Prime ministers question time

Posted on July 5, 2023July 5, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Argument, debate, Life, Politics, Prime minister, Prime Ministers question time, spectacle, UK Parliament, Wednesday2 Comments

Wednesday at noon. Prime Ministers question time is on again. When the House of Commons is sitting this is the time to question the political situation in Britain.

It is a spectacular event. An argumentative debate. Noise and heckling, shouting, barracking, hundreds of members of Parliament shouting at each other. Conservatives, Labour, Scottish Nationalists, Democratic Unionists and Liberal Democrats put forward their questions about what the government is doing.

Varied questions came up today: private renting costs, the Northern Irish parliament, melanoma, cost of living crisis, accommodating migrants, student debt, steel manufacture amongst other questions.

The Conservatives, who are in power ask mainly soft subject questions, pleased with themselves and smugly denegrating the opposition. The opposition parties try and ask searching questions, but are often sarcastically fobbed off with flippant answers.

This method of questioning is not always enlightening or clarifying. The world might be a better place if the whole procedure was rethought. A lot of it is Members of Parliament trying to get seen by their constituents by asking questions. Some of it does clarify policies. I’ll continue to keep watching this spectacle.

Right wing politicians

Posted on May 13, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Brexit, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1934, englanders, Pandemic, Politics, Refugees, Right wing, Sadness, scandal, UK2 Comments

What public figure do you disagree with the most?

I cannot be specific. There are too many politicians I strongly disagree with. I know that any person can be bad. Whether they support right, left or central politics. But somehow they all seem to be capable of misdeeds.

So why right not left? I just think currently in our country, we have had too right wing politicians for too long. They have been in power for thirteen years and things have not improved. Our health service which was the best in the world has been partly sold off, and what’s left is succumbing to cuts in beds, loss of doctors and nurses who are leaving to go to better paid jobs abroad.

We voted to leave the EU (Brexit) and turned our backs on a whole continent that supported us. We have always been ‘little englanders’, but that was a ridiculous idea and we are all suffering for it now.

Our politicians want to ignore human rights and are getting more and more vindictive. A series of political scandals including the miss selling of Protective equipment for the pandemic, (which was not fit for purpose). Sewage being poured into our rivers and sea, and tax cuts for the richest, all have destroyed our reputation. And we have awful treatment of migrants who cannot safely get into this country so are risking their lives trying to cross the channel in small inflatable boats. And one of our ministers had the gall to call them ‘migrant shoppers’ or similar phrase, as if they were not desperately seeking refuge.

So no, I know there are awful people everywhere, but I need to think about our government. If we cannot act in a humane way how can we expect anyone else to do so?

Yes I vote

Posted on May 5, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1927, Election, Opinion, political party, Politics, universal suffrage, Vote, Voting2 Comments

Do you vote in political elections?

I feel lucky as a woman, to have the right to vote. It was only 100 years ago that the suffragettes fought and won votes for women in Great Britain. I voted when I was 18 or 19 and have done ever since. I followed my family vote when I was young, but going to college and seeing the real world changed my opinion on who to vote for.

I wish all women had the right to vote. In some countries they are still not allowed to, effectively disenfranchising half the population. Why shouldn’t women have a say? After all the rules and laws governments make effects 100% of a population. I think the patriarchy in many countries means that women and girls only get basic education and have little chance of bettering themselves. They should have the choice to change their governments.

So if you don’t vote how can you change things? And if enough people get together, they can make a difference. Not voting or saying anything just means your opinions can be ignored or denied. One vote might make all the difference….. X

Voting

Posted on November 3, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged dictatorial, Elections, ethics, Fairness, freedom, Life, Politics, Thinking, VotingLeave a comment

There’s so much politics going on in the world. But what’s worrying in a lot of these elections is the idea that if a party lose they won’t accept the result. Clearly there are some states and countries where elections have been rigged. This is usually in dictatorial states where the regimes never change and the results come out with votes for the incumbent party getting more than 90% of the vote. Places like Russia, China or North Korea spring to mind.

What is more important than some form of fair elections? Free and fair must be the goal.

But recently accusations of stolen elections have occurred in countries where ballots have been normal and peaceful. If the incumbent official lost they generally accepted the result, but not any more. Like spoilt children they cry out ‘its not fair’ , or ‘he cheated’ its almost like leaders have temper tantrums. Weird conspiracy theories are thrown about and as humans are great at storytelling there is a tendency for some of these accusations to stick even where it has been proved that no corruption occurred. There are even attempts to change the rules to disenfranchise some voters.

