare Housing £841,000 who are ‘Busting the myths around Social Housing and Asylum Seekers’;

• Workers’ Education Association £596,000;

• Noise of Angels £1,000 ‘Emerging as a distinctive new voice in the UK's left field electronic space’;

• Oasis Hub Oldham £163,000 ‘We are actively engaged in creating a community that is characterised by trust, safety, cohesion, mutual support, vibrancy, health, and opportunity, where individuals feel included, connected, and supported and in which they feel happy and proud to live’;

• Paws for Kids £19,000 ‘We are a community based domestic abuse service in Bolton offering a number of projects providing practical and emotional support to help break the cycle of abuse. We support individuals and families in their home and in temporary accommodation. We run the YPDVA service for 16-19 year olds representing the young person at MARAC. Each project is supplemented by group work and in-house counselling. We also offer a pet fostering service covering the Northwest for those fleeing abuse’;

• Pupils Profit £25,000 ‘Our goal is to teach pupils how to set up and operate sustainable Healthy Tuck Shops and Eco refill shops, which will contribute to a school's overall well being’; • Breaking Barriers (Meaningful Employment for Refugees) £24,000;

• Zion Arts Centre £75,000 ‘The UK’s only dedicated arts centre for children and families.’

Business development

• Future of Greater Manchester Ltd £24,000 ‘We build better places through connection, knowledge and leadership’;

• Greater Manchester Business Support £733,000;

• MIDAS Manchester’s inward investment agency £449,000;

• The Growth Company £2.7 million ‘We drive innovation across place promotion and investment, business support, skills and careers, people focused services, and insight led impact’;

• The Innovation Unit Ltd £214,000 ‘Our mission is to reduce inequalities and transform systems by growing people-powered innovations.’

The spreadsheets also show £50,000 for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, £100,000 on uniforms, £349,000 of payments where the recipient’s name has been redacted and £64,000 to Click Travel Ltd. Then there’s Delicious Catering £3,000; Lunch in the City £630; and Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust £430,000.

My personal favourite is the £22,000 grant to Hey Little Cupcake. ‘For over 16 years, we've been creating freshly baked cupcakes, celebration cakes, wedding cakes, afternoon tea experiences, baking classes and corporate cupcakes from our Manchester baker.’

No wonder shop-keepers are clicked-off

If the Cock of the North’s love of the High Street was so great he’s happy to wipe out vape shops and bookies, why didn’t he require his own employees to shop in Manchester rather than buy stuff on Amazon when he had the chance?

Admittedly, shopping on-line is easier, saves parking costs and fines and we know the item we want is available, whereas shops these days often say it’s not in stock but you can get it from their website.

Even so, you’d think our glorious leader’s anxiety to save the ‘hollowed out High Street’ would start with shoppers and money he has direct control over.

But when he was Mayor of Manchester, credit-card users in his employment shopped at Amazon 149 times in the first three months of this year, spending £6,231.87.

Not all that much, you may think, but add in £299 at Sainsbury’s on-line, £426 to Asda on-line and £3,556 at Screwfix Direct and you might think the poverty-stricken shopkeepers of Greater Manchester – who, after all, pay for much of this – would have appreciated a little support from their local squire. What about leading by example?

Still, as Andrew Burnham’s fiefdom paid £14,330 to Google, £4,920 to Facebook and £854 to Mailchimp, they have clearly gone digital. Luckily, they did manage to pay £125 to Flowers by Bethany , £202 in a restaurant, £819 at Premier Inns, and £110 at Mcdonald’s, so that’s nice.

(Annoyingly, credit card data for Andy’s last three months as Mayor are supposedly available on-line but if you try to read or download them, they don’t work. Wonder if they have something to hide?)

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16044211/Former-M-S-boss-brands-Andy-Burnhams-plan-save-high-streets-lot-b-s-nothing.html

Pork-barrel scratchings with Andy and John

When the Cock of the North and his new best friend, Chancellor John Healey, took time out to debate the relative merits of pork scratchings and scampi fries in a nauseating video, did they also mention Britain’s defence spending?

Mr Healey resigned as Defence Secretary supposedly because he couldn’t get enough money from Rachael Reeves’s treasury. Then, in what came as a surprise to most people – notably Ed Bacon-sandwich-eater – the military’s champion is now its paymaster.

