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Reply | The Reform Party Conference
at 21:23 17 Sep 2025
Where have I suggested we don’t do anything? Nowhere!
Net zero is interesting and the figures depend on who you want to listen to. Some say it’ll cost £120bn over 25 years and others say it will actually save that kind of money. My personal view is that we shouldn’t be slaves to net zero, but we should definitely be looking at diversifying our energy sources and to reduce our dependence on gas etc which is only going to increase in cost in future. What we need to do is build a tidy grid and have a system in place that doesn’t reward the owners of turbines for switching off their turbines etc.
If Reform want to deliver the £25k tax threshold and 20p per litre saving over the source of 1 Parliament, they are going to need to reduce about £100bn - 120bn from the public spending over a maximum of 5 years - if they want to do it quicker then it’ll be even more hard hitting. The net zero savings which average a maximum of about £5bn per year won’t come close to saving the £120bn over 5 years that Reform are looking at. The kind of savings I’m talking which are needed to deliver Reform are taking about can only be found by slashing expenditure in the big budget areas - pensions, sickness, PIP, universal credit etc, health and education. If they do that, then there’s a risk of alienating the electorate and wide scale disorder like we saw during the poll tax riots.
The £120bn over 25 years isn’t going to come close to what Reform need to cut out of the expenditure. [Post edited 17 Sep 22:14]
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Reply | The Reform Party Conference
at 23:18 16 Sep 2025
I think we need some kind of coalition government which puts party politics second and the national interest first.
The Conservatives left us in a mess, it’s early days and they have 4 years to go, but Labour haven’t exactly set the world on fire and things are a mess and Farage is BSing us and telling us things he just can’t deliver on. |
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Reply | The Reform Party Conference
at 23:12 16 Sep 2025
Do you actually believe stopping illegal immigration will deliver the savings he’s looking for?
I’m all in favour of stopping it, but any savings it generates are not going to even come close to delivering the savings Farage needs to deliver the £25,000 tax free allowance and 20p per litre cut in fuel duty.
There are other figures out there that suggests the costs of illegal immigration is around £4bn, but it depends where you look and who you believe. If he’s doing to deliver what he’s talked about, he needs to either -
1) cut massive amounts from public spending and as per my previous post the main areas he can look at are welfare, pensions, disability, universal credit etc,
2) health - cut services or introduce an insurance based payment system or charge for appointments-
3) education -cut services
4) Not pay the interest on the national debt
Or a combination of all 4.
It’s not likely that he’ll be able to borrow the money as the sums are too large and we saw what happened which the Truss budget.
Illegal immigration ain’t gonna do it. [Post edited 16 Sep 23:22]
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Reply | The Reform Party Conference
at 22:22 16 Sep 2025
The only way that could be afforded is massive cuts in public spending.
The 4 largest budgets are
1) State Benefits - pensions, universal credit, disability benefits etc. which amounts to 29% of total spending.
2) Health - this amounts to 20% of spending.
3) Debt repayments - this amounts to 10% of our current spending.
4) Education - 10% of our spending.
After that you’re into Defence etc.
I’d love the first £25k of my wages to be tax free, but it’s not going to happen. As someone that’s getting older, some kind of US model of insurance to access medical services could be a nightmare and would again likely target middle income earners as the rich wouldn’t be bothered and the very poor would get it via benefits. |
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Reply | "One-in, one-out" scheme struggling
at 21:08 16 Sep 2025
The HRA was a decent piece of legislation, but our adversarial criminal justice system has totally twisted and undermined what it was intended it. The HRA enshrines the right to a fair trial.. nothing wrong with that or many of the other Articles.
It needs a radical revamp, the basic concepts such as Article 2,3,4 , 6,7,9,10,11, should in my opinion be absolute.
Articles 5, 8 and 12 should be qualified rights, - if you aren’t here legally you shouldn’t be able to rely on the right to liberty, a private or family life. Under certain circumstances I’d also remove the right to marry. Bring in those changes and we may be able to get something we can work with. There’s in no way a foreign national sex offender (or one of their family) should be able to argue that their rights under Article 8 are being breached etc when we’re taking steps to deport them because their presence isn’t conducive to the public good. If someone breaks the law, they should be expected to to be deported - end of.
The articles are as below
Article 2: Right to Life,
Article 3: Freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment
Article 4: Freedom from slavery and forced labour
Article 5: Right to liberty and security
Article 6: Right to a fair trial
Article 7: No punishment without law
Article 8: Respect for your private and family life, home and correspondence
Article 9: Freedom of thought, belief and religion
Article 10: Freedom of expression
Article 11: Freedom of assembly and association
Article 12: Right to marry and start a family
Article 14: Protection from discrimination in respect of these rights and freedoms
Protocol 1, Article 1: Right to peaceful enjoyment of your property
Protocol 1, Article 2: Right to education
Protocol 1, Article 3: Right to participate in free elections
Protocol 13, Article 1: Abolition of the death penalty
The problem is most people have heard of the HRA, but they don’t actually know anything about it and they just read the guff in the Daily Express. [Post edited 16 Sep 21:15]
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Reply | Charlie Kirk shot.
at 20:56 16 Sep 2025
From what I’ve read theres money for lobbying figures and then direct contribution to support political “allies” - in 2020 the NRA trousered up $50m to support DT and the Republicans. |
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Reply | Robert Redford
at 14:40 16 Sep 2025
A quality actor, my favourite film of his was Three Days of the Condor. |
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Reply | Mandy’s best pal
at 21:49 15 Sep 2025
Starmer appointed Mandelson because of his reported good relationship with Trump and the need for a trade deal on favourable terms and that pretty much worked for us because we’ve got one of the better trade deals with the US, it all worked out ok until this week when the past caught up with Mandelson. I strongly suspect there a lot more to run on the Epstein story in this country and across the pond, but I suspect some vested interests are trying to keep the lid on things. |
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Reply | Mandy’s best pal
at 14:56 14 Sep 2025
I know and I made reference to the restrictions in the 3rd paragraph. The restrictions on A8 nationals could only ever be temporary.
