How Sez Sees It

The Tories accused Labour of having a magic money tree for all their plans but they are the ones using it for the Queen and DUP when everyone else is suffering. It has made me so angry that the Tories voted down a motion to remove the freeze on public sector wages. In real terms those wages have actually been a pay cut as prices of everything continues to rise. This means our teachers, firefighters, nurses, doctors, police, local government officers and many more are doing the same job for less. Actually, in some cases they are doing more for less as there has been a huge reduction in job numbers over the last few years. Meanwhile, the Queen, an unelected head of state, gets a pay rise which constitutes multi-millions so that she can refurbish her home. Compare that to one case study (because we have heard a lot about it) Grenfell Tower. This is a place where people were in social housing and it was re-clad with something highly flammable to save a couple of quid for each p...

What is happening in British politics? Who the hell knows? Well this should be a little round up of how I have viewed the last few weeks and in particular the election on 8 June 2017. Actually, let's start at the beginning shall we? Brexit. What is Brexit? A good question. To Theresa May, Brexit means Brexit. So that clears that up.  In reality this is what happened. In 2015, following five years of coalition between the Conservatives (Tories) and the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems), there was a General Election. The coalition was formed because the Tories didn't get enough votes to win a majority and take power back after 18 years of Labour Governments. They needed to team up with the Lib Dems to make them the most powerful in the House of Commons and so the then leader of the Tories, David Cameron, became Prime Minister and the then leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, became Deputy Prime Minister. There was an agreement in the House of Commons that elections would n...

Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party on Saturday (12 September 2015) with an overwhelming majority. The way the system works is that the members and supporters cast votes in the alternative vote (AV) system. This means you select your favourite and put a ‘1’ next to their name and your second favourite has a ‘2’ and so on until all the candidates have a number. The winner of the leadership election has to have more than 50% of the vote. The person with the least amount of votes goes out in the first round and their results are redistributed if there is no clear winner. This continues until someone has more than 50% of the vote. Corbyn sealed his win on the first round. This is almost unprecedented. His first act was to join a rally in support of refugees. One of the next public appearances didn’t go down as well. He attended the Battle of Britain celebrations and caused the internet to go a little mad when he refused to sing the national anthem. To anyone who doesn...

Normally I plan these blogs out (believe it or not) but this time I am writing as things pop into my head. This is not about voting in something like the General Election (my view is that if you are eligible to vote you should make your voice heard whatever your political view), but about the current Labour leadership election. We have had the personal attacks and the people worried that a vote for Corbyn will either not work or will work or whatever. The biggest issue is with who is allowed to vote. Basically, if you are a party member it is now one person one vote. Last time I had two votes as I was a party member and I was a member of Unison. That has all changed now and that is probably right. I was never comfortable with the idea of having two votes so one person one vote is fine by me. However, you don't have to be a member to get a vote. You also can be a supporter for £3.00 and get a vote that way. This has led to worries that people are paying their £3.00 and voting ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/02/ed-miliband-plan-curb-unions Kind of think that the point has been missed a little here by a lot of people in the comments.  Not sure they either read the piece or really understood it. I am both a union member and a Labour Party member.  I have to confess that I did vote for Ed to become leader, that is because I believed then (and still believe now) that he is the best man for the job [cue other troll posters who want to babble on about how I am deluded, etc...there beat them to it, sticks and stones...] The point is that the party does need to be reformed and it does need to be taken away from the Blair/Brown era style that it got itself into.  The people obviously got fed up with that.  Miliband is not saying that he is cutting all ties with the unions, he is saying that they need to take responsibility, like politicians, for their actions and need to be held accountable.  He is not saying that he is going ...

To start, a personal victory.  I did not win the seat I was standing for in the Winchester local elections, but I did increase the Labour vote by over 50.  Sheffield has gone to Labour, kicking Nick Clegg in the preverbial and there have been major losses for them up and down the country.  Scotland has given Labour a kicking with a majority for the SNP and Labour loosing a lot of seats, but they have held on to Wales. AV is a difference story, but the exit polls suggest a 'No' for AV.