Why Did Labour Release Those Prisoners?

Following part one of the current Government messing up (read all about both parts here) the Telegraph ran a story with the headline:

‘I’m a lifelong Labour voter now’: Prisoners praise Starmer after early release

One inmate said the scheme was a good idea. On the one hand, of course they would say that. Most of the people being released who aren't homeless are going to be happy about it. If you are shocked by that you have never seen a prison break film.

The way the Telegraph, any many other papers with a similar story, have written it, they’re trying to stir the poop. What are they saying? “I bet Labour only did this to get more voters?”

Let’s have a little think. We’re chronologically the furthest point from another election. This is the worst time to be recruiting new voters. Ken Clarke has always said the moment right after an election is the time to be unpopular, but even he must look at the way Labour have played it and thought, “Yeah, but don’t take the piss with it.”

Do you need to convince people in prison to vote for Labour? I’m not trying to be nasty but surely if you’re in prison you’re more likely to be a Labour person than a Tory person. That’s correlation not causation. If you’re from a less well off background you might be more likely to be driven to a life of crime. Also, if you do the kind of crimes Tory voters do you don’t go to prison. You pay back the tax you should have paid crack on with your life.

And would you risk losing so much national popular support to go after the former prisoner vote who might not be the most likely to get out there and vote anyway. Some criminals don’t vote in every election because they’re busy doing a 5-stretch, but I’m not sure they’re the most dependable voter block.

It’s just a snide way for the newspapers to imply a sinister motive behind Labour’s move other than a failing prison system.

The proof that it isn’t a conspiracy is in the newspaper article. The convicted drug dealer, who was freed from prison under the Government’s early release scheme, said on Tuesday that it had made him “a lifelong Labour voter”.

Keep doing drugs and that won't be very long.

» Read the source story

---

 | ☕ TIP (Help by donating)
 | 📻 LISTEN (to the new radio podcast)
 | 📺 WATCH (YouTube)

➡📺 Try Amazon Prime Video for FREE for 30 days 📺⬅

Read More

Warning Labels... On Food!?

Smoking in the UK has reached some impressively low levels. There are about 6.4 million adult cigarette smokers in the United Kingdom. It's still way above the levels in 1586 just before Sir Walter Raleigh come home with a lot of duty free but it's still nice to see it drop.

It's hard to pin down the exact reason that we are smoking less. It could be the cost. It could be social pressure. It could be because you have to ask the shopkeeper to open a dodgy cupboard to hand you your packet like you're a sad old perv in an adult shop wanting a specialist item. It's probably a mixture of all the anti-smoking policies brought in, which will include the warning pictures on the packs.

For years, if you bought some smokes, you were given a small picture of what one of your body parts would look like if you carried on smoking. It's such a popular idea that we may see it on other products.

Campaigners are now saying we should using hard-hitting warning labels on food that can make you fat. The obvious choice would be pictures of naked obese people but using those images as a cautionary tale would seem offensive to the larger-boned community.

It also could require making the food packets larger to fit the picture on, which might mean larger portions, more people gaining weight, and the cycle continues.

All of these plans to tackle the UK's growing growing sideways problem think education is the key. If we could only teach people that healthy food is healthy for them and junk food is bad we'd have a nation of slim folk again. But I doubt there is anyone who doesn't know by now. If you walked up to anyone in the street and showed them a burger and a carrot everyone would know which could make you fatter. It's not that part of our brains that instructs us to eat.

This is evident when you have a GP telling you that you need to lose weight while his gut wears his shirt like a bank robber wears tights. These GPs sometimes have the audacity to use the phrase, “We need to do something about this BMI.” You're left thinking, “I'd better do something about it. I'm not sure you have a good track record of winning that fight.”

There's no way these GPs lack education on healthy eating habits but the information isn't enough to beat the cravings.

A warning label system is already effectively being used with the traffic light symbols you'll find on food. Sadly, it doesn't take long till an unintended response to the badges kicks in. If you pick up a pack with at least one of the salt, sugar or fat categories earning it a red light there is some part of your brain that knows it can look forward to a little treat. If you're holding something that's green across the board you know you're still going to be craving a snack five minutes later.