Yet no-one – not our Glorious Leader, his Chancellor or even new Defence Secretary Wes Streeting – is willing to say we will hit Mr Healey’s target of three per cent of GDP to go on guns and bombs by 2030.

What’s going on? Is it possible Mr Healey was lined up as Chancellor all along? Is it perhaps the case that his supposedly principled resignation just a week before Andrew Burnham became an MP again had nothing to do with the defence of the realm and everything to do with undermining Keir Starmer?

Mr Streeting, with terminological inexactitude, claimed he had enough support to mount a leadership challenge but that fizzled out. Now he says it’s more than his new job’s worth to say how much his new department should get.

Maybe Mr Healey really is a man of principle and will give Mr Streeting enough to secure Britain’s defences though it means finding £10 billion from the magic money tree which is already supposed to deliver £15 billion more for defence on top of all the other perks and promises Andy makes every day.

Or maybe Mr Healey’s resignation was simply part of the plot (which the Cock of the North claims to he had nothing to do with) to stitch up Keir Starmer and crown Burnham without a fight. In which case, it was just you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours and keeping the country safe from attack is just an unfortunate casualty of this summer’s coup.

Andy Burnham's pub video slammed - 'patronising to Labour voter!'

This Charming Man

When the Cock of the North gave his first interview to the State broadcaster, what did we learn from the twitchy behaviour of our new dictator?

That he is uncomfortable answering even the least-penetrating questions such as: ‘Will you get on with Donald Trump?’ or ‘Where is the money coming from?’

Laura Kuenssberg kept bowling him juicy half-volleys and all he could do was pat them away to mid-off.

The BBC billed the interview as an ‘exclusive’ but it was hardly a great triumph when every regime strong-man in any banana republic needs to capture the media in order to spread his propaganda and give him a cloak of legitimacy.

In Andy Capp’s case, we got a severe case of parochialism (does anyone really think a regional Mayor has support or legitimacy?), evasiveness and the usual slipperiness from the man who – astonishingly – claims not to have had anything to do with the plot to get rid of Keir Starmer.

Will he meet his own new Chancellor’s demand to increase defence spending? Hmm, he hasn’t really looked into it yet. Will he impose a new Death Tax to pay for social care? Hmm, he’s only been in the job a few days. Will he save money on welfare spending? That’s a question he must consider in due course.

He even had the nerve to claim people did not want a General Election and went on to claim he would stick to Starmer’s election manifesto because we live in a Parliamentary democracy.

He almost said there wouldn’t be an election before 2029 but not quite, which means he’s planning one next year when he has thrown around a few sweeties, the bills haven’t come in and he has ducked the ‘hard decisions’ he claims to be facing.

Having watched this nonsense, it makes you wonder why he wanted to be Prime Minister in the first place other than obvious self-aggrandisement. Either he has plans and daren’t tell us what they are or he genuinely doesn’t know what to do. I’m not sure which is worse.

The Cock of the North struts into Downing Street

As the Cock of the North’s Socialist coup comes to fruition, he could become as prolific as Donald Trump in using social media.

Andrew Burnham is certainly no stranger to on-line propaganda. In three months between January and March this year, his Greater Manchester authority spent £4,923 on Facebook ads and £14,330 with Google.

Our glorious leader’s former fiefdom spent £854 on email marketing with Mailchimp not to mention £252 with Elon Musk’s X to ‘enhance the user experience’.

Still, it’s small beer when merely eating and drinking leads to credit card payments of £930 at Asda, £301 at Costco, £110 at McDonalds, £569 at Morrison’s, £310 at Sainsbury’s, £434 at Tesco and £279 at Waitrose.

Mind you, when Manchester firepersons went to Mozambique in January to help with flood relief, they managed to pay £473 to Kangela Maputo which would appear to be a luxury seaside resort ‘nestled in the unspoiled coastal bush of Maputaland and overlooking the breathtaking Indian Ocean’.

One of the few policies today’s Prime Minister has outlined is a cut in taxes for High Street shops paid for by an increase in taxes on warehouses. This will dismay one of Greater Manchester’s biggest suppliers, Amazon, where £6,231 was spent on 139 transactions in the first quarter of this year.

The shops might not need the help if only Mr Burnham and his staff bothered to get off their backsides and use their local shops rather than sitting at their desks waiting for yet another Amazon Prime delivery. Still, it seems Mr Burnham likes to do things the easy way.

