Chris Whiteside's Blog

"Happy New Year! 🎉💥 I’m excited for 2025 and the challenges ahead. The renewal of the Conservative Party is underway.   Our country needs us to get this right. Under new leadership, we are committed to doing things differently, focusing on real solutions to the challenges we face. Together, we can restore our nation's pride and prosperity." (Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch MP,  Leader of the Conservative party)

Forty years ago today, at the end of a year which had been bad for a number of reasons which had nothing to do with the novel which made it infamous long before it arrived, my late mother said to me,  "I will be glad to see the back of 1984." So was I, but I will be even more glad to see the back of 2024. Let's work together to make 2025 better.

The petition about Labour's broken promises has now reached more than three million signatures. It will be debated by parliament on 6th January. If you would like to check the details or the number of signatures, or indeed sign it if you ahve not yet done so, you can follow the link below to do so Call a General Election - Petitions

 

Harvey Jones in the Express (see previous post) was not the only person to compare the Reeves budget with Kwasi Kwarteng's budget during the short-lived Truss administration over the holiday. A member of my family who is no fan of Liz Truss said to me over the Christmas break that he thought Reeves' 2024 budget was right up there with the Truss/Kwarteng budget in terms of irresponsibility - he called it the biggest gamble in British economic history. He predicted that there could be dire consequences for the economy in 2025 when the National Insurance rises kick in. I hope he's wrong but I am very much afraid that he probably isn't. What really gets me about what the new Labour government have done to business - after promising to be business friendly and deliver policies aimed at promoting growth - is that, which business might have survived several of these policies in isolation, to have them all hit at about the same time will be the biggest squeeze on business in re...

Writing in the Express, Harvey Jones reviewed the record in 2024 of the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. He quickly got to 20 mistakes before he ran out of space. His list of " Rachel Reeves’s 20 biggest mistakes in 2024 - and how we’ll all pay for them " is as follows: "1. Her first big error was to claim she wouldn’t hike taxes on “working people” if Labour won the election. It meant she had no mandate for October's horror Budget. 2. Lavishing public sector workers with £9billion of pay rises without demanding any productivity improvements was a swift bung for Labour's union paymasters, funded by taxpayers. 3. Taking freebies from friends to fund all those smart trouser suits. Not a good look. 4. Embellishing her CV. An even worse look. 5. Axing the Winter Fuel Payment for 10million pensioners. Labour’s own research shows thousands will die as a result. She doesn’t seem to care. 6. Scrapping the £86,000 social care cap without putting anything in its place. This wil...

"Sir Keir Starmer's attack on the working class, our children, and parents/grandparents is unjustifiable. He lied to us all to get elected and does not deserve to be the leader of the Labour party." Labour councillor Steve Edwards. I wrote here to congratulate Councillor Alex Dale on a stunning council by-election victory a few days ago when he gained a Brockmoor & Pensnett seat on Dudley council in a ward which had a huge Labour majority in May. Another Conservative by-election gain on a huge swing from Labour Labour's vote collapsed by nearly 35 percentage points and they were beaten into third place by Reform UK. One of the remaining Labour councillors for the ward has written a piece thanking "everyone in Brockmoor and Pensnett who held their nose and voted Labour" It will be interesting to see how long it takes Starmer to throw Councillor Edwards out of the Labour party - unless he gets removed first himself. Here's Councillor Edward's piec...

“Liam Byrne spoke for many of us when he declared that ‘in the long run, we’re all dead’ . Yes. But how would those of us watching the committee necessarily know?”   John Crace, from an article in the Guardian about the PM’s meeting with the House of Commons Liaison committee, which consists of the chairs of all the Select Committees.  (Link to the full article is at the bottom of the page.)  For those who don’t recognise the quote within a quote within a quote. Liam Byrne was quoting John Maynard Keynes. Other extracts from the article:  “Being asked questions about what he has been doing is Starmer’s idea of fun. It satisfies his inner civil servant. There’s nothing he likes more than going on and on about himself. Setting his inner ChatGPT to talking in triplicate. A chance to repeat old favourites such as “I didn’t want to inherit a £22bn black hole”. Not entirely true. Think of how miserable you’d have been if the economy had been in good working order. There wo...

