Best Of

Re. the discussion in the last thread, the Probate Officer will be employed by HM Courts and Tribunal Service i.e. the most well known under-funded part of public life in the last 20 years. It isn’t the “civil service” as is commonly understood.

Isn't it? That's how I understood the "civil service"!

I was puzzled on the last thread by a complaint that a government service was slow and therefore the solution proposed was to cut staff. How is that going to make the service better?

Coz they will be terrified they’ll be the next to go in the next round of cuts. Put the fear of god in them

Give them hard targets to meet and if they don’t meet them - gone

This is the new £350m for the NHS delusion.

It’s really not. We are all going to experience the “fear of god” in the next few years, in regards to our careers and crafts - the civil service will and should be no exception. We should utilise the moment to make them WORK

As a Civil Servant myself, go to hell. I work my arse off in a background of rising abuse from the public due in no small part to the lazy pontificating of people like you.

Why the feck are you posting on here? At 09:50 on a working day? I can do it because I’m self employed - and I employ you with my taxes. I am your boss

Get back to the office you lazy scrounger

I'm using an annual leave day to care for my sick husband if you want to know. I can't use them to actually go and travel because he's too ill so I might as well use them to provide a bit of extra care than I can provide in between the hours I spend at work trying to ensure that the public get a say in their government. I've already been threatened with a law suit this week. Why don't you go back to writing subsidised puff pieces and try to have a bit more empathy for people who work extremely hard.

Guardian's list of runners in deputy leader race is a bit white and middle class. I can't see the members being happy, understandably as it suggests McSweeney has total control.

I am non white, perhaps I should become Labour's deputy leader?

Nobody cares about class, people with class do not talk about class and well...

I am running to be Deputy Leader of @UKLabour.

As a proud working-class woman from the North East, I have come from a tough council street all the way to the Cabinet.

I will be a strong voice to unite our Party, take the fight to Reform, and deliver for our country.

https://x.com/bphillipsonMP/status/1965310226565095448

I think Ms Phillipson is a very decent person, but her background is actually too typical of the Labour party that understands some harsh realities but not others.

Track:
Joins Labour party age 15
From Comp to Oxford to read history and languages
Two years working local government
Three years managing the charity founded by her mother. This brings us to 2010.
Thereafter MP for safe local Labour seat..

The charity:
The excellent charity founded by her mother is not a charity in the sense that the general public understand them - funded by voluntary donations of the general public. It is nearly 100% funded by the taxpayer.

Would it be good to have a deputy leader who had started a business, employed people in a set up where you made a profit or went bust and so on?

We need a Labour party that understands why pubs are closing, hospitality is in crisis, why energy costs are a problem for manufacturing and knows what a sovereign debt crisis is.

TSE dethreaded me again. I must have said something about Yorkshire.

We have been warned:
Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK
·
7h
Reform will transform the civil service from a bloated, failed organisation hostile to the interests of the British people into a lean, performant machine that makes our country proud. 🇬🇧

On the face of it, this doesn't sound like anything to be worried about. What do you see as problematic with it?

This is obvious by now, surely? It's about 97% likely to be pure BS. Reform are an incompetent policy-free slogan machine, hoping that fools will fall for it. I doubt if they even know what they mean themselves by "Civil Service", never mind what it actually means.

We have this exact cycle from Zia himself in Kent County Council. Lots of "we will save X Y and Z". But LTNs to be cut did not exist. Woke waste to be cut did not exist. "DEI jobs" hardly existed.

It was all public information, but the numpties of Reform, including Zia himself, did not do any homework. So then he rifled through last year's local papers and social media, to find some identified savings he could claim to have "identified". And made a serious of fake claims about it. Cue a public faceplant.

So what happens next? Well, in Derbyshire they cut half the adult education centres. They had time for a proper process, but waited until the last minute and tried to do an emergency decision.

But RefUK are such a fuckwit collective that they had to admit their action was unlawful.

Vote for a clown show, and you get a circus. I don't want a circus in my Council or Government.

I've got an appointment at the hospital tomorrow morning when the x-ray will hopefully give me the all clear to start weight-bearing on my ankle, and so walking, again

It's been six weeks since I was last walking, and my calf muscle has shrunk to around the same size as my forearm. I need to get it built back up a bit before I get back to work, but more importantly get back to full foot fitness at work for my annual Spring peregrination

I'm planning to walk the west coast of France from Vannes to Biarritz, to join up my Brittany walk with last year's Pyrenees walk. I've been checking out the route for the first time. The centre of Nantes looks lovely, and I have to visit La Rochelle

I can't remember the name of my first French school book in the mid-eighties (Latin was Ecce Romani), but everything in it happened in La Rochelle

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/sep/08/labour-deputy-leadership-election-contest-keir-starmer-angela-rayner-uk-politics-live?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-68bea8df8f08f8842fbb453f#block-68bea8df8f08f8842fbb453f

An interesting take on small boat arrivals from a researcher into what's causing people to come here, arguing that Brexit is one of the drivers. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.

The media don’t want to talk about it but it’s clearly had an impact and it’s so obvious by just looking at the figures post Brexit .

Pre Brexit there were no boats but illegal crossings by HGVs

This was stopped, and by 2018 small boats crossings started with 299 and 599 the following year

In the years from 2020 the crossings surged along with the explosion in migration into Europe via Italy

This is not, as some would portray, a brexit issue but a more recent problem dominating governments around the globe

Migration observatory says the specific post-brexit issue is the withdrawal from EU databases. Previously claimants refused elsewhere in the EU would be flagged, now the UK is known to be a second opportunity to claim asylum.

A few months ago I met up with a political strategist who knows a thing or two about winning general elections and they said the best way to stop Reform winning a general election was for the public to see them as a bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists mostly, things like this and lauding Lucy Connolly will seal the deal.

NEW: Linden Kemkaran, the Reform UK leader of Kent County Council, tells @TimesRadio the party should consider an inquiry into a possible link between the Covid vaccine and cancer.

Comes after Dr Aseem Malhotra told the Reform conference the jab gave the Royal Family cancer.

https://x.com/KevinASchofield/status/1964733148434182451

These asshats are going to further reduce vaccination rates of all sorts in this country, and lead to lots of disease and deaths as a result.

Vote Farage Party, vote death!