Tagged, taxed and traduced - don't let the Cock of the North catch you with money

Here’s a warning for the Cock of the North as he prepares to impose an exit tax on rich people fleeing his Socialist regime. It’s from my book ‘The Ministry of Theft’ which is meant to be a satirical look at the near future but might just be more of a prediction than I feared:

‘As the trickle of rich people getting out of the country threatened to turn into a flood, the Government banned all known billionaires and their families from leaving.

Since the imposition of Personal ID devices, it was easy for the Ministry of Surveillance to place a tag on their digital passports which meant they were unable to pass through control barriers at any legal route out of the country. To be on the safe side, the ban affected hundreds of thousands of people who were required, for a fee, to prove their relative impoverishment before the tag was lifted.

A State of Emergency was declared. The Prime Minister insisted it was a temporary measure to prevent the country’s oligarchs from escaping the new Fairness Charge which even middle-classes with modest assets hated and called a second Wealth Tax. The travel ban extended to anyone directly or indirectly related to the named wealthy individual – even ex-wives and step-children, cousins and uncles, were affected – and, with the compliance of the National Bank, the Government was able to prevent them from removing their money even if they were not allowed to remove themselves.

Wealth tests were imposed at airports. Security checks now included demands to see three years of bank statements. Thorough searches were made to prevent the export of cash or valuables. Some people thought they could convert money into diamonds and wear them on the way out of the country but it quickly became apparent this was not only unacceptable but the jewels themselves would be confiscated as punishment for trying to circumvent the regulations.

There were other ways round the Government’s prohibitions. The most popular was through the purchase of Bitcoin and other digital currencies which soared in value as demand increased. Some pundits warned that, once the State of Emergency was over, the value of virtual-reality money would plummet. That did not end the speculation. The Government sought international agreements to prevent what it called the laundering of money via cryptocurrencies but only with modest success. To the Prime Minister’s unconcealed fury, other countries saw themselves as competitors with Britain and encouraged wealthy people to move their money to their jurisdictions by whatever means were still open to them. The drain of capital became a game of cat-and-mouse as the rich sought ever more elaborate ways to get round the ban on extracting their money and moving it somewhere safer. Accountants and lawyers got rich as a result and both groups used their skills to ensure their own earnings were, as far as possible, placed legally beyond the reach of The National Revenue and Customs.

It didn’t take long for international confidence in the financial stability of Great Britain to drain away. This provoked ever-rising rates of interest. In turn, this stalled demand for loans and mortgages, crippling the economy while the cost of servicing the Government’s own debt grew more and more unmanageable.

The blackouts grew worse.' Buy it now - while you can still afford it

A win for the ages?

Some people don’t love the Daily Mail but you’ve got to welcome their success in defeating the concerted attack by celebs and the ridiculous Hacked Off whingers over allegations the paper broke the law to land various stories.

It is such an emphatic victory one would hope critics of the press will crawl back under a stone and stay there. Alas, that is not likely.

Indeed, there is a danger the Northern coup d’état leader will impose state regulation as part of his campaign to impose a 1,000-year Socialist reich.

State control should be anathema to any sentient being.

We’re fed enough lies, half-truths and misleading nonsense by our rulers and their spin merchants already. Getting at the truth is increasingly difficult. Yet sometimes it really matters that the great and good are exposed for the grubby little self-servers they really are.

Congratulations to the Daily Mail on a famous victory. Let’s hope this is (as they say about World Cup victories) ‘a win for the ages’ and not just a brief glimpse of honesty as we drown in a sea of propaganda.

https://www.dailymail.com/columnists/article-15960437/conspiracy-Daily-Mail-enemies-free-Press-STEPHEN-GLOVER.html

The United States of Amnesia

Only an idiot would say history is bunk.

Stone me. Someone did.

An American, inevitably. And not just any American but the man who gave the world the Ford motor car, named after Henry himself, and available in any colour as long as it’s black.

That was in 1916 but by then the die was cast. America was doomed and over a hundred years later it is rushing headlong towards catastrophe.

The “world’s greatest democracy” elected Donald Trump as president not once but twice. In between his two stints in the White House, it elected Joe Biden and might have re-elected him even though he had dementia.

What a dreadful choice: The village idiot lining his own pockets like a despotic banana republic dictator or the dead man stumbling.

How did it get to this? How did the United States of America degenerate to such a point that the world’s greatest superpower is now as divided and crumbling as it has been at any time since its civil war over slavery?

