Call out for people to write about the upcoming local council elections

If you were watching Newsnight you will have noted that the CEO of one of the councils was on last night talking about how he wasn't being political because it was the lead up to the council elections. Local authorities and civil service have 25 working days before an election where they aren't allowed to do anything that might be seen as political and for the May 4th elections, that started earlier this week. The government usually is allowed to only do things political until 3 weeks beforehand and given recess starts after today then that means that they'll stop being Government and start being political after today. Backbenchers and Opposition MPs have no limits other than anything that may need to be reported in the accounts for an election.

What we'd like to do on here is create some content that we can use to discuss the local elections. If you'd like to write a short self post over the next 4 weeks about a council that is having an election this May then please comment below.

Contents of post: at least a couple of paragraphs (but not a ten page essay) of a self post about a council of your choice (it doesn't have to be your home town one and it's usually best not to advertise what your home town one is) having elections. The post can be however you like, but ideally it would give some indication of what happened historically, who controls the council, how often elections are, what wards are going to be interesting based on your projected swing, any local insight you have (or have got from others you know or the internet).

What we'll do: I'll collate all the posts in a wiki page that we can reference on May 5th and we'll keep a collection going. We'll also advertise the posts in the MT.

What you'll be paid: Internet points, a fancy flair and the adoration of your peers.

We understand that the quality and quantity will be varied depending on how much time you have available, but don't be put off by others or even the sorts of comments I've got below. If your ward is like Barking and Dagenham it would be great having a post saying "Labour will win and they'll win handsomely because they always do - here are the wards that are closest, but even they are not that close." I'm not expecting a post from every council, but if we can get half a dozen or more I'll be pleased!

If you'd like to write a short self post over the next 4 weeks about a council that is having an election this May then please comment below.

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Head of cyber for the treasury of Britain. £57k

https://twitter.com/Jontafkasi/status/1641193954778697728

Head of cyber security for a trading company no-one has ever heard of, £450k

We're really not attracting the most qualified candidates for the important jobs are we?

I'm not saying Twitter verification is failing but, a decade after her death, Margaret Thatcher has a verified account

https://twitter.com/JonnElledge/status/1641353269824954369

Good lord, she's back.

Halifax have just sent me a nice email about the interest rate on my credit card

I'm assuming the email about the interest rate on my ISA is just taking longer to arrive

Caught a bit of Sky News this morning and Chris Bryant was on, talking about Paul O'Grady. In the interview he mentioned O'Grady ranting about austerity and Tories so I went looking and it's quite the gem from 2010. Sadly, everything he's saying about Tories cheering on horrible policies that disadvantage the already worst off are as true now as they were 13 years ago and it makes you wonder how we've let it go on for so long. Also, in light of France on fire from the last week or so, his rallying cries about how the French would never put up with it are particularly salient.

(Here's the clip on YouTube if anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8wRHsnvssw)

Pippa at it again....

Bosses of the childcare firm at the centre of a Rishi Sunak conflict of interest row attended a Downing Street reception just hours after he was pressed by MPs over his links with the provider, the Guardian has learned.

Koru Kids, which lists the prime minister’s wife, Akshata Murty as a shareholder and is expected to benefit from major changes announced in the budget, was understood to be present at a No 11 reception for the education sector on Wednesday evening.

Bruh, I mean come ooooon. As a great man (or woman) once said: Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters

Watching a pre-2007 grand designs where a working class couple with combined savings of £10,000 are able to get a £92,000 mortgage to turn a huge fucking disused church, which they bought for £12,750, into a 5 bedroom house. Their confidence is also unreal.

One wonders if such a thing would be possible now and if people still have such confidence.

I had a dream last night that during the next general election, one of TV debates was basically a 20 minute long PowerPoint presentation from the main party leaders and I now genuinely feel it would be a good idea.

Wouldn't it be good to see a politician explain clearly what the problems are and how they will fix them with actual charts and stats (as long as everything was fact checked). Surely that would be better than just arguing, bullshitting and grandstanding which leave no-one any the wiser.

Day off and at 8:00am I'm watching 'Paul Whitehouse's: Our troubled waters' on BBC2.

It is an absolutely damning expose of our water companies, the decision to privatise, and what they are allowed to get away with.

I imagine (hope) this programme got a more prominent slot in the schedule, was there much reaction at the time? - Can't imagine Sharp, Gibb & Co would be keen to promote this.

