[The Weeping Angel]

In a shocking twist.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Will Kemi leave it there or will she suggest that the FCA have been got at? I suppose it depends which way Twitter goes.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Child Poverty strategy published today.

Let's see how much coverage this gets from people who have told us for years that they care about this stuff. I suspect it'll get a lot of "we wouldn't have child poverty if Starmer taxed the rich/ joined the EU" and the like.

[Abernathy]

Child Poverty strategy published today.

Let's see how much coverage this gets from people who have told us for years that they care about this stuff. I suspect it'll get a lot of "we wouldn't have child poverty if Starmer taxed the rich/ joined the EU" and the like.

AKA "Let's look after our own".

[Tubby Isaacs]

There'll be that, but I'm talking about people who have professed to care about poverty. Reaction will likely be the same as the reaction to other things they've said they care about- industrial policy, workers rights, the minimum wage, renters rights, green investment, increasing unemployment benefit, more free school meals, recognizing Palestine.. Some will ignore, some will talk about the "real issues". The real issues are anything else they don't like about the government. Fewer jury trials, that's one of the real issues. Striking resident doctors. Anything.

[The Weeping Angel]

A good article on the child poverty strategy here.

https://labourlist.org/2025/12/tories-s ... d-poverty/

Did you hear the words of the leader of the opposition? She said Labour’s budget was a budget for ‘Benefit Street’. It was a flashback returning us to a decade ago. The Tory front bench on the hunt for any opportunity to pour scorn on people they believed were beneath them and ordinary humans being denigrated on the television.

Nothing has changed for the Tories in the 10 years since George Osborne proudly horrified us with his scroungers versus strivers rhetoric. They still think that pouring scorn on those poorer than themselves helps them politically.

But something changed for the rest of us. From then to now, the Tories in office increased child poverty by about one million.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This might get some cut through if and when energy bills come done. The £150 a month cut (from April) should help, but some of that will be recouped from the income tax threshold being frozen.

Talking of George Osborne, he was by far the most influential Tory Chancellor. So why would straight talking Ed Davey leave him out of this (massive bullshit) meme, eh? It's a mystery, On the plus side, more people seem to be noticing this bullshit from the Lib Dems.

[The Weeping Angel]

Karl Turner thinks the jury proposals are in trouble.

[mattomac]

Anyway to achieve cutting the waiting lists down would be appreciated at the same time?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Do these people think everyone gets their day in court with a jury now? Maybe they’re responding to the bullshit about “series offences like rape and murder” when it’s way more serious offences than that which will still be tried by jury.

Think it’s unlikely the proposals get defeated, with the weight of Leveson behind them. Plus the Minister, Sarah Sackman, is a KC who knows what she’s talking about.

I keep saying how the government isn’t allowed by almost anyone in the public eye to make any changes at all. The Winter Fuel Allowance was the first clue to that. (There were certainly arguments to keep it, but “pensioners freezing to death” wasn’t one of them).

Restricting Motability so that it doesn’t cover some seriously expensive foreign petrol cars is apparently unthinkable to some. “Trapping the disabled in their homes”.

Tax deductions for £10k bikes survived the Budget, or else that would have been another ridiculous kick off. That this survived a Treasury review makes the Treasury look like a bunch of pals fighting their own corner.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Tories must be laughing their arses off at how the bombs they left for Labour are all exploding. SEND is another one, see just one connected issue here, transporting children to school. (I say connected, because it's a wider issue, with only 40% of children having SEND certificates)

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... s-mps-told

People from LAs are clear that lots of these children don't need what they disparagingly call a "door to door taxi service". While a Labour MP points out (absolutely correctly) that support for SEND children is something that parents only get if they fight all the way for it. Can't this be organized better? Say what you like about the Tories, they were capable of making changes, even just at the level of saving money in the short term. They've preferred not to, and will now have a good laugh at Labour trying to do it and getting mauled by everyone as "making changes not even the Tories considered". It depresses me that such people, while often exaggerating what Labour does for partisan reasons, can't see why the Tories didn't consider them. Certain newspapers will inevitably go out of their way to give the impression Labour is smashing the whole thing up even if they end up spending more money on it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Good thread here on why surgery waiting lists aren't falling despite improved NHS performance.

I actually like the explanation offered BTL that most people on waiting lists don't actually need surgery. So the quickest way to get a waiting list down is actually to see these people, so they're not actually on the list any more, rather than do the operations etc. We'll see if increased capacity can deliver more of this. But it's sure as heck a long way back from where we are.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I like David Henig. More of this please. And why does he have to keep up a running commentary on everything Trump says anyway?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Talking of political bullshit, nice to see the Lib Dem rubbish called out. As Anand says, the figures are not at all plausible. Yet Davey will get a load of silly Labour backbenchers to kick up a fuss about how they must be allowed to support Davey's 10 Minute Rule Bill. This nonsense was for a while the headline story on Guardian political blog, and probably would still be if Badenoch hadn't come to the rescue.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Here's something the Government can improve on, rather rapidly. Event taking the lowest estimate, this is ridiculous. Do even lots of people voting Reform care about Filipino care assistants?

The only semi-rational explanation I can see is that the Government have hammered down immigration as much as possible in their first year, as a matter of political strategy. There might be something in that. A lot of the poison around immigration (and one of the things Starmer was getting at in that otherwise shit speech) was that since 2010, politicians have given done the opposite to what they said on immigration, and this has created an impression. of shady forces who won't let it go down. So perhaps the hope is that by establishing straightaway that it can go down a lot, the government can then make the case that more of it is needed. Which might be defensible, if that didn't involve collapsing universities and old people without social care in the meantime.

[The Weeping Angel]

I see where you're coming from, as for care workers, there is this.

https://labourlist.org/2025/12/fair-pay ... s-funding/

round one in five residential care workers lives in poverty, according to Health Foundation fellow Lucinda Allen.

Chronic poor pay reflects “systemic problems”, from insufficient funding to a particularly marginalised, under-unionised workforce. Migrants, women and ethnic minorities are over-represented. Migrants’ bargaining power is especially limited by reliance on employer visas.

Care minister Stephen Kinnock told LabourList care workers faced a real struggle putting “bread on the table”. Even experienced workers often earn little more than new recruits.

“We’ve got the constant challenge that people will say ‘I can get paid more down the road at that supermarket’.”

Turnover is high. A government report recently acknowledged this “increases risks around access to high-quality care”.

Improving the pay of care workers and fixing our broken social care sector are good ideas and it's better in the long term than to import migrants to wipe people's bums as Zack Polanski would put it.

[davidjay]

Perhaps one way to square the circle would be to properly recognise unpaid carers

[Bones McCoy]

Child Poverty strategy published today.

Let's see how much coverage this gets from people who have told us for years that they care about this stuff. I suspect it'll get a lot of "we wouldn't have child poverty if Starmer taxed the rich/ joined the EU" and the like.

AKA "Let's look after our own".

Which is always swiftly followed by "Not like that!!"

[Yug]

A gripe about comms:

From "Your East Riding", the caahncil mag

Brown bin collections will be going weekly in two stages stages starting from February 2026...

...The council needs to introduce the shift to meet a new Government directive that all authorities must collect food waste from all households on a weekly basis. The changes have been funded by the Government...

Why is it left to a council top-heavy in fucking Tories to inform me about a positive change which has been ordered by the Labour government?

I know this is only a small thing, but it's a good example of how shit the government is at communicating. They're doing all sorts of positive things, but apparently can't be bothered to tell us about them. Has no one at the top considered that better comms might go some way to countering the constant stream of bullshit from our noble free press?