Blair did impose restrictions on the A2 nationals (Bulgarians and Romanians) who joined the EU in 2007 but again, these could only be imposed for a fixed period. [Post edited 14 Sep 15:08]
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Reply | Mandy’s best pal
at 13:34 14 Sep 2025
The comment about Blair “throwing border control” isn’t quite accurate. He could have gone better, but some of the causes pre date his time as PM.
Freedom of movement for workers had been of the cornerstones of the EEC since 1957. When John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 that expanded FOM to everyone. When Tony Blair came to power FOM was already in place and there was nowt he could do about it.
When the EU expanded in the 2000’s to incorporate some of the former Eastern Block countries Blair could have introduced temporary restrictions on migrants coming in to the UK from the new countries for 2 years and, under certain circumstances the restrictions could have been extended for under certain criteria BUT there was no option to extend the restrictions permanently.
I believe Blair was 100% wrong not to introduce restrictions when the EU expanded.
Migration under the previous Conservative regimes has been much higher than it ever was under Labour, I’ve previously posted the stats on her (and I can’t be bothered to try and find them) but they were on average around 50% higher per year than they were under Labour.
The last few years of the Conservative government saw net migration of around 2mn - that’s the net figure the actual number coming in was much higher than that.
What we have seen since Brexit is a marked change in the type of immigration, previously it was primarily white Christian Europeans, now we’re seeing more Asians and Africans who may have different religions.
I am no Blair fan and if I had my way he’d have been investigated criminally for his tole in the Iraq dossiers saga. Blair got things wrong, but he isn’t the only one responsible for where we are now. The likes of Boris, Sunak and May are also responsible. |
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Reply | The Arab Slave Trade
at 22:10 12 Sep 2025
With regards to the comment about there being more slaves now, out of interest how do the numbers look as a percentage against the estimated world population back in the day and now? |
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Reply | Should Antifa be proscribed as a terrorist group?
at 22:06 12 Sep 2025
It’s my understanding Antifa is not a single organization but a loosely affiliated, decentralized political movement of individuals, primarily on the left, who oppose fascism and the far-right, which would mean you couldn’t ban “Antifa” it would be more case of looking at the individual organisations.
Many of the organisations who are labelled as “Antifa” are peaceful, but there are others who are more disposed to using violence and they should be looked at closely. |
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Reply | Charlie Kirk shot.
at 21:10 12 Sep 2025
It’s not just social media. They own the bulk of the press, quite a few TV stations and they control platforms like Twitter - being in control is exactly why Musk paid all that cash for Twitter. |
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Reply | When will it happen
at 23:57 11 Sep 2025
Your comments about schools visiting mosques and synagogues are spot on, my children who are now grown up went on trips to visit mosques and synagogues and they were able to speak to the Rabbi and an Imam.
Unlike many, I’ve actually been to a couple of mosques and to a synagogue and I received a warm welcome in both. I’ve also been to services at Catholic and Protestant churches.
There’s good and bad in all walks of life. |
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Reply | When will it happen
at 23:49 11 Sep 2025
We’ve previously had Muslim Chancellors and the U.K. didn’t collapse during their tenure.
I think one area where we’d really see some pain and potential collapse if we weren’t able to count on Muslim folk is across our health service. I have 2 Muslim families living in my street and they are absolutely lovely people. One is a surgeon and the other a paediatrician. |
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Reply | The Reform Party Conference
at 23:29 11 Sep 2025
If Farage is going to call out other people and hold them to account, then he’s got to expect the same level of scrutiny and to be held to the same standards.
If he’s done nothing wrong great, if his behaviour has come up short then he needs to be held to account. |
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Reply | Mandy’s best pal
at 23:23 11 Sep 2025
I suspect that Starmer took the risk of appointing Mandelson on account of the previous reports which claimed Mandelson had a good relationship with Trump and I suspect Starmer hoped this could benefit the country obtain a favourable trade deal and benefit us in other ways, but it’s all gone Pete Tong for Starmer on account of the US electorates continued interest in Epstein.
In the run up to the US election the Republicans repeatedly made reference to Epstein and in February Pam Bondi claimed to have a list of clients, but it’s never been published and now there’ve been denials it ever existed! The US electorate are being fed conflicting information and they smell a rat. The Whitehouse have been on the back foot and are looking to shut the story down and 1 strategy has been to release further information which has brought Mandelson in to the picture and it’s blown up in Starmers face. Had the US electorate interest been quelled some time ago this story wouldn’t have come out, but it has come out and Mandelson had to go.
It’ll be interesting to see what else comes out because I don’t think Mandelson is going to be the last name we’re going to hear about.
I don’t think Mandelson should have been appointed in the first place, but I can see why he was. |
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Reply | Israel is now bombing Qatar
at 22:09 10 Sep 2025
Regardless of some of the other very valid comments in this thread, Qatar is a major ally of the US and is the home to the largest US military base in the Middle East. The Israeli act could well jeopardise the base’s long termfuture. [Post edited 10 Sep 22:09]
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Reply | Yvette cooper now Foreign Sec
at 17:47 6 Sep 2025
Wasn’t aware that there hadn’t been any crossings in the last 2 weeks. That may well be foen yo the weather, but equally you could argue the record number we’ve seen crossing during the summer is also down to the really good weather we’ve had. It cuts both ways. |
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