So where now? People need to be grown up about it. Stop pretending that vote have been miss cast. Allow the real majority to take the chance to rule, and let’s have some sanity. Lying to the public and causing violence and disruption and distress is clearly wrong.

Boris isn’t standing!

Posted on October 23, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Boris Johnson, candidates, Cartoon, Life, News, Politics, Prime minister, withdrawn2 Comments

A cartoon I did of Boris Johnson while I was doing my Illustration MA. I wanted to discuss the underfunding of arts at school.

Anyway after a couple of days of conjecture and speculation it turns out Boris Johnson has decided not to stand for Conservative leader and Prime Minister again. When I heard the new I actually whooped with joy!

His Conservative backers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg were saying he definitely had 100 MPs supporting him (the threshold was raised from 20, which it was for Liz Truss). So what has happened? Could it be he’s had a change if heart, or maybe he realised that there Ed too many things adding up against him? So it is now likely that Rishi Sunak will become Prime Minister although there is another candidate. We do live in interesting times….

Possible power cuts

Posted on October 20, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged crisis, Electricity, Energy, Gas, Life, Politics, Population, Power, power cuts, ThinkingLeave a comment

As the Conservative party in the UK try and decide on a new prime minister there is talk of power cuts in the winter so that there will be enough energy to go around. The talk is about it being cut for three or four hours each afternoon. This is madness! If we need to save energy there should be advice on what to reduce, either by reducing the flow rate on combi boilers, or discussing the merits of part cooking food in a microwave or a slow cooker, or even advising on the energy efficiency of heaters. Of course some of this is moot because if you can’t afford to put your heating on in the first place you can’t make that choice. So, we wait and see who is the next leader, but what about the population who have not been offered the choice?

Liz Truss has resigned

Posted on October 20, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Crazy, interesting times, Life, Liz Truss, News, Politics, Prime minister, resignation4 Comments

Our Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has just resigned, she will stay on until her successor is elected. The situation is that the Conservative MPs will decide over the following week who will take her place. There is an old curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’, we certainly do!

Elections?

Posted on October 17, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged America, Democracy, grown up, Guns, learning from mistakes, Life, Politics, Sensible, Serious, Thinking, time to change5 Comments

Reading a friends blog about the mid term elections in the USA it made me wonder about the whole thing. I posted this response to her post:

Interesting news on the ‘tinternet’ I keep seeing videos of what people are up to in different states but I saw one where republicans who include some ‘oath takers?’ will be guarding ballot boxes, especially between midnight and six am, to make sure no one tries to put lots of votes into the boxes… An extention of ‘stop the steal’? And they said they might carry guns!! Weird, is this democracy? No pun intended.

I seem to be getting more and more commentary about the elections, but in a way I’m quite interested, I know it’s none of my business, but there are so many world issues including war and global warming and climate change isn’t it about time the world’s largest democracies had a grown up and serious discussion about the whole world instead of soap opera style politics.

New Prime minister

Posted on September 6, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged cost of living, Crime?, Environment, inflation, national health service, People, policy, political parties, Politics, Serious, social care, ThinkingLeave a comment

Our new Prime minister is a woman. She is choosing her cabinet at the moment which is very diverse. That’s great, but most of them are her supporters. Where are the people to quietly tell her that her ideas may be wrong? Sycophantic behaviour is not good for running a country. There are dictators who have yes men telling them their ideas are wonderful. But at this time of crisis we need people who are serious about changing things, taking sensible decisions rather than populist policies that grab headlines. I know I’m being political, but sometimes you have to say something.

Things she needs to deal with: inflation, cost of living, the environment, national health service, climate change, social care, crime. Who would want the job?

New prime minister (PM)

Posted on September 4, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged broken laws, Choice, free speech, lying, mini-me, no choice, our PM, Politics, Prime minister, the people, TrumpLeave a comment

Our PM is finishing tomorrow. Another PM will replace him. He or she (probably she) is being chosen by 160,000 Conservative party members not the British electorate. We might have a general election until next year or the year after. Our old PM has been found to have lied and broken laws. His popularity meant his party got an 80 seat majority in the 2019 election and are changing electoral boundaries to make it difficult to defeat them. It also seems Scottish voters may try and go for independence making it virtually impossible to get the Conservative government out of power.

I think of our PM as a Trump mini-me. He even thinks he can get back in power! The new PM will probably be Liz Truss. She does not seem to know what she is doing. It seems the rich and entitled rule. The rest suffer.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Politics