The one area where this could work is in forcing the manufacturers to change. We greedy, lizard-brained punters won't be slowed down by a warning label but if you're in the business of making a foodstuff you might not want to have to pop a skull and crossed bones on it. You might tweak the recipe instead. This is similar to how to sugar tax on fizzy drinks didn't lead to only the rich being able to have a Fanta, but the drinks having less sugar in general.

The British Heart Foundation, who floated the warning label idea, is also proposing other action to tackle the UK’s increasingly bad diet. We could see a ban on junk food firms sponsoring sport.

Currently energy drinks Carabao is linked to the English football’s League Cup, McDonald’s sponsors the Football Association’s youth football development programme, and KP Snacks are an official team partner of the Hundred cricket competition with the slogan, “Cricket – You'd have to be nuts to sit through this”, probably.

Surely sports sponsorship is the best case scenario. The people who are being tempted with bad foods are also being shown inspirational scenes of fit people being active. The other end of the spectrum would be burger restaurants sponsoring mobility scooter dealerships. That's the area where real damage will be done.

It's not the first time such ideas have been proposed but it's the first time in a while that a Labour Government has been in place to hear them. This is an administration that's been in power 1.29 Liz Trusses and already we have heard of beer garden smoking bans.

The goal is a good one. Something needs to be done as heart conditions have moved up the ranks of most common cause of death. This will have been caused, in part, by the number of smoking-related deaths dropping off. We could drive heart disease back down the league table without cutting our junk food intake if only we could get more people smoking again.

» Read the source story

---

 | ☕ TIP (Help by donating)
 | 📻 LISTEN (to the new radio podcast)
 | 📺 WATCH (YouTube)

➡📺 Try Amazon Prime Video for FREE for 30 days 📺⬅

Read More

Is Silent Praying Thought Crime?

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a woman arrested after praying outside an abortion clinic, has received a payout from police. She received £13,000 from West Midlands Police. The annoying this is that it really means she received £13,000 from the tax payers, because that’s where the money comes from ultimately.

They settled her civil claim "without any admission of liability", but if they had her banged to rights you would have assumed they wouldn’t have dropped the case. That’s not really how the police work.

The big question is can you tell that someone is praying silently? If you can it still breaches the exclusion zone near the clinic. If you can’t then how will anyone know who to arrest?

And how does the distance work? Surely you could pray from anywhere seeing as the one you’re praying to is omnipotent. It feels like there could be a solution to this that keeps everyone happy and means we don’t need to pay out tax payers’ dosh.

Here’s a section from a recent TV spot covering the story.

@mrstevenallen

Arrested for praying... silently?

♬ original sound - Steve N Allen

» Read the source story

---

 | ☕ TIP (Help by donating)
 | 📻 LISTEN (to the new radio podcast)
 | 📺 WATCH (YouTube)

➡📺 Try Amazon Prime Video for FREE for 30 days 📺⬅

Read More

Prisoners & Pensioners: Labour’s PR Fail

This Government has walked into some avoidable traps. How do they not see this coming?

1,700 prisoners will be released early. It’s because of prison overcrowding and it’s not like they could have built many prisons since July 4th when Labour got in power, so while this could be all about the previous lot’s failing, Labour have managed to really own this.

Only prisoners given a prison sentence of less than 4 years will be eligible to be released at 40% of their term rather than the 50% stage when they would have been let out anyway. That’s a maximum of 4.8 weeks difference, but they haven’t pushed that angle at all.

Some Gov.uk figures show that around 25% of prisoners reoffend anyway. That’s the normal rate before this scheme was brought in, so there will definitely be some reoffending. But when it happens now it will be all over the newspaper front pages. A story that wouldn’t have even made the newspaper inner pages will be the biggest political story in town. “Labour’s Lawless Legacy” or something like that.

Meanwhile the MPs were busy voting on cutting the winter fuel payments from pensioners, depriving them of between £200 and £300 a year. Today is also the day when the news tells us the state pension set to rise by £460 next year. You don’t have to be a whizz at maths to see how you could spin that story.

