Kemi Badenoch nails it

[teawamutu]

From Glinner's update - this is brilliant:
grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/no-means-no?r=ahiyi&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Looking forward to this. Kemi is really impressive.

Kemi in the Times today:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5ad85442-fefd-11ec-88db-ae1b6b9bdd3e?shareToken=7a63da6bb3f07f09807645166962976a

I'm afraid I never got past ' lower taxes , reduce spending '. That seems drearily familiar 🤔.

God, I’m so conflicted. “Small government” rhetoric like in that piece sounds like a disaster for people who are already struggling right now.

But public life is such a repulsive mess that there is a huge appeal in a politician who speaks clearly and values truth and integrity, at least enough to include them as part of her brand.

I read that piece and think about Michael Gove openly sniggering in an interview when his lies got too ridiculous to sustain, or basically anything Boris Johnson ever said or did, and I can feel the attraction in someone who’s the complete opposite of Johnson, at least in her public persona. I don’t know if I want her to win, but I think the Tories would do very well by choosing her.

@Abhannmor

Lower taxes and reduced public spending is the means by which Conservatives believe we’ll avoid a drawn out recession. Is there a better idea?

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/08/penny-mordaunts-pro-trans-stance-has-ruined-chances-becoming/

Let's hope so.

I think austerity policies have been shown to just exacerbate the problem and further shrink the economy.

Ensuring that the poorest DO have money is a good economic stimulus, as well as being a compassionate response that can help people out of being trapped in poverty.

Climate change is also unlikely to be solved by a small government approach.

Other than these - ie I guess she is a Conservative, and I'm not! - I agree that Kemi has spoken admirably clearly on women's rights.

I just heard she was running and came here to find this already reactivated :)

I really am a single issue voter till this issue is properly addressed in this country, so I hope her colleagues realise how we all feel and get behind her.

It's good to have fresh faces in the Conservative leadership contest so all the very best to her.

I agree with her on some issues, but the lack of adequate public spending by successive governments for many years is why we have so many problems in society.

Not enough police to tackle actual crimes. Police stations closing down everywhere so even less of a presence to deter anti-social behaviour. It's easier for police departments to shift focus onto 'hate speech' and Twitter spats because they don't have to involve actual feet on the ground.

Public organisations and local authorities are relying on ever shrinking or stagnant budgets. It becomes even more tempting to 'outsource' their responsibilities, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation by activist groups like Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence etc who claim to do all the legal thinking for them and provide a list of checkboxes to tick and feel like they've done their job. Putting up a rainbow flag is easier and cheaper than, say, building more public toilets which would greatly benefit elderly and disabled citizens in being able to get out and not be tied to their homes by a 'urinary leash'.

We need more social housing and housing that is actually affordable. Not a wildly inflated housing market that is continuously propped up by schemes that only serve to keep a dwindling supply of houses at abnormally artificial prices.

There's a serious lack of funding in mental health services, including for children, and that's why it's easier to shunt them off to gender clinics and assuming drugs and surgery will solve people's issues rather than invest in the time and labour intensive job of getting to the root cause of why people are deeply unhappy and struggling with their lives.

In times of uncertainty and volatility, people and private businesses automatically decrease their spending, which is why the economy shrinks and you get recessions. Only governments can restore public confidence via targeted spending. So much public infrastructure is in great need of repair and replacement. Government projects to modernise our country can provide the jobs and employment security needed to stabilise the economy until confidence in private spending picks up again.
It's only when an economy is doing well that public spending can reduce.

@MsMcGonagall

I think there’s a difference between austerity and running public services in a cost-efficient way. There’s a good argument that govt is too big.

Where I live, for example, you can’t get a police officer to attend your house even if you have the burglar in a headlock with a written confession in one hand and your nan's wedding rings in the other, but there’s a massive ‘community engagement’ operation, with ten police officers attending the opening of an envelope.

Efficiency is dealing with the first problem and cutting down on the second scenario.

I have to agree that in general I do question the assertion that 'efficiency' is needed rather than more money (especially when it comes to the NHS).

On the other hand it does give me pause when I hear how many diversity and inclusion jobs there are in the NHS paying 6 figures or high 5 figure when there are 100,000 frontline medical vacancies. Surely funding so many non frontline jobs is a total waste of money when we have 40,000 too few nurses.

See also the amount of police resource spent on interviewing Kellie-Jay, MM, KS, and many others for stating that science is real (XY can't become XX just by saying so). And yet, my friend had their bike stolen and it was advertised on FB marketplace and they provided details of the ad to the police and the police did fuck all. How much time would it really take to phone up and send one officer to retrieve the stolen goods? With rape basically legal I do sometimes what the police are for when they're not thought policing.

Having said this, all this virtue signalling waste of money has happened under the Tories watch - but they ARE the only ones saying they're going to do something about it as far as I can tell both Labour and LD will spend more and more money on pandering to a tiny minority while just identifying out of the reality of not enough nurses - which will change nothing on the ground. And of course many organisations have gone totally off piste away from the government view (NHS, police).

