Seek Allowance No More

As Thames Water demands to increase its bills by 44 per cent plus inflation, why is no one calling for it to be allowed to go bust and then renationalised for nothing? And as the power to issue sick notes, which at least Rishi Sunak calls them instead of that ridiculous "fit notes" rubbish, prepares to be handed over to non-medics who were paid by how many people they found fit for work, remember that that will obviously neither cure anyone nor find anyone a job.

Instead, the victims will be moved onto a Jobseeker's Allowance that had been kept in existence for the purpose, but which will be limited to one year, again as if that either cured anyone or found anyone a job. Well, after 12 months, we cannot have people still living the high life on £90:50 per week for those aged 25 and over, or £71:70 for those under 25. You do not get anything without having worked for it, as Sunak has reminded us. Demand to be seen by whoever had signed off much of the Royal Family. I do not doubt that they are ill. A lot of people are.

I am just throwing this out there, but perhaps this level of chronic illness is what comes of low pay, bad nutrition, poor housing, the inability to see a doctor or a dentist, and the hospital waiting lists that have trebled in the 14 years that the National Health Service has paid £150 billion to private healthcare providers, which are generous contributors to politicians? Perhaps it is something to do with increasingly unaffordable privatised heat, light and water, the last possibly having raw human waste in it, anyway? Yes, I am talking about mental as well as physical health.

On every one of those issues, Labour is if anything even worse than the Conservatives. But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.