What's the Welsh Assembly Senedd ever done for us? Well there's Environment and Housing ...

Wales goes to the vote in May this year (Covid permitting) so each month I will continue to highlight the many achievements of the Labour led Senedd (formerly the Welsh Assembly).  And l’ll start by letting everyone know that 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to vote.   Also the Senedd is are currently legislating for this to apply to voting in council elections.  This month looks at ENVIRONMENT & HOUSING :

Wales was the first country in the UK to introduce:      
> 5p charge for single-use carrier bags
> A ban on smoking in cars carrying children
> A ban on smoking in hospital grounds, school grounds and playgrounds 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

and
> Fracking has been banned in Wales
> Wales has legislated for sprinklers in all new homes
> The Right to Buy policy has been abolished in Wales.

Les

Brexit - what now?

 

I am so angry.

Partly at myself – I didn’t see it coming, didn’t realise how important the decision was, and didn’t realise how lack lustre Cameron’s campaigning had been until it was too late.

Leading up to that vote we had all been drip fed ludicrous ‘fake news’ about the EU.  Everything from it insisting on bringing in ‘straight bananas’ to ‘it’s all the fault of immigrants, coming over here, taking our jobs’. 

So I don’t blame those who voted for it …

Many have said since that they still stand by their decision, and they are untitled to their opinion.

Many were eventually so ground down by it, so bored out of their minds with it being constantly under discussion, that they caved in to accepting the decision, just wanting to ‘get Brexit done’.  (What a vilely clever little three word mantra that proved to be!)

But so many MANY more were duped from the outset by the lies upon lies that preceded the vote.

So I DO blame the result on the self serving garbage that spewed out of the mouths of people like Farage, and then Johnson who cynically chose the Brexit path for political expediency once he knew the outcome.

And I reckon they are all so wrong.  The idea of working as a team is sound, but it’s abundantly clear that there’s plenty wrong with the EU.  But you don’t solve that by leaving the team.  We should have stayed and worked on remedying this together.  Easy to see in hindsight but Theresa May could have said the vote was too close and wasn’t binding.  She would have suffered for a while but no more than she did anyway.

And now we have no right whatsoever to complain, and the consequent damage, not just in the act of leaving in itself but also through the abhorrent arrogance of most of the Tory cabinet, is such that the future – already dire for millions of individuals and businesses suffering the unnecessary austerity of the last 10 grim years – is going to get worse. 

So yes I’m so angry.

Let's celebrate the achievements of the Welsh Assembly

You may be aware that there will be an election next May to vote in your chosen representatives for the Welsh Assembly.  But you may not be aware of its many achievements, lead by the Labour Party throughout.  

Over the coming months I will be listing some of them, and as it’s especially relevant now I will start with how it has reacted to the covid pandemic, certainly handling it far better, and fairer, than the UK government’s woeful response.  Here’s just a few of many highlights :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite all this and much more there are those who would have you believe, and I quote, “the Welsh Assembly has failed to deliver for the people of Wales”.  Fake news at its worst, together with their catchy but totally inappropriate Twitter  ‘#savewales’.  If we need to ‘save Wales’ from anything I’d suggest it would be interference from this current incompetent UK Government!

I fail to see how anyone here in Wales would benefit if making decisions which directly affect us were returned to those outside of this country.  The Welsh Assembly is much closer to Wales both in distance and in spirit.  Is it perfect?  Of course not.  But has it ‘failed to deliver’?  The list above of just some of their achievements says otherwise.

Les
 

The Tory 10 Year CON

This procession of ghastly Tory governments have inflicted 10 long years of misery for the many, and undeserved prosperity for the few ...

CONditioning - whilst the rich now believe they not only have the right to their wealth but they are entitled to even more, everyone else has had 'know thy place' drummed into them

The Anti Robin Hood CON - take from the poor by imposing benefit cuts, and give to the rich by handing out tax rebates

The CON of Divide and Rule - setting the JAMS against the most vulnerable by blaming the latter for everyone else who has suffered through the effects of austerity, and taking advantage of the numerous TV programmes which have painted anyone on benefits as being scroungers

The Status of Money CON - pushing hard on the idea that money somehow makes a person better than others, where only those with money are viewed as being successful, and as a consequence the arrogance of the wealthy has grown even worse, and a culture of greed & selfishness have become more the norm

And possibly the most disgraceful of all is the 'Thankyou' CON - being used in the current pandemic crisis, and after BJ thanked the NHS workers who nursed him through coronavirus, he and his government then try a triple whammy :
* proposed increase to the surcharge applied to migrant workers, fortunately overturned by the extreme backlash from across the UK, b ut then shouldn't be there in the first place
* most of a so-called bonus where given to UC claimants and key workers will be clawed back, so not really much of a bonus
* key workers 'thanked' with the promise of a pay freeze, which makes you wonder what the government does to punish people

TORIES DON'T CARE!
Just when you think they couldn't stoop any lower they do, and still get away with it.  
THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!

This Tory Government ... The 10 Years of Con

This procession of ghastly Tory governments have inflicted 10 long years of misery for the many, and for the most part undeserved prosperity for the few.  In doing so they have done even more damage ...