The answer, of course, lies in its history. You need to go back to the founding of the United States of America to see the seeds of its own destruction, where it all went wrong. It is reasonable to argue the answer to America’s woes today result from its very establishment 250 years ago when it rebelled against rule from Westminster. Its ‘founding fathers’ gave it a constitution which explains most of the United States’ twisted and unprepossessing history.

The truth is, America was not founded by men whose overwhelming desire was for liberty from the tyranny of a despotic King across the water. It was founded by gangsters, slave-owners and bigots who wanted to preserve the “liberty” to kill Roman Catholics and native Americans. They wanted to keep hold of their property – the black men and women who created their prosperity and allowed them to behave with unspeakable cruelty. They insisted someone else pay for their defence from native Americans without contributing a single dollar for their own security. They demanded the indulgence of all kinds of religious fundamentalism which are still a notable feature of American culture even today.

They rebelled against Britain for no better reason than that they wanted to remain intolerant in matters of religion, ignorant on the question of human rights, indigent when it came to maintaining any form of law or administration and isolated when it came to the 18th century enlightenment.

The USA was founded by religious fundamentalists who happily put witches on trial and burnt them. The country has never really abandoned its millennial fanaticism; indeed, much of today’s astonishing idiocy in America has its roots in the allegedly sacred “constitution” drawn up 250 years ago and now held – by deluded Americans only – a beacon of liberty for the whole world.

Let us for a moment consider the ridiculous right to bear arms.

This was established, in the second amendment to the constitution, so the country could maintain a militia. The Protestant fundamentalists inherited a horror of standing armies from the days of Oliver Cromwell’s military dictatorship in the 1650s. They needed local militias to protect themselves from an over-mighty army controlled by the President so the right to carry a gun was enshrined in law. The problem was the Americans never managed to differentiate between the quasi-military local armies and individuals with guns. Nor have they ever discovered the difference between a flint-lock musket and a modern machine gun. Instead, they have invested in their own little arms race where no-one trusts anyone else so everyone has to carry a gun.

Consider the famous words from the Declaration of Independence – mostly a long-winded whinge attacking King George for crimes he did not commit – “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

All created equal? Inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The hypocrisy of this revered and much-lauded claim must have been astounding even when it was written. Obviously, women didn’t count. But what about other men, slaves for instance or native Americans? This equality led to a bloody civil war and genocide while the country even now retains an unspoken apartheid.

The United States of America is a dangerous, lawless and deeply-confused country which has never come to terms with the treachery, bloodshed and unresolved contradictions which gave it birth. They continue to paint George III as a tyrant and those loyal to Britain as traitors (they hanged enough of them). But America was established in blood and has wallowed in it ever since. It was not to be trusted 250 years ago. Nothing’s changed.

Rats and sinking ships

Apparently, the people of Makerfield have voted for ‘change and hope’. Whoopee-doo.

Two years ago, the country elected Keir Starmer on the promise of change and no doubt that came with a dollop of hope too.

As the Parliamentary rats desert his sinking ship, we must surely ask: Change from, or to, what? A new Prime Minister, obviously, but then?

Surely, the leader of a provincial fiefdom whose greatest claim to fame is failing to win the Labour leadership twice then running away from Westminster does not inspire much hope.

The only changes we are likely to see are the further ruination of the economy (Ed Miliband as Chancellor? Angela Rayner as Foreign Secretary?), more extreme left-wing policies and Andrew Burnham’s smug satisfaction at slipping into Number Ten by the back door.

As Karl Marx said: ‘There is no change without sacrifice.’ Keir Starmer will not be the only sacrifice on the altar of Burnhamism.

Time out for trade unions cost us £89 million

Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority claims the 34 people whose trade union work takes up at least half their time only cost the taxpayer £121,000.

Finding this hard to believe, I checked the Government’s own data for what is called ‘trade union facility time’ for 2024-5. Oddly, this excludes Greater Manchester, London and similar fiefdoms.

Even without these, the taxpayer pays £89.8 million to allow civil servants, teachers, doctors, police officers and so on devote their time and our money to their various unions.

The civil service bill alone runs to £13.7 million with – every accountant will be delighted to learn – £2.29 million spent by HMRC, exceeded only by £3.2 million at the Ministry of Justice.

Our schools and universities spent £19.3 million on union activists while 312 local councils were in for £29.4 million (Birmingham’s bill was the most at £1.8 million).