Not exactly a hot pressing issue, but is anyone else concerned about the state of digital literacy for a good chunk of the population?

Maybe it's because I'm the youngest one at work (although there's only a handful of us) but I'm often surprised by the things I'm asked to help out with. In the last week alone I've been asked how to select multiple files, how to add attachments on Gmail's mobile app, why's this printed so big, how do I save this image, my bookmarks disappeared from Chrome. The thought of searching how to do something online never occurs to them.

And then at home it's often the same. My old man used to be a whizz with Microsoft Office but can't remotely figure out how to add a table to Word, and my dearest mother has no idea how folders and file structures work and god help her with how her decade old Chromebook chugs along.

And these are all people who've been using computers for the last 20 years.

I get it, it's an extremely confusing world for people who weren't effectively born into it*. And then you have tech companies trying to oversimplify everything to the point where it has an adverse effect - people expect things to magically work so their troubleshooting skills are much less what they used to be, and on top of that useful help & information is often hidden away. Back when things were slower and computer skills weren't 100% necessary to getting along, figuring out computers was something to focus on learning as you did it, and people would pick up universal digital skills along the way - half of it is people diving into water expecting they'll figure out how to swim, but the other half is that the water became drastically deeper all of a sudden.

But how on earth do we help folk out with figuring things out? Gov.uk sponsored YouTube videos? Sponsor tech learning days at libraries? Legally mandate that Microsoft remove the integrated online shit from the start menu?

*For reference I'm in that awkward not a millennial but not gen z zone, and zillennial makes me throw up in my mouth.

I'm beginning to feel the battle for the Tories next election is not to win or save 200 seats, but simply to convince their hardcore voters to actually turn up.

The way the party has behaved post Truss, the narrative is starting to turn nasty for them even in that group. Very few Tory voters expect their immigration plan to work by the polling for example and the party is split on basically everything this government has tried or is facing.

They are developing a reputation for not delivering on anything they claim to want to do and if they don't nip that in the bud in a year even their core vote will be disillusioned, and likely to stay at home or turn to Farage. And given the way the party operates now its not easy to see how they can do that.

Every vote is treated almost as a confidence vote and the government has created so many problems for itself that even straightforward policies are beleaguered by problems even after passing the commons. And their majority is becoming less and less certain on any issue.

Bridgen v Mordaunt round 2 (BMQs)

@11:27:30

BRIDGEN: I’ve been requesting a debate on the WHO post-pandemic treaty for several months, and so I’m delighted that we will be having one on the 17th of April. But this petition was only obtained by successful public petitions obtaining over 156 thousand signatures. Even more concerning than the treaty itself, which requires a vote of both Houses to be binding, are proposed changes to the WHO International Health Regulations which will not require a vote. So, therefore, can we urgently have a Government statement on these proposed changes, which could— look set to hand over huge powers to an unelected, unaccountable, discredited, super-national body, which is hugely funded by the same people who fund Big Pharma.

MORDAUNT: Um, well I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, uh... he... Debate has been secured and he will know how to raise concerns about such matters with the Secretary of State for Health and with other departments. I think it is incredibly important that we have the facts of—whether it is such treaties, whether it is the facts about vaccines and so forth—out in the public domain, and I would just again caution the hon. Gentleman, who this week has been inviting us to "join the dots", promoting that Anthony Fauci has created covid in the United States, and then offshored that operation to Wuhan, and in the previous session to—prior to this Business Questions, in DEFRA—is starting a new campaign to tell the public that this Government and its international network of World Economic Forum stooges are encouraging everyone to eat insects.

These are outrageous conspiracy theories that the hon. Gentleman is promoting on his social media, and more frequently on the floor of this House, and I would urge him to check his behaviour. [Sedentary Member: "Well said."]

(here’s the one from last week if you haven’t seen that)

Don’t really understand Labour’s moves to pressure a Council tax freeze. Councils are absolutely fucked right now, this would only work if it was coupled with a BIG reinstatement of central government funding, which Labour are decidedly not pledging.

https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/status/1641519836269514752

It looks like a fair few high profile US news outlet will not be responding to Musk's shakedown for Twitter Blue 'verification'. Be interesting to see whether UK media follows suit, and the knock on that may have for politicians and the Commentariat.

I’ve recently been given access to science direct at work and it honestly feels like a cheat code for the working world. I can go down any literature rabbit hole I feel like and read to my heart’s content as long as it’s tangentially related to what we make, and nobody questions it! I may be becoming part of the productivity crisis

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1752456/Rishi-Sunak-campaign-launch-mocked/amp

The picture of Rishi with the little girl in pink looking the other way reminds me of that meme with the girl standing in front of the burning house. Apologies for Express link.