CONditioning - whilst the rich now believe they not only have the right to their wealth but they are entitled to even more, everyone else has had 'know thy place' drummed into them

The Anti Robin Hood CON - take from the poor by imposing benefit cuts, and give to the rich by handing out tax rebates

The CON of Divide and Rule - setting the JAMS against the most vulnerable by blaming the latter for everyone else who has suffered through the effects of austerity, and taking advantage of the numerous TV programmes which have painted anyone on benefits as being scroungers

The Status of Money CON - pushing hard on the idea that money somehow makes a person better than others, where only those with money are viewed as being successful, and as a consequence the arrogance of the wealthy has grown even worse, and a culture of greed & selfishness have become more the norm

Some say the clock's been turned back to the 30's - yes to the greedy mill owners of the 1830s!  So you would have thought by now everyone who's not the richest miniscule percent will have been totally ground down.  But along comes a pandemic like most have never experienced before, and the vast majority have ended up working alongside each other. regardless of wealth & status, in looking after those worse off than ourselves.

So maybe there's still hope yet.  I mean,  just who was that idiot who said there's no such thing as society?! 

Les

Labour's future, it's in our hands

One of the worst things after a general election is having to listen to everyone's verdict on the outcome, and why it happened.  Everyone is suddenly an expert on politics, all joining in the blame game, the recriminations, and stating their opinion as fact.  (The actual worst thing by far this time will be the suffering, the vilifying, and the dying, of many more people across the UK.  This of course will continue until this government is booted out, but in theory not for another five long years.)

Maybe it helps others to do this, but it certainly doesn't help me!  So let me redress the balance ...

In my opinion there are loads of reasons why we are still having to deal with a Tory led UK government hell bent on ruining the country so they, the very few, can carry on living the high life at the expense of the very many.

- Let's start with the constant betrayal of Corbyn by many of Labour's own MPs.  I cannot condone this but I think a possible reason is that they are no longer solely responsible for electing the leader.  It's likely that non MP Labour members have a different take as to what we need in our leader, but at the end of the day it's the MPs who have to have to work with the leader, respect them, be able to follow them, and be expected to do so even when they don't agree with them.  After all would councillors like myself want the people of Swansea electing our council leader?

- Then there's Anti-Semitism v Islamaphobia.  Very easy to highlight the former as being both bad, and rife with high profile defections of Labour MPs to other parties, and so blame the Labour leadership for not dealing with it.  And equally the Tories are able to get away with the latter when terrorist & similar incidents keep happening most recently the knife atrocity in London, resulting in two dead, in the very last stages of the campaign. 

- And of course we have the right wing media which control the majority of what goes out in the press, over the internet, and on TV.  Even supposed Labour papers have not clearly been supporting Labour, and/or with too little, too late.  And it certainly suited the Tories that the media called it the Brexit Election right from the start.  One comment repeated over and over is that Labour did not have a clear enough message on Brexit, and I reckon people believed it regardless whether true or not simply because the media kept on doing this.  And so they were also able to get away with ridiculing Corbyn as being 'on the fence' yet look what the remain stance did for the Lib Dems, as they haven't even got a leader now! 

- Another aspect I believe has come into play is the fact that there are some who need to be guided by who they think are the people in the know ie the government.  Tories had a snappy mantra 'Get Brexit Done' - almost didn't matter what it said just so long as it was short!  This  I suspect appealed both to those who voted leave, and to those in neglected communities who have been told that being in the EU is to blame, and end up grateful for the few crumbs that the Tories have promised, even though it's them who took away the whole loaf in the first place!

- And so we get to the Manifestos.  We have found election after election that these aren't worth the paper they are written on, so why on earth should anyone believe the truly inspirational honest & costed manifesto of Labour.  Compare this with the much more cynical one of the Tories.  You can just hear them now when they cooked this one up, saying 'we'll con the electorate into voting us back in by fooling them into thinking that austerity has ended.  We'll give just enough back to high profile public concerns like the NHS & Police and they won't notice that it only restores things to 2010, and in many other cases not even that'.  All couched not so much in outright lies as in underhand distortion & manipulation of the truth.

I've probably only just touched the surface - I haven't even started on how come Labour came back from the dead in 2017 yet disappeared into hell this time?  And why didn't all the opposition parties work together more when most clearly had no time for Johnson et al? 

I'm sure there are many more aspects to why we have the result we have.  But my real point here is we have to go forward somehow, ignore the crap, the negativity - and boy is there a lot being spoken right now!  The Labour Party is NOT finished, and we KNOW we have right on our side.  We've just got to find out a way of getting this across.

Les

This Tory UK Government ... The Fatcats-Getting-Richer Con

No not the Tory politicians themselves but their fatcat cronies.

At a recent meeting someone came out with a very pertinent comment in the light of the demise of yet another high profile big company.  If a local community organisation can ensure it keeps it books in order and so ensure it survives then how come Thomas Cook couldn't?

But then those greedy fatcat CEOs, much applauded & feted by this Tory government, get a bonus whether or not the business is doing OK.  So NO incentive whatsoever in doing a good job!

Les