The National Health Service devoted £18.9 million to unionists, including, we must suppose, the time it takes for the average junior doctor to get her act together sufficiently to organize yet another strike.

The police unions cost the taxpayer £5.3 million while ‘other’ public sector bodies cost us a further £3 million. Here, the BBC stands out: its 316 union reps cost the licence payer £775,000.

I still think GMCA’s modest £121,000 is a made-up number but, quite possibly, so are most of the others.

Birmingham NHS bosses warn of disruption ahead of strike - BBC News

Remain optimistic about Brexit

It should be obvious to most people that Brexit is not the cause of this country’s woes and, indeed, that binding ourselves again to a fading 1950s pipe dream is liable to make things worse. GDP growth since 2015 in the G7 shows the following:

* 🇺🇸 USA: ~121 (Up 21%)

* 🇨🇦 Canada: ~116 (Up 16%)

* 🇫🇷 France: ~110 (Up 10%)

* 🇬🇧 UK: ~109 (Up 9%)

* 🇮🇹 Italy: ~106 (Up 6%)

* 🇩🇪 Germany: ~106 (Up 6%)

* 🇯🇵 Japan: ~104 (Up 4%) 

We did worse during Covid than any of the others but rebounded faster than any G7 European country and Japan. The USA and Canada are doing best largely because they do not endure idiotically high energy prices.

In 2024, EU growth was 1.1 per cent, so was Britain’s. Last year, the EU average was 1.5, ours was 1.3 or 1.4 according to the Office for National Statistics. Admittedly that’s well below the 9 per cent recorded by the Cook Islands but above France, Germany, Italy, Austria or Canada.

The trouble with this endless argument about Brexit is that it is possible to find statistics to support both sides of the divide and that allows everyone emotionally invested in their abhorrence of the majority vote to get all aeriated about made-up numbers when the truth is they are all unreliable and untrustworthy. Does anyone seriously trust the numbers we get from Eurostat, the OECD, the World Bank, the IMF, even the ONS let alone the Treasury or the OBR?

Which means we are reduced to questions like getting through passport control with more difficulty or worrying about immigration and the absence of cheap Polish plumbers.

In the great scheme of things, Brexit is neither here nor there. We are at the mercy of Governments of limited competence and world events over which we have no control or even influence.

If the country is broken, don’t blame Brexit, blame the people trying to run it (and those who tried and failed). https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/

Forever blowing bubbles

David Sullivan has been accused of being a sexual predator. Who'd have thought?

Surely, if he was as disgusting as the BBC claims, then Baroness Karren Brady would never have had anything to do with him.

Some are more equal than others

Andy Burnham is terribly worried about inequality but happily he seems to be a subsistence-level would-be Prime Minister, according to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s spending for the first quarter of the year.

To most of us, subsistence probably means scraping by on the breadline but not to the Labour candidate for Makerfield.

Under the heading ‘subsistence’ we find two ‘Lunch In The City’ payments of £1,410 and £693 (curiously, a Stockport company called Lunch in the City, which supplied ‘boardroom buffets’, went bust two years ago).

A subsistence payment of £1,319.66 went to The Monastery, which boasts The Andy Burnham Café, and £3,576 of ‘subsistence’ was paid to Marketing Manchester.

Meanwhile Mr Burnham’s authority is still using private transport pretty freely. Two payments for taxis totalling £1,300 don’t compare with the £13,275 spent with Prestige Chauffeurs Ltd, maintaining the authority’s £1,000-a-week luxury limo habit. Nothing's too good for the workers.

Then there’s all the good causes. The Labour Party's favourite think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research was paid £33,333 in March while large sums went to all those magnificent charities which make our cities so vibrant at such modest cost to the public purse.

For instance, the Big Life Group got a little over £900,000 to carry on ‘fighting for equity in health, in wealth and in life’. That is dwarfed by the £4.47 million paid between January and March to the Growth Company, which aims to achieve ‘high value, sustainable and inclusive growth of people, business and places’.

Then there’s Streetgames UK (£123,000) which is ‘on a mission to bring sport to young people’s doorsteps’, Greater Together Manchester (£69,000) who ‘identify the causes and consequences of poverty, listening to communities and those with lived experience’ and Community Led Initiatives (£204,000) who ‘believe everyone deserves to feel valued, to be happy, to belong’.