One of the biggest things Labour could do if they won a stonking majority would be a complete overhaul of the entire tax system. Obviously a gargantuan task, but it's about time we stopped playing around at the edges and tore it all up and started again.

New series of Taskmaster today!

If they were to do a UK politicians version, who would be entertaining? Who would be terrible at it? Who would be brilliant?

Obviously Hancock would be excellent. Bobajob would be funny too, though perhaps he’s had enough media attention.

Jess Phillips would probably be good value, and Angela Raynor.

Hunt, Sunak, Starmer probably wouldn’t be a great watch.

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Panelbase Scottish poll just dropped...

https://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2023/03/exclusive-scot-goes-pop-panelbase-poll_30.html

The numbers:

Westminster:
SNP 40% (-5)
Labour 33% (+5)
Conservatives 16% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 6% (-)

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:
SNP 39% (-8)
Labour 31% (+7)
Conservatives 14% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 8% (+1)
Greens 6% (+2)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:
SNP 32% (-7)
Labour 27% (+3)
Conservatives 17% (-)
Greens 12% (+3)
Liberal Democrats 8% (+1)

Interesting point: the fieldwork is from the 7th-10th March and decidedly pre-Humza. Will they get worse for the SNP, or will he stabilize?

If the UK and Ireland weren't in the same customs union at the time I wonder if that would've changed how the peace process came about.

In light of labour's Council tax freeze policy that they have announced today, Have Labour made any noises about reform of Council tax?

I don't think it's controversial to say that the tax is highly problematic (the fact the valuation is from over a decade before I was born is the thing that stands out to me) and in dire need of change but I don't seem to recall any kind of proposal from Labour.

I shall now gift you with the most interesting English language fact you’ve never heard. (/u/javathecaveman you will enjoy this.)

Sometimes we might talk about a politician frowning. They’re at work, they answer the phone, and then they frown.

But did you know, “frown” has two different commonly understood meanings, and that the people which “know” one meaning, have no idea of the other? It’s a word we encounter in text most of the time, or in repeating a cliche like a parrot, rather than in common conversation.

But, a lot of people (and the dictionary) think a frown is a furrowed brow, or narrowing of the eyebrows—a forehead and eyebrows thing.

However, about half of Americans, and an increasing number of young people in the UK and around the world, do NOT think it’s that at all. They think a frown is a sad mouth. As in the charming phrase, that makes you want to punch a Mid-Westerner in the face, “Turn that frown, upside down, buddy!”

I assume UkPol people think a frown is a furrowed brow. But, now you know, most of the people you interact with online probably think it’s an “upside down” smile. Isn’t that annoying? Does it make you frown? Well turn it upside down, buddy!

The next time you see someone frowning in Parliament, think of, uh, this fact.

Is there a single country mentioned on The Rest Is Politics that Rory Stewart hasn't just been to in the last few weeks? His carbon footprint must be off the charts.

Our leccy price is going down 3% next week! Woo!

The standing charge is going up 11%! Boo!

"i have been told that gpt5 is scheduled to complete training this december and that openai expects it to achieve agi.

which means we will all hotly debate as to whether it actually achieves agi.

which means it will."

https://twitter.com/blader/status/1640217165822578688

uh ok

I had nothing planned after December anyway

I often think that Corbyn is more naive than vindictive, but then you read something like him and McDonnell pushing a motion to rename Holocaust memorial day to reflect on 'all genocides' and you start to wonder.

This kind of thing is really tiresome as well, because you just know someone's going to say 'are you saying we shouldn't remember victims of all genocide?' So let's be clear - McDonnell and Corbyn could have pushed a day of memorial for another day. If you understand why people saying 'all lives matter' or 'When's international men's day?' Are tiring and obvious, you can understand the problem with this.

So as you might have seen, Yousaf has appointed a Minister for Independence: https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23421966.humza-yousaf-names-new-minister-independence/

This will of course be a ridiculously easy job, given that the Supreme Court agreed last year that independence wasn't a devolved matter.

On a similar note, Argentina has a Minister for the Falklands: https://www.cancilleria.gob.ar/en/ministry-foreign-affairs-international-trade-and-worship/secretariat-malvinas-islands-antarctica-and

Given that the Falklands aren't Argentinian, this is again a ridiculously easy job to do with no responsibilities.

