Don't Mention the [Post] War...

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Two things - maybe three - or even four, if I can hold the thread together: I am post-prandially challenged at the moment and have driven a fair few miles earlier in the day, picking Jane up from The Stretton Fox this lunchtime, en route back from her visit to her mom in Carnforth, this week. Two points firstly, raised from pieces in the i newspaper yesterday and today. Katy Balls in the weekend rag asserts that the Tories are losing the very last bastion of their electoral support: pensioners. Speaking knowledgeably as one of that amorphous cohort of older people myself, I can honestly state, hand on heart, that I have never - ever - voted Conservative in my entire life, and the thought of changing that position simply for the reason that I had entered the - ahem! - twilight years of my life, would never have crossed my mind in a million years [why on earth would I?].

Secondly, the debate over what Labour should, will or can do about turning this benighted archipelago's economic fortunes around when inevitably elected to government, is as partisanly febrile as ever: plan, schplan. The government claim that Labour has no 'plan', despite the fact that they have simply sat on their arses for fourteen years milking the economy dry for their mates' and their benefit. Labour - at the moment - are claiming as little as possible simply to guarantee their accession to power in order to oust this disastrous pile of right-wing ordure from parliament.

One thing that needs to be pointed out - point three - as Andrew Fisher pointed out in yesterday's paper, Clement Attlee's 1945 postwar Labour government inherited a debt burden two-and-a-half times as large as the current national debt. And still they managed to create The National Health Service and welfare state, British Rail, nationalised public utilities that actually functioned, social housing on a vast scale and legal aid for those unable to afford their own representation should they need it.

This all worked perfectly well - I know, I was there - until Thatcher's Tories tore the heart out of it and sold off not only all those publicly-owned assets for profit, and in doing so removed the human rights of the majority of our population, along with their ability to earn a fair crust for a fair day's pay; all in the service of feeding the maw of corporate greed. The bottom line is that if Attlee's Labour government could do it in the aftermath of a World War, under far, far worse economic conditions, then Starmer's government-in-waiting should be able to do likewise. The ball is now firmly in their court. Just fucking deliver, people, because we're running out of time as a society. There is no point four, or at least if there was, I can't remember it...

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