That's Death?

Esther Rantzen is the only pensioner who matters in Britain today. By causing four thousand deaths, the means-testing of the Winter Fuel Payment will increase the annual total by 50 per cent, since eight thousand pensioners already froze to death every winter. In 2022, which was no outlier, 2349 infant and 1019 child deaths were officially linked to poverty and deprivation, although the true figure was no doubt higher. The Government is committed to the retention of the two-child cap on benefits. Assisted suicide is thoroughly on-brand.

Thankfully, all of Starmerism's many enemies have noticed. A coalition is coalescing. There is even trouble in Paradise itself, with today's Times changing that newspaper's previous support for assisted suicide to as near it will ever come to an admission that what it saw as the necessary safeguards could never be put in place. Still, Keir Starmer may talk of a free vote, but the huge 2024 Labour intake will not have missed his personal enthusiasm for this measure.

Among the politically active in these parts, there are those who call me "Speedboat", recalling the late, great Jim Bowen's, "Look at what you could have won." If Andrew Flintoff failed to say that during the revived Bullseye, then he ought not to be paid. But there are others who call me "The Cockroach", because I would survive a nuclear war. While perhaps I would, I would stand far less chance of surviving this.