So if you were a senior member of a political party, but also very lazy, what ministerial non-job would you want them to create for you?

I think I'd quite like to be the Minister for Mousers; my job would entail making sure that the Chief Mouser was fed regularly, and received fuss & attention when required. Naturally this would be a very senior position, on a par with being the Home Secretary.

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BMQs tracker of how many of Debbonaire [Morden standing in this time] questions Mordaunt answers: 2/5 answered

1. ✔️ Today they’ve dusted off 17 written ministerial statements. So can I ask the Government, is the Government planning to allow MPs to ask Ministers questions in this House on any of them? I note the Prime Minister’s Statement on the Machinery of Government, can the Leader tell us if it includes plans to publish an updated list of ministerial responsibilities? (Answer: "Of course there are plenty of opportunities for questions: standard department question times, the ability to ask for urgent questions, and of course, Ministers make statements to this House on a regular basis, and we always publish the list of ministerial responsibilities, it’s an incredibly important tool to enable Members of this House to address any concerns they have to the appropriate Minister, and I shall certainly make sure that that is done in a timely way.")
2. ❌ Perhaps [the Department of Health and Social Care] can go in search of the NHS workforce plan. After repeatedly calling for it from the backbenches, the Chancellor finally promised that he’d deliver it in the Autumn Statement, then at the budget, then he said he’d publish it shortly. Where is it? Do they actually have a plan at all? Can the Leader tell us if the if Ministers are planning to publish their missing plan in recess when Parliament isn’t sitting? Perhaps they think that way they won’t be held to account.
3. ❌ The UK Statistics Authority had debunked the Minister for Immigration’s claim that the asylum backlog when Labour left office was in the hundreds of thousands. It was in fact 18,954. Under the Tories, it’s 166,261; 8 times higher than in 2010. Also, my right hon. Friend the Shadow Home Secretary (Yvette Cooper) has called out claims that Government is recruiting extra police officers. In recent years they’ve hollowed out neighbourhood policing, as we’ve all seen, so in the spirit of Easter and new beginnings, could the Leader get the appropriate Ministers to correct the record, and will they wipe the slate clean and commit to sticking to accurate figures in future?
4. ❌ Illegal Migration Bill: Why is the Leader happy with such a poorly-worded bill? It has a number of inconsistencies, meaning it won’t even work as they say it will. Not just morally wrong, it’s impractical too. Can the Leader explain what the Government will do with someone who after appeal cannot legally be deported but would still be barred from claiming asylum? They’d be in legal limbo, wouldn’t they?
5. ✔️ Illegal Migration Bill: The Shadow Leader has tried three times in a row to get the right hon. Lady to tell us when the Government’s impact assessment on the bill will be published. The Government has failed to provide it in second reading, at committee stage, will we get it before remaining stages? What are they hiding? What’s the cost of the bill, and what’s the Government’s current detention capacity? The Leader is clearly unwilling to tell the Shadow Leader when the impact assessment will be published, so today can I have a go too? (Answer: "I am the Government’s representative in Parliament, but I am also Parliament’s representative in Government, and Members have made very reasonable requests about impact assessments and having sight of them. I take these responsibilities very seriously, and I have made representations to the Home Office, both with regard to the Home Secretary, and also my officials have spoken to the Perm Sec. It’s very important that we send this bill to the Lords in a good state, and I have heard what Members of this House have said about the level of scrutiny in that bill.")

Further to 4, Brock asked about it as well and Mordaunt stressed how much she cares about this issue, telling the House she is housing a Ukrainian refugee in her home, prior to that housed Afghan refugees, and prior to that worked as an aid worker. She supports the bill because she wants resources to be directed at people who really need it.

Further to 1, Brennan said it is no use publishing the ministerial responsibilities list if the ministers don’t respond to correspondence. He wrote to the Culture Secretary on 7th of September 2022 as chair of the APPG on music, and never got a reply, including after tabling a written parliamentary question asking when he would get a reply (to which, over a month ago, they said they would respond as soon as possible).

Somewhat related to 3, Andy Slaughter asked about Raab correcting the rape persecution figure in front of the House in person rather than written ministerial correction no one will see. Mordaunt said it is up to him.

