This stuff writes itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ed-britain
From football matches to Taylor Swift tickets, Starmer’s penchant for perks is a disconcerting trait
Let’s call it the Boris Johnson test. When our rightly disgraced former prime minister was collecting numerous freebies at a time of acute social crisis, were you outraged?
What are we referring to here? Bozo collecting £250k a year from the Telegraph when he was the Mayor of London? Yeah, I was outraged. Bozo getting free tickets for pop concerts or football? I can't remember it, so I can't have been that outraged.
It’s only eight weeks into Keir Starmer’s administration, but he has made clear how he intends to rule.
That he intends to get current budgets into balance? I'm OK with that really. But let's wait till we've seen some actual budgets, right?
The refusal to scrap George Osborne’s two-child benefit limit imposes poverty on 250,000 children, and drives 850,000 kids further into hardship and squalor.
Fair point.
Labour’s decision to radically restrict winter fuel payments in England and Wales, meanwhile, will withdraw support from 800,000 impoverished older people who are eligible for pension credit but don’t receive it – an inevitable evil generated by means testing – as well as another 1 million pensioners just above the breadline.
It's not an "inevitable evil of means testing". You can publicise pension credit much more than has been done in the past. For all its faults, winter fuel allowance was well known about. Isn't it likely that a lot of people who didn't know about pension credit will claim it now to get the winter fuel allowance? That would mean all those people among the very poorest will be much better off than before. Of course, that's not the main reason why the changes are happening, but it ought to be a positive effect of them.
It is possible to raise the threshold for pension credit too- would be surprised if that didn't happen, though we have to wait for the budget.
Meanwhile, there has been no talk of meaningful taxes on the mega-rich to raise revenue
Because what you'd do if you were thinking of that is tell them months before the budget.
ensure security for all citizens from cradle to grave (the richest 350 British households have a combined wealth of £795bn: bigger than Poland’s annual economy)
We keep hearing about a 1% wealth tax. Assuming no behaviour change at all, that's less than £8bn. Not "security for all its citizens". You might as well paint arrows in the streets leading to the big accountancy firms' offices, with "minimise liabilities this way!" written by them. And they wouldn't even need to do anything shady to avoid tax anyway.
businessperson Waheed Alli. This is the Labour donor who has since been embroiled in a cronyism row after being granted a pass to No 10. Again, apply the Boris Johnson test: would you be perfectly comfortable with a wealthy Tory donor being granted access to the heart of power after showering our ex-PM with expensive suits?
Funny he forgot to mention that it's Lord Alli- ie a member of the House of Lords. I'd be surprised if this wasn't deliberate, because Owen's missing a chance to stick it to the House of Lords here. Ask anyone who remembers Michael Foot about the importance of looking like people expect leaders to look like (not everyone can pull off the John Fetterman look, and anyway he's not the President of the USA).
All of this cements a sense of class solidarity. When Labour scrapped the Tories’ VIP helicopter contract, they said it represented a past government that was “totally out of touch with the problems facing the rest of the country”. Does the same apply to the current prime minister or not?
The current Prime Minister was literally the one that scrapped the contract.
What happens when energy bills surge, winter bites
Same as happened the last two year, one presumes- the government will make special payments. That's better than spending a fortune every year.
And I've followed Owen's link on cronyism.
It is understood all three were hired under a fast-track route that can be used to employ taxpayer-funded officials in certain circumstances, such as when they have “highly specialist” skills or are being hired for short-term roles.
So-called "exceptions" to the normal rules have been granted more than 100 times in the past yearr.
I'd never heard of this, but it seems reasonable enough that a short term role can be filled in this way.
Ian Corfield was hired to deliver an "investment summit" in October. He's now going to be working unpaid. If this was Corbyn. Jones would be attacking the rightwing media for this campaign against him doing nothing wrong. But as it's Starmer, this stuff goes straight into his article.
Starmer’s speech promising misery now for long-term gain is merely a less optimistic riff on David Cameron’s opening statement as prime minister in 2010
It's not really, is it? Cameron promised no cuts to frontline services, and anyway inherited a better situation than he expected. Starmer inherited a worse one. Starmer's approach to public sector pay has been a bit different to Cameron's too- are we even talking about austerity when we factor this in?
In total, he received £76,000 worth of freebies in the last parliament. These ranged from hotel stays to more than 20 football tickets (bear in mind that, as leader of the opposition, his £128,291 annual salary hardly left him wanting). Throw in VIP tickets courtesy of the Premier League to see Taylor Swift, worth £4,000, during the general election campaign and, well, you get the gist.
This bugs me. Starmer's happily shown up to sit in regular seats at Arsenal for many years. When you're LOTO or PM, the security requirements make that impossible. So if you want to go to a football match, it has to be "VIP", whether you drink mineral water or down 2 free bottles of bolly. These tickets are very expensive, and would massively eat into his salary. So it doesn't actually tell me he's an enormous freeloader who loves hanging out with the rich. It tells me he's not going to miss out on watching football because he's PM.
That Starmer self-evidently craves the lifestyle of the jet-setting rich, while imposing destitution on children and pensioners alike, well, the evidence is glaringly apparent. And an already unsympathetic public is going to notice it.
Destitution isn't being imposed on pensioners. And the 2 child limit is awful, but the public (including Labour voters) supports it. By all means say it should be abolished, but spare us the old "British public have seen through him". I'd like to see a bit more evidence of "international jet-setting" than attending events in the only way the PM really can, but that's just me.
Jones does have a point about expenses as DPP, I think. Then again, if you just wanted international jet setting, you could work far less hard in the private sector and get more of it.
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