So new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch doesn’t like the way Reform leader Nigel Farage has been stealing the limelight in the last few weeks, and believes that some of the media is stacked against her.
Frankly, I have some sympathy for her – and that’s a first, I normally don’t support Tories. Farage is incredibly skilled in turning any situation into a positive for him and Reform, and therefore he is a formidable opponent.
He wasted no time shouting from the rooftops that Reform had overtaken the Tories in the number of members it had on the books.
Badenoch should have simply shrugged her shoulders, but, in my book, stupidly took the bait and tried to suggest that Reform had somehow rigged the figures. She claimed membership figures were based on “fakery” and that Farage’s party was resorting to “endless lies, smoke and mirrors, stuff-and-nonsense politics”.
And Farage, being true to form, hit back threatening to sue unless she retracted her statement and apologised. He’s spent too long in the States, where people sue each other if they fart out of place!
I should imagine there are now a good few Tory members regretting the day they chose Badenoch as leader.
There is a serious danger in the media having too much of a say and control in politics. Yes, we have had politics at play in the Press for centuries, and it is common knowledge that the majority support the Right wing, fewer the Left and hardly any Lib Dems, although recently there has been some growing support for the Lib Dems or centre ground.
Television news outlets have tried to remain neutral and present all sides of an argument equally, but GB News has come on the scene with an obvious bias towards Reform – after all Farage was a presenter.
I imagine Tories were delighted that a right-leaning TV news channel took to the air, but I’m sure that delight has waned now, with it being found to have breached the UK watchdog Ofcom’s standards on several occasions. In October last year GB News was fined £100,000 for breaking impartiality rules.
Journalistic standards dictate that news items should not be biased in any political direction but should reflect all sides and all should have their say. Vital at election times.
News should be clearly presented as news, comment should be clearly defined as comment. This article, for example, is comment – my opinion and mine only, unless you agree with me of course!
Sadly it’s all too easy to slant a news story in the direction you want the public to latch on to. And it saddens me that ever since Labour won the last election the Tory press have worked overtime to bash the government and in the process spread dissatisfaction.
An example was when news leaked that Starmer had sent letters to various regulators, like Ofgem, Ofwat, the Financial Conduct Authority, etc. calling on them to submit a range of pro-growth initiatives by mid January, in a bid to kickstart the economy. Good for him, I say.
But what happened? Predictably Tories ridiculed it, latched onto by the Tory press. I wonder how many Tories are hoping Labour doesn’t get any economic recovery and the public are so dissatisfied they will vote them back at the next election?
At this time it’s the last thing Britain needs. The country needs everyone working together to get the country out of its mess. We know the NHS is in a mess, hospitals and schools are falling to bits, as are the roads, the economy is flatlining and inflation is on the rise.
Who is to blame for all that? The Tories in power for 14 years and it’s going to take a long time to fix it and it’s going to take more than immigrant bashing Reform party to fix it – unless Farage can persuade Musk to part will all his billions to come to poor Britain’s aid without any strings attached!
My solution? A government of national unity coupled with a complete reform of politics in the UK with the introduction of proportional representation.
MONEY DRIVEN
While Christmas decorations, etc., were still on the shelves at UK supermarkets a week before Xmas, lo and behold, thousands of Easter eggs suddenly arrived! In other words Jesus’ death was being observed before he was even born.
If this doesn’t demonstrate that the real meaning of Christmas has long disappeared, nothing will! Money first, everything a very poor second. It’s about time that Britain stopped following money mad America.
PERPETUAL GREENS
As if problems in UK hospitals aren’t bad enough, we now learn that the number of people admitted to hospital in England because of a lack of vitamins or minerals is soaring, according to analysis of NHS figures.
In 2023-24 there were 191,927 admissions where the main reason was a lack of iron, up 11% on 2022-23. The figure is almost 10 times the 20,396 hospital admissions for lack of iron in 1998-99.
There were also 2,630 admissions in 2023-24 where B vitamin deficiency (other than folate) was the main reason, up 15% on the previous year and triple that of 1998. according to the NHS data.
Put simply, people are not eating properly – preferring junk food to good wholesome foods and it causes obesity too.
You can get plenty of iron by eating spinach, pulses, red meat, dried fruit, eggs, broccoli, oysters, string beans, dried apricots, poultry, beef and fish.
So, readers, here’s a tip. Get a packet of perpetual spinach which will grow anywhere. I sow it in pots here in Spain and in my garden plot in the UK and it’s ready to pick in weeks. Free food…you know it makes sens
ROAD SAFETY
I learn that France is to introduce a new highway rule prohibiting motor cyclists from weaving between stationary or slow moving traffic on major roads. Good for them. I have long wished this highly dangerous practice of motor cyclists undertaking or riding as if determined to get in front of everyone should be banned. I hope police catch them and they are heavily fined. The same goes of stupid electric scooter riders, many of whom haven’t a clue about road safety.
WHAT SAFEGUARDING?
Remember the horrific stories of severe sexual abuse carried out by Pakistani grooming gangs in Rotherham, Telford, Oldham and several other towns over many years? Girls, barely in their teens, were preyed on lured into a world of vice by gifts, alcohol and or drugs and then handed from one immigrant to another and from one town to another.
Girls would try to report the abuse but authorities, in an appalling cover-up, tried to pretend it was the girls who were the guilty ones because they were promiscuous.
The simple fact was the situation was too hot to handle – if the British public were then told the true facts last summer’s race riots would have been game in the park compared with what would have erupted.
So police and so called “responsible” local authorities covered it up. Oldham council carried out an inquiry and wanted the government to have a public inquiry into the appalling abuse.
But true to form that’s been ruled out. Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips has responded to two letters from the Oldham Council executive after the authority voted to write to the Home Secretary requesting a formal Public Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in the borough.
But the matter has not ended there. When Elon Musk learned about Jess Phillips’ refusal to hold a government led public inquiry he responded by calling for her to be jailed!
He had been replying to former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who wrote: “This is Jess Phillips, the same Home Office Minister who excused masked Islamist thugs.
“Her title ‘Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls” is a perversion of the English language.
“It’s clear whose side she is on.”
The X and Tesla owner retorted: “She deserves to be in prison.” In a separate post, Musk added: “Prison for Phillips now!”
With feelings running so high in Britain and elsewhere against immigration, legal and illegal this is a most explosive situation, and is bound to be exploited by the Right in politics in the coming weeks and months.
GB News, predictably is right there, with reports detailing what the girls went through and the news channel is now running a poll asking the public whether there should be a public inquiry.
GB News commentators accuse the government of being scared of the Muslim community as a reason for not agreeing to a public inquiry. I think it is more like being scared witless of the uprising by the British people against Muslims, bound to end in extreme violence.