Frame the debate as “should ALL pensioners get winter fuel payments” and all you need to do is argue about what the cut off point should be and you’ve won. Using the Pension Credit boundary as the means test is the problem. Somehow Labour have managed to really own this move and let it be framed as them hating OAPs because the old folk vote Tory.

Each year there are tens of thousands of deaths in the winter where cold is considered a factor. Again, not one of those stories would make it into the papers, but this winter as soon as the papers find one case the front pages will be screaming “Cold Keir Killer Crisis” or something like that.

If you are a Labour government you must know that most of the newspaper in the UK aren’t your biggest fans. They’ll be looking for you to slip up so they can write about how bad you are. The problem with thinking you’re doing the right thing is that you can be tempted to simply ignore those who disagree with you. It’s not party political, we could call that The Lizz Truss Effect, but why hand over such easy wins?

» Read the source story

---

 | ☕ TIP (Help by donating)
 | 📻 LISTEN (to the new radio podcast)
 | 📺 WATCH (YouTube)

➡📺 Try Amazon Prime Video for FREE for 30 days 📺⬅

Read More

The Pope V Pets – Who Wins?

You see them on social media. People who post pictures of their dog that don't have the owner and pet vibe. They have a different feel. You look at the posts and think, “This is oddly familial.” There are undertones of parent and child, maybe step-child seeing as they probably don't have a genetic link. The vibe of parent and step-child isn't better; we all remember Woody Allen.

It turns out there is someone else who doesn't like these people. It's The Pope.

Pope Francis criticised couples who have pets instead of children. The Pope used the words, “This can't go well”. He has definitely seen pictures of doggy mommies who let their little pups kiss them on the lips. That really can't go well. David Beckham once caused an internet upset when people saw a picture of him kissing his daughter on the lips. That was innocent and, more importantly, it's unlikely that David's daughter had spent the afternoon licking her balls.

The Pope's angle is about people having more children. We see a lot of news recently about the falling birthrate but it is in the nature of every religion to promote its followers having many children. It's basic recruitment. If you are a devout follower and you have a child you will bring it up to be a devout follower. The church should get Michael Parkinson to send you a Parker Pen as a thank you gift.

The reason that all religions want you to go forth and multiply is because any religions that preached, “Thou shalt focus on having disposable income and holidays. Maybe just have a few cats,” wouldn't be around today to be counted.

This is meant in a nicer way than it will sound, but a religion telling you to have offspring is like a computer virus including the command to copy. Without that step it really wouldn't work.

The Pope was on a visit to Indonesia and praised those who had a large family while contrasting those to the childless couples who opt to care for cats and dogs. He didn't bother with any nuance. It's not always the case that every couple can have children. IVF can be expensive and it's not as if you're allowed to eat a child if you struggle in the cost of living crisis, so there are many things in the pro pets columns he's missing.

It's a theme he's been on for a while. A few years ago he told the story of a woman who asked him to bless her dog and he called that dog her “baby”. Francis said, “I lost my patience and scolded her.” So we're hoping it really was a dog and not an unfortunately hairy child who really needed a miracle.

Cats and dogs aren't the problem. The quadrupeds aren't replacing children. You can prove this by seeing a family that has children and a pet dog for example. The problem is money. We hear how hard it is for younger people to get on the property ladder. They live with parents into their thirties or rent a room in a house with other strangers. Both situations don't lend themselves to starting a family. You can't have a home birth with a birthing pool in the shared lounge of a houseshare. Someone will end up leaving a passive-aggressive note.

Yes, it can give you the ick when you see someone call a dog, “My baby,” but it's just a figure of speech that people use about their classic car or wine collection. It's hyperbole and doesn't have to mean the couple will never have children.

Don't blame the pets. Stick to handing out wine and telling people not to use contraception. Sooner or later those two will lead to a baby coming along.

» Read the source story

---

 | ☕ TIP (Help by donating)
 | 📻 LISTEN (to the new radio podcast)
 | 📺 WATCH (YouTube)

➡📺 Try Amazon Prime Video for FREE for 30 days 📺⬅

Read More