I used to work in the public sector until 2009. The organisation I worked for always said they needed more money etc etc but there was someone in my office who - no lie - played solitaire on their computer all day.

There was a lot of waste. At that time there were loads of people in 'communication' jobs all spending time mostly having meetings with each other and getting in the way of the actual frontline staff making real changes on the ground.

*On the other hand it does give me pause when I hear how many diversity and inclusion jobs there are in the NHS paying 6 figures or high 5 figure when there are 100,000 frontline medical vacancies. Surely funding so many non frontline jobs is a total waste of money when we have 40,000 too few nurses.

See also the amount of police resource spent on interviewing Kellie-Jay, MM, KS, and many others for stating that science is real (XY can't become XX just by saying so). And yet, my friend had their bike stolen and it was advertised on FB marketplace and they provided details of the ad to the police and the police did fuck all. How much time would it really take to phone up and send one officer to retrieve the stolen goods? With rape basically legal I do sometimes what the police are for when they're not thought policing.*

I'd go further. It's not just paying for non-jobs or not investigating real crime but the impact of not investigating and the impact of "diversity" jobs that only really serve to put the frighteners on people who know what reality and truth is. There must be frontline ripple effects that could be linked to these non-activities that somehow got rocketed up the priority list.

Having said all this, I don't trust the 'market forces are everything' lie the Tories spout. All that privatising railways has done is transfer money into the pockets of rich shareholders while the system falls apart and gets more expensive. Virtually every country with a nationalised railway has a better system than us.

And if they really believed in market forces with a 40,000 staff shortage, in the NHS the market answer would be to get rid of the non-jobs and pay nurses more. I doubt if nurses earned 40k minimum we'd have a staff shortage.

As it is it's pointless having any 'inclusion' jobs in the NHS because things are so dire with the staff shortages in frontline care EVERYONE is being excluded from timely medical care. It really is fiddling while Rome burns to spend money on pronoun badges. I suspect most people are so grateful when they finally see anyone medical after a 4-5 hour wait that they LAST thing they care about is pronouns.

The next government needs to be no-holds-barred about efficiency. I’m all for having people be treated fairly. You shouldn’t experience discrimination when accessing medical services, but the rainbow badges, the gold/silver/bronze ratings, the lanyards, the pronouns, the song and dance of Stonewall, the LGBT Foundation, Mike Brady, paying people to write ideological dictionaries, the staff groups, all of that can get in the bin. Complete waste of public money we don’t actually have.

And of course real efficiency does require truth. If you can't be truthful about the problem, you can't address it properly.

I work for a super efficient private sector organisation. All employees work really hard. It feels too hard sometimes, but we're value for money that's for sure.

The main thing is really clear targets and accountability. Being honest and truthful is part of that.

I'm also not convinced that rainbow everything creates a more inclusive workforce. It doesn't really do anything practical to increase diversity or eliminate discrimination, does it? If you're not careful and there are gaping holes in the reality of the organisation (like 40,000 nursing vacancies) then people become cynical and see the rainbow lanyards as a symbol of waste and lip service rather than anything meaningful. It can cause a lot of resentment along the lines of 'why on earth did they just spend 50k on rainbow lanyards when we're down to one nurse per 5 patients in ICU'?

@blahblahblahspoons

For me it’s even more insidious than that. The lanyards and badges are meant to indicate staff who are “safe” for LGBT people. So does that mean people not wearing badges are somehow dangerous? If they are dangerous, should they be working in the NHS? It doesn’t make sense, and is just a form of expensive showing off.

I do worry about the baby being thrown out with the bathwater when it comes to DEI. I have a horrible feeling that it would be the people who are actually doing good in that area who’d end up on the chopping block, while useless bastards on a power trip would be fine. I don’t know how anyone can solve that particular problem though! Useless bastards on a power trip are the true scourge of modern life.

Yes I'm afraid she is pretty right wing and is not who the country needs in a cost of living crisis.

I'm pleased she is standing though, as it means she will probably end up with a cabinet role (please god, not in the treasury) and her clarity on what a woman is will be hard to shake.

What does it mean to be a single issue voter. Does it mean if something is really really really important to you you will vote for the person who echoes your view regardless of their stance on other equally important stuff but just not quiet as important to you? I can kinda understand that but isn't it high risk.

There's always some waste in any large organisation, both private and public - if you search hard enough you'll probably find some efficiencies.

Having said that the costs of our ageing population, plus the cumulative effect of previous years of austerity, plus the prioritising of creating housing wealth over creating homes over the last thirty years, plus absorbing the costs of Brexit, plus the need for action on climate change, plus the need to increase defence spending far, far outstrip any efficiencies that might be there.

"Low tax and decreased public spending" is pretty much what we've had over the last twelve years of Tory rule - anyone think the country is in a better state because of them?