This is supposed to be the season of peace and goodwill towards men. And usually on Christmas Day I post about that. Unfortunately nobody seems to have told the Kremlin. As the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, has just commented by posting on X, formerly Twitter, about Russia’s attack today on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. "Russia’s Christmas gift to Ukraine: more than 70 missiles and 100 drones, directed at Ukrainian families celebrating in their homes and the energy infrastructure that keeps them. For the third holiday season, Russia weaponizes winter." Putin has again acted as the Grinch this Christmas, leaving half a million families without heating on Christmas Day, in temperatures just a few degrees Celsius above zero. What makes Putin's actions so stupid is that until he launched this war there were plenty of Ukrainians, though probably not a majority, who actually wanted to be closer to Russia if not rejoin Russia. But because of the amount of carnage a...

For anyone reading this who is of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Bahai faiths , May the God of Abraham be with you and all who you love at this time, guard, guide and protect you. For anyone reading this who loves the Christmas story: May the Joy of the Angels, The Eagerness of the Shepherds The Wisdom of the Magi The Patience of Joseph The Love of Mary and the Hope represented by the baby Jesus be with you this Christmas season and throughout the year For anyone reading this of any other faith , may your God be with you at this time. And for everyone reading this , I with you and your family good health and happiness at this time and a peaceful, happy, healthy and prosperous New Year 2025. In other words:  HAPPY CHRISTMAS! 

Miriam Cates, the former Conservative MP, wrote a column for GB News last week about the progress of Reform. It was not the sort of piece which most parties, if it were written about them, would have chosen to treat as an attack. It contained a lot of things which could have been presented quite the other way using lines like "Even our opponents recognise the 'extraordinary success' of Reform UK." But that isn't how Reform chose to respond: instead they focussed on the words in Miriam Cates' piece about the challenges they would need to meet to become a serious contender for power, and made a series of comments about her which amount to personal attacks. Here are some extracts from Miriam Cates's latest reply. "Well, I didn’t see that coming! In my GB News column last week, I wrote about the extraordinary success of Reform UK, as the insurgent party drew level with Labour and the Tories in the polls for the first time. I remarked on the threat this po...

 

 

 

Thangham Debbonaire MP, then Labour MP for Bristol West, criticising Boris Johnson for appointing allies to the House of Lords during an appearance on ITV two years ago:  "This has been rewarding cronies, and that's just not on. "And Sir Keir Starmer would never do that, he would never exploit the honours system to do what Boris Johnson has done." Lady Thangham Debbonaire posting on X this week, accepting a peerage from Sir Keir Starmer after losing her seat this year.  (Yes that's right, a Labour MP who lost her seat in the 2024 general election. Think about the implications of that for a moment.) "I'm honoured to be asked to join the House of Lords. "I'm grateful to the Prime Minister for giving me this opportunity to serve the country and support the Labour government he leads to transform the UK." For the avoidance of doubt, I'm NOT criticising Starmer for appointing allies to the House of Lords, because it's how the system wor...

"Lessons in life will be repeated until they are learned." (Frank Sonnenberg)

Congratulations to Councillor Alex Richard Dale who was elected to Dudley council yesterday, gaining the Brockmoor & Pensnett ward from Labour on a huge swing. In the fist six months of this year it was the Conservatives who were doing badly in by-elections and mostly Labour who were triumphant.  But since July as people found out or have been forcibly reminded what a Labour government is actually like, it has been Labour who have been taking a punishment beating at the hands of voters almost every Thursday, losing dozens of council seats, the majority of them to the Conservatives who have notched up more than twenty gains.. The Conservative gain in the Brockmoor & Pensnett (Dudley) council by-election yesterday was typical of the new mould: CON:  571, 35.4% (+7.0) REF:   485, 30.1% (+30.1) LAB:   466, 28.9% (-34.7) GRN:    49,   3.0% (+3.0) LDM:    24,   1.5% (-6.5) IND:      16,  ...

‘How can the Chancellor say this with a straight face? It is an outright falsehood. ‘Businesses and economic forecasters have made clear that higher employer NI means higher inflation and a bigger wage squeeze for working people.’ Former Bank of England official Andrew Sentance responds to a claim by the Chancellor that she had protected working people by not hiking their national insurance - even though the £40 billion of tax increases in her budget included a £25bn hike in national insurance contributions by employers. Rachel Reeves' accused of 'outright falsehood' over budget boast

QUESTION: What's the difference between a farmer in a tractor which has sunk to its' axles in mud, and the latest Ipsos political satisfaction survey? ANSWER: One's a stuck farmer: And the other showed  61% of voters who took part were dissatisfied with the Prime Minister (Ipsos) .