Inevitably there’s £49,000 for the LGBT Foundation: ‘We’re not just a charity—we’re a community who all believe that LGBTQ+ people deserve safety, hope and joy.’ The foundation also ‘facilitates’ Mayor Burnham’s LGBTQ+ advisory panel. Perhaps this is the source of his confusion about what constitutes a woman.

Obviously vast sums are spent on consultants of one sort or another as well as the regular fees for agency staff (why can none of these organisations recruit and retain people?) along with 29 payments totalling £158,000 to recipients whose names are redacted.

As a caring employer, Mayor Burnham – a former Health Secretary – has spent over £170,000 on private medical treatment for his staff, including £4,700 on counselling and psychotherapy. As they used to say (but it’s probably not allowed any more): You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.

Andy Burnham issues furious 1,500-word response to Tony Blair attack | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

Hello Snowflake

As a lifelong music fan with zero musical talent I was interested to hear how easy it is to make a song using AI. So I thought I’d give it a go.

It took ten minutes to write some words, five minutes to find the right website and about ten seconds to turn the words into a song.

The frightening thing is that it sounds quite good. If this is the future, we’re all doomed. Have a listen…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKwvpRSnzZgt

Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant

John Cotton, leader of Birmingham Council, claims an end to the bin strike is nigh. His opponents claim this is a cynical ploy with days to go before the local elections.

That can’t be right because, if it really were a cynical ploy, it implies Councillor Cotton thinks it will win his incompetent crew a few extra votes.

Surely nobody, not even Councillor Cotton, really thinks the people of Birmingham are stupid enough to believe he has miraculously come up with a deal which he has failed to do for well over a year.

It’s not a cynical ploy. It is the last despairing twitch of a dying administration.

When the election is over, Birmingham faces a coalition of chaos – but even that can’t be worse than the dreadful, profligate, incompetent crew about to receive their just deserts.

Doubleplusgood

Brum Tik-toking down to the election

When it comes to squandering taxpayers’ money, there’s still no place like Brum. Last month the city council’s single biggest credit card payment was for £14,520 – to promote itself on TikTok.

It seems the Nonsensical Agency is ‘raising awareness’ of the city’s ‘Be Bold Be Birmingham’ campaign having set up the account in 2021, which now claims 42,000 followers and 5.5 million video viewers.

You will be proud to know this is now ‘the biggest council TikTok in the UK’.

Mind you, the city spent £17,400 on gift-cards last month in two transactions. No doubt the recipients were very grateful.

While a huge proportion of the March credit card spend of £344,000 went on petrol and charging electric cars as usual, the council also forked out £60 a time for at least eight, and probably, 16 parking fines.

Still, our well-travelled credit cards did pay £15,695 at least for stays in a variety of hotels. The most popular were the Future Inn, Bristol, and the Hilton Hotel at Wembley stadium. No doubt there was a very important goal in mind when they booked that one.

https://youtu.be/w-8VM_p3r94?si=NKj3LJBbkJPRWjHs

Secrets, lies and the civil service

If Keir Starmer is telling the truth – and we must assume he is, because nobody could get away with blatantly lying to the House of Commons and the country if he has been lying – then what does it tell us about the Government vetting process?

If Peter Mandelson failed the vetting and was therefore considered a security liability, why was the Prime Minister not told? Chums of the sacked civil servant Sir Olly Robbins claim he was not merely under no obligation to inform the Prime Minister but that he was not allowed to do so by their code of conduct.

If that is true – and it does stretch credulity to think it is – then what about any other official or politician who is granted access to Britain’s most top secret information (always assuming there is any such stuff anymore given our country’s abject decline)?

Officially, we don’t vet our senior politicians. But do our security services really not check out those at the top, like Home Secretary, Defence Secretary or the Foreign Secretary? They get access to the secret stuff and they get appointed before any checking for security clearance can take place because many of them are given their jobs as soon as a new Government is formed.

What happens if one of these top politicians has skeletons in the closet? Do the civil servants really keep that information to themselves? If so, how do they behave when the office holder starts passing top secrets to the Russians, the Chinese or – God forbid – the French? Do they really keep schtum?

Actually, the answer may be yes, they do. Anyone remember Sir Anthony Blunt? MI5 knew in 1963 that he was a Russian spy but the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures was allowed to carry on as usual until Margaret Thatcher finally exposed him in 1979.

Anthony Blunt (1907−1983), aka "Tony," "Johnson," "Ian"

Who is the rocket man now?

