Caveat Emptor, Labour Voters!

A government policy to create 100,000 new nursery places using spare capacity in English primary schools is “unlikely to work”, according to research. The research blames a geographical mismatch between capacity and demand, while leaders in the sector have raised concerns about staffing, the provision of sleep areas for the youngest children, toilets that are too big and sinks that are too high for nursery age children.

Another Labour campaign promise spirals to the ground in flames, like a novice pilot in 1918 who tried to tackle Von Richthofen... 

The success of the policy is critical as the government is under pressure to create sufficient places to fulfil its promise of 30 hours of free childcare a week for eligible parents of children aged from nine months to three years from next September.

And is it not gouing to meet that anywhere? 

FE says London is the only region where spare reception space will meet and could exceed additional demand for nursery places, as schools in the capital’s rolls fall due to a declining birthrate. Elsewhere, only a small proportion of projected demand will be met by spare capacity – just 13% in the East Midlands, 25% in the east of England and 32% in the West Midlands.

Ah. Well, to Starmer's mob, no doubt London's all that counts, so they'll probably simply declare victory regardless.  

Electing A Labour Government Has Consequences…

Britain’s only specialist respite holiday provider for severely disabled people and their carers is to close because of financial difficulties, in what has been called a bellwether example of the UK’s growing social care crisis.

The Tories didn’t kill it, but the prospect of a Starmergeddon has. 

Revitalise, a charity that runs unique state-of-the-art respite stays, offering 24-hour care at two specially adapted hotels, said local authority cuts, combined with increased running costs and a fall in donations, meant it was no longer viable.

The 60-year-old charity, which has a number of high-profile supporters, including Samantha Cameron, Dame Esther Rantzen, and Dame Judi Dench, said the financial challenges it faced were “insurmountable”.

Good luck pinning this on 'the Tories', Rachel! Now you're the one in the hot seat, things are going to be your responsibility. 

One can only steel oneself for what next Wednesday will bring from this most wretched of governments...

If You Get The Very Basics Wrong, Why Should We Listen Further?

Carole Cadwalladr on the riots:

"The 1996 Dunblane massacre and the outcry that followed are held up in the US as a textbook example of how an act of terror mobilised a country to demand effective gun regulation.The atrocity, in which 16 children and their teacher were killed, provoked a wave of national revulsion that, within weeks, led to 750,000 people signing a petition demanding a change to the law. Within a year and a half, new legislation had outlawed the ownership of handguns."

But Carole, we still have gun crime. So really, how effective was it? It stopped some innocent people enjoying a legal hobby, and the thugs and criminals went right on doing what they do...

Almost 30 years on, the horrific violence visited on a dance class in Southport has sparked a very different reaction. A reaction that shocked many in Britain this week but which experts in domestic extremism – and especially those who look at the intersection of violence and technology – say is all too depressingly familiar. And in this, our new age of algorithmic outrage, depressingly inevitable. “We’ve always had radicalisation, but in the past, leaders would be the bridge and bring people together,” said Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist and trenchant tech critic who won the 2021 Nobel peace prize. “That’s impossible to do now, because what used to radicalise extremists and terrorists is now radicalising the public. Because the information ecosystem is designed that way.”

Ah, so now we must ban the Internet? I think that's going to prove a tougher opponent than the target shooting community... 

The question is what Keir Starmer will do.

The wrong thing, of course! Since this whole thing started, he's unerringly done that every single step of the way. 

Ebner points to the fact that this is no longer about dark corners of the internet: politicians are among those who have been radicalised. “They now say things that they would not have said previously and use dog whistles to the far right, flirting with conspiracy myths that used to belong to fringe far-right movements.”

And now everyone can see that they actually had a point after all and that the conspiracy is out in the open. No wonder people like you, Carole, are shitting themselves at no longer being able to control the narrative...