 

 

Atrocious polling numbers for Sir Keir Starmer have led to a slew of media articles with headlines describing him in terms like, quote,  " Keir Starmer is 'the worst Prime Minister in modern history,' according to Brits. " Starmer has overtaken Gordon Brown as having the worst net satisfaction figure ratio five months into his  premiership of any PM since IPSOS began tracking it more than forty years ago. The latest Ipsos Political Monitor, taken between 27th November and 4th December 2024 asks the public their views on the government and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Only 27% of Britons are satisfied with Starmer's performance, while 61% express dissatisfaction, resulting in a net satisfaction score of -34. Public dissatisfaction extends to the government as a whole, with a net satisfaction rating of -49.% IPSOS say that, quote, "Starmer's ratings compare unfavourably to previous Prime Ministers at similar points in their first terms." His rating of ...

 

"I see no good reason, unless we do something really stupid, why we shouldn't be the largest party in Wales." (Quote given to GB News by "a Reform party insider" ) It really is tempting fate when a politician of any party makes a comment like that ...

From an opinion piece by Harvey Thomas The article begins with a reference to the film "Life of Brian" ... "When Brian sweating on the cross at the end of the film, he's given a glimmer of hope as a "thoroughly trained suicide squad" marches up and apparently offers to save him. Their leader proudly boasts "we can commit suicide within 20 seconds", and that's exactly what they do, leaving Brian despairing and doomed. I'm reminded of that scene when I see the Labour front bench. Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband offered hope to a desperate nation during the general election, only to commit instant economic suicide. Now the whole country is sweating on the cross. Labour had 14 long years in opposition to train up. Now it's committing economic suicide at speed. PM Keir Starmer drew his sword first, killing all hope by warning of the tough decisions Labour would make to fill that £22billion black hole. It was a mas...

"Labour’s decision to remove the winter fuel allowance from 80 per cent of Britain’s pensioners will only save the exchequer around £1.3billion - £1.5billion. For a Government to take such a risk with millions of people's lives after they have worked hard and paid into the system is shameful, negligent and something that could cause Labour damage for decades to come. Whoever made this dreadful calculation and advised Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves that this is a good idea? This will do three things, it will cost votes, seats and most importantly people’s lives. This Labour Government, who are meant to be there for the working class and vulnerable people, abandons them at the first opportunity it gets. The party is choosing to abandon the people who need them the most by knowingly taking a vital payment away from people who cause some of their deaths." Keith Bays, from an opinion piece which you can read in full at Pensioners best not have a BAD winter or Labour's ...

“Removing the Winter Fuel Payment for millions of Pensioners could leave thousands of the most vulnerable at risk.” John McDonnell, who was then Labour shadow chancellor, publishing research on behalf of the Labour party in 2017 suggesting that means testing Winter Fuel Payments could cause an extra 3,800 pensioner deaths a year compared to what otherwise would have happened. Unluckily for ten million pensioners, now Labour have been elected they have taken a different view and adopted in government the very policy they condemned while in opposition.. 

 

 

“Starmer’s betrayal isn’t just a slap in the face to farmers—it’s a direct assault on the future of British agriculture. “These are families who’ve slogged their guts out for generations to preserve their land. Farms bombed in WWII. Lives lost in Flanders. “Farmers scraping by in the 1970s just to hold onto their farms. And Starmer thinks he can waltz in, sell them out, and we’ll all roll over? Think again. “The reality is stark: even if he sold every farm in Britain, it wouldn’t be enough to paper over the NHS’s waste and mismanagement. “This isn’t about funding healthcare; it’s about stripping rural Britain of its lifeblood. “The British public needs to hear this loud and clear—without farmers, there’s no food, no future, no country worth fighting for. “Starmer’s hour of lies will come back to haunt him. It’s time to wake up and fight for the farmers who’ve fed this nation for centuries.” Colin Rayner , a farmer from Berkshire, speaking ahead of the second Farmers' rally against ...

The opportunity to learn more about new plans for Egremont will be available at a public engagement event on today (Tuesday 10 December,) between 2pm and 7pm, at Egremont Market Hall. Three Egremont projects are being developed to support a £3 million bid for Borderlands Inclusive Growth Funding. They will support the town’s health, economy and reputation as a destination town. The event is a chance for local residents and businesses to take a closer look at the schemes and provide feedback on the projects. The projects have been developed by a Town Team made up of representatives from the community. The three schemes currently proposed are: Redevelopment of the former Red Lion site This project will see the redevelopment of this vacant town centre site to provide a new public space. The proposal could create new ‘buildings’ on-site, offering pop-up vendor locations, play/gym equipment, maker spaces and landscaping. Development of Florence Arts Centre This project will develop the cult...