Does anyone really care the USA has sent another rocket into space? How much does it matter when the same country is creating a new, more deadly, world order here on earth?

Is this space nonsense some sort of distraction technique to persuade us that the United States not only rules this world but other worlds as well?

What is the point of swinging by the moon when the Middle East is in meltdown, the war has given a boost to Mad Vlad Putin’s Russia and even Rachel Reeves has another excuse for Britain’s looming rejection?

Is there any real benefit from this new space shot because, for all the alleged excitement and nerd overload, it is not apparent?

Isn’t there something obscene about all this? As far as peace on earth is concerned, I think it’s going to be a long, long time.

Artificial intelligence unintelligibly stumped

Here’s proof you can’t trust AI.

Musing on Easter and the start of the cricket season, I asked Google AI who said: ‘I can never walk down the nave of Westminster Abbey without wondering whether it would take spin.’

First of all, it said Sarah Ferguson and gave me a lot of guff about her wedding to the Windsor formerly known as Prince.

I pointed out that taking spin was a cricketing term so it offered me Shane Warne (a spin bowler). When I doubted that, it said Ted Dexter (not a spin bowler). I again demurred so it swore the answer was Richie Benaud (a spin bowler).

If artificial intelligence is this stupid, what hope is there? And does anyone know the answer or what the precise quote actually is?

County Championship cricket 2026 fixtures, dates and full match schedule | Cricket News | Sky Sports

Today Worcestershire, tomorrow the country?

Nigel Farage’s Reform party took over Worcestershire County Council promising to ‘reduce waste and cut taxes’.

Now they are increasing council tax by nine per cent, Mr Farage wishes they hadn’t won control of the county because it was already bankrupt and the massive increase isn’t his party’s fault.

Today Worcestershire… tomorrow the whole country? In a few years’ time Prime Minister Farage may be revealing record tax rises for the whole of Britain and accusing other people for his failure:

‘Don’t blame me for the financial crisis. We just inherited it from those terrible Tories and that awful Labour lot.’

This week, he said: ‘Worcestershire, I have to say, we took minority control of a virtually bankrupt council, I wish we hadn't bothered.’

I do hope we don’t hear him saying much the same thing on the steps of 10 Downing Street in due course.

Regime change - does it actually work?

It’s all very well swooping in and arresting Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela or bombing the life out of Persia’s Ayatollah Khamenei but what next?

We might all want to see Vlad Putin dead and buried but someone worse could quite easily succeed him.

While no-one would wish to see Sir Keir Starmer extinguished completely, the growing likelihood that he will be replaced is not something to imagine with equanimity.

Without a General Election – and why should we have one given the Tories’ unattractive record of regicide? – if Starmer goes, we’re bound to get someone even worse.

The only solution his party can come up with to restore its popularity is a new leader and a wealth tax which would merely hasten the flight of Britain’s wealth-creators for foreign shores.

My own nightmare scenario is Angela Rayner as PM and Ed Miliband as Chancellor but others can doubtless envisage something equally catastrophic.

Sir Keir’s days are numbered. Soon enough they will get rid of him. But taking out the leader is not the answer unless there’s a clear plan for a better the future. In Britain, as in Venezuela and Persia, there isn’t.

Why we need the Monarchy

The BBC and Channel 4, among others, are enthusiastically exploiting the plight of the Windsor formerly known as Prince to whip up anti-Royal sentiment in a bid to rid us of the Monarchy.

They must be careful what they wish for. Get rid of the Monarchy and hark what discord follows. An elected President? Then where does that leave Parliament and the Prime Minister?

We would require the complete re-writing of our unwritten constitution if that was a serious option. But who could we possibly trust to come up with a viable solution? We could end up like America or France – or even Russia or China.

We could supposedly elect someone without much power but even in Ireland the President has real power. What if she exercised it against the wishes of the incumbent Government? An elected President would certainly have more justification for political interference than an hereditary Monarch and you could easily imagine circumstances where she set herself up in opposition to her Government.

Instead, we could have an appointed President, chosen from among the ‘great and good’. They would almost certainly be the favoured nominee of the ruling party. Peter Mandelson might have been candidate for such an office not so long ago. And how could a political appointee possibly be a unifying force?

Our history and national identity rely on having a Monarchy. We did get rid of it once and it was followed by chaos and dictatorship which ended in everyone agreeing the only thing to do was restore Charles II.