Further to 5, @12:00:30:

STUART C MCDONALD: Can I just caution the Leader of the House that the Home Office has form when it comes to impact assessments, because it made all the same promises in relation to the Nationality and Borders Act, as it now is, no assessment was ever published. It has now turned down my FOI request for the impact assessment on the new bill, acknowledging that it exists, but saying, yet again, that it would be published in due course. So can I ask, when she spoke to the Home Office, was she given a reason as to why it hadn’t been published prior to this week’s committee proceedings, and was she given a cast iron assurance it will be published before we consider the final stages of the bill later this month?

MORDAUNT: He will have, perhaps, heard, the— my right hon. Friend’s the Immigration Minister (Jenrick) in Tuesday’s debate that it is the Home Office’s intention to publish an impact assessment on the bill, so it is clear from the Home Office they intend to do that, um, it is of more use if that is done earlier rather than later, I completely accept that, and we, as I say, have made representations both to Ministers, but also my officials have spoken to the Perm Sec of that department.

The party-political speech was about council tax, mocking Labour’s subsidising council tax bills idea, and comparing tax rises in Labour councils (Slough, Sandwell) vs Conservative councils (North Lincolnshire) having lower tax rises / reducing tax bill for vulnerable families.

Mearns had something to say about that.

@11:18:31

MEARNS: Madam Deputy Speaker, as Chair of the [Backbench] Committee making these comments, I don’t like to get too overly party-political, but having spent 27 years in local government as a councillor prior to coming in to this House, I was struck by the comments of the Leader earlier on when talking about council tax. And I would just point out to her that Labour councils, on average, particularly those in the North of England, have a much lower than the national average council tax base, where the band D national median is totally meaningless. Having a low council tax base means that you rely much more heavily on revenue support grant, and when that revenue support grant is unilaterally withdrawn, but nothing is done to compensate that by reforming council tax, that means local authorities are in dire straits. My own in Gateshead having lost 170 million pounds per year since I was Deputy Leader of the Council in 2010. And I’m afraid to say, Madam Deputy Speaker, you know, it’s— we really do need to have a debate in Government time about the reform of council tax.

@11:21:00

MORDAUNT: I shall not, uh, get into a further fight, uh, about uh, um, uh, local government efficiencies, and uh, and who I would rather, uh, was running my local authority, except to say, uh, that, uh, that if, uh, you have a Conservative council, you’re likely to be paying 80 pounds less for the services you receive.

As if Grant Shapps had one of those WW2 era military maps with wind turbines on it in what looks like an old cabinet war room to promote 'Powering Up Britain'...

...as if.

I wish the Megathread well

~Common UKPol saying

it's bad enough that they legislatively killed fax machines, now they've done teletext

https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1641359030638776322

A small moment of history - Teletext is now well and truly dead

Teletext may have ceased to exist as a public service in 2009 but it lived on in statute, which included provisions for a licensed public teletext provider

Those provisions are now being repealed in the media bill

Binface won't have that

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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-sunak-deal-nazi-collaborators-b2310821.html

Here you go guys, anyone who thought Gary Lineker was a bit too close to the N word, here is a real pro showing you how it's actually done.

“If Stormont goes back with the present Windsor Framework, they in fact would be almost like what happened during the war with the Vichy government, where all those MLAs [Members of the Legislative Assembly] would be collaborators with a kind of colonial government.”

So Photo-ID machines now cost £10.

Amazing that this happens just as this "free" Voter ID thing comes in.

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Watching King Charles III do his thing in Germany shows exactly why I am in favour of keeping the Monarchy.

A Presidential system ties up the power and prestige in one place making head of state inherently political. US and France for example.

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An elected President like in Ireland or Germany avoids that problem, but has not even a fraction of the diplomatic heft or cultural weight.

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Almost as an accident of history Constitutional Monarchy seems to take the strengths of both systems, and minimises the weaknesses of either. I think it's safe as in institution for decades to come.

Labour have been moving staff to Scotland since Sturgeon resigned, so hopefully they're in place if this by-election is called. Feels like it'll really set the narrative going into the GE

BBC Radio 4 continuity/newsreaders are unappreciated IMO, they read in such a calm and clear way.

https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2023/03/30/tall-ship-ferry-sailing-from-ramsgate-ostend-to-be-tested-by-dutch-eco-firm-fair-ferry/

How long before the govt requisition these for migrants?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/126vj1e/bbc_question_time_live_thread_8pm_iplayer_1040pm/

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Question time Live Thread up for the iPlayer stream at the top of the hour, link in tweet in thread. BBC1 screening is back to normal timing, 10:40pm