Every country needs a Head of State, someone to represent the nation at home and abroad, and someone above the machinations of politicians. No matter how bad things seem for the Royal Family today, surely we have to agree the Monarchy is the least worst option.

The choice is simple: God Save the King or God Help Britain.

The Man Who Invented The News

Not much Reform going on here

While I think we can all agree democracy is a good idea, the restoration of the franchise in Keir Starmer’s latest U-turn has led to lots of excited talk of a Reform landslide.

As someone who has flirted with the idea of backing Nigel Farage’s party, I thought it would be worth checking out how it’s been doing in the 14 areas where Reform has control of local authority finances.

The results are massively disappointing, suggesting all the talk about Reform cutting out waste, supporting hard-pressed local taxpayers etc is just so much political guff.

As the cliché goes: politicians are all the same. Bearing in mind that a rise of five per cent or more requires special Government permission, these are the rises proposed by Reform-led councils:

Derbyshire County Council: 4.9 per cent

Doncaster Council: 4.99 per cent

Durham County Council: 1.99 per cent

Kent County Council: 3.99 per cent

Lancashire County Council: 4.99 per cent

Lincolnshire County Council: 2.99 per cent

North Northamptonshire Council: 4.99 per cent

Nottinghamshire County Council: 3.99 per cent

Staffordshire County Council 3.99 per cent

West Northamptonshire Council: 4.99 per cent

Leicestershire County Council (Minority administration): 2.99 per cent

Warwickshire County Council (Minority administration): 4.89 per cent

Worcestershire County Council (Minority administration): 9 per cent

Cornwall Council: 4.99 per cent (Largest party)

At the last local elections Reform pledged to ‘Reduce waste and cut your tax’ (Worcestershire increased councillors' allowances by 17 per cent).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEMOxwFAu7o&t=252s

The Russian honey trap

We should shed no tears over the oleaginous Peter Mandelson’s downfall, after so many previous disgraces this slippery, slithy tove has slithered his way out of.

What’s striking, though, is Jeffrey Epstein’s travelling harem seems to have included a large number of young Russian women.

It’s almost as if Vladimir Putin and his chums plotted to implicate as many influential people as possible in one vast honey trap with, or without, the connivance of the spider at the centre of the web.

Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Windsor formerly known as Prince, the current President of the United States, various bankers… the list of luminaries involved with the great financier and paedophile goes on and on (though only one relatively minor offender is actually in jail).

So is this all a Russian plot to destabilise the West? If so, you can only say it’s been a great success.

Police 'dodgy dossier' scraping the barrel

Crime commissioner Simon Foster has been pleading poverty again in a bid to put up local taxes to cover an alleged £41 million ‘black hole’ which would certainly be filled if only he stopped wasting public money.

What may or may not be a waste of money (see Birmingham Council’s Oracle debacle) is the West Midlands Police ‘Synergy’ IT programme on which it spent a little over £1.8 million in November and £3.4 million in October.

You’d at least think it was enough to ensure that, when they Googled for evidence to justifying a ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters attending a match at Villa Park, the results would be trustworthy.

On his humiliating recall to Parliament, Chief Constable Craig Guildford told MPs he stood by his force’s ‘dodgy dossier’ exaggerating the cost of policing a Maccabi Tel Aviv game in Holland, completely inventing one against West Ham and falsely claiming it had consulted local Jewish groups.

So what about WMP’s IT policies? It’s hard to tell, after wading through a 2024 report by Marc Williams, its ‘Head of Architecture’.

It uses the word ‘leverage’ 38 times in 35 pages and you can be certain any official report relying on a word that has to be pronounced in the accent of a Wall Street trader means you’re in for a cold shower of meaningless drivel.

For instance, ‘policing Data has become the apex of focus for untapped potential’ while ‘desktops are being leveraged to provide the niche use-case where the fixed technology makes sense’ and so on.

Even so, maybe Mr Guildford should have waded his way through this gibberish (why are IT people incapable of using plain English?) because it does warn: ‘Trust and Confidence in policing's use of public data is critical.’

Mr Guildford told MPs his force ‘do not use artificial intelligence’ which is interesting because his IT report says: ‘A logical step in the enhancement of Data within policing is the potential to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies.’

Mind you, the report does add: ‘Policing needs to proceed with caution here.’

https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/aston-villa/2026/01/06/west-midlands-police-chief-denies-scraping-for-reasons-to-ban-maccabi-tel-aviv-fans-from-aston-villa-match/