United Kingdom
Take a trip into the WasteLand
The Taking of Rockall
Historic moments... 300 miles to the west of Scotland you will find uninhabited Rockall because it's merely a piece of granite and the rock is disputed by the those Cod stealing Danes and Icelanders. Our victorious navy planted a flag on it in 1955. It wasn't quite a Port Stanley moment.
Gruinard
A mile off the coast of Ross and Cromarty, red circle on the Scot' map below, you will find the island of Gruinard, for the longest time contaminated by wartime anthrax experiments. The island is worth a look, through a long telescope! The population was recorded as six in 1881, but Gruinard has been uninhabited since the 1920s.
More Facts
The United Kingdom (UK) comprises four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The United Kingdom population as of Wednesday, April 11, 2018 was 66,485,633.
Great Britain or Britain: refers to England, Wales and Scotland and all the surrounding islands but not N. Ireland. Various islands such as the Channel Islands are Crown Dependencies.UP
England
The population of England is fast approaching 56m.
The Scottish border is 70 miles to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne. The Welsh border runs from Flint to the north and Chepstow in the south.
Wales
The population of Wales is 3.2m. (2018 estimates from NSO)
Politics, the Labour group are in charge of the Welsh Assembly. The Assembly has a small degree of independence on legislative measures.
Scotland
Scotland's population is 5,254,800. this includes: the Shetland islands 22,300 pop. living across 15 islands, Orkney Islands, 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited, pop. 21,349, Hebrides Islands, the islands' total population at the 2011 census was 27,684. (2011 census)
Politics
The Scottish National Party control the Assembly and have 35 MPs at Westminster. The Scotland Act 1998 enabled devolution and the Scots had their own parliament up and running from July 1999. The SNP are a pro-independence party. However, following a referendum on independence in Sept' 2014, 55% voted no. Following the referendum the SNP were bribed by the Tory government to stop fretting by being given more powers, e.g., over taxation.
The Fantasy
The SNP dream of becoming independent of the UK and rejoining the EU.
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Ethnic composition of the UKWhite total: 55,073,552
Irish Traveller: 63,193
Asian British total: 4,373,339
British Mixed: 1,250,229
Black or Black British: 1,904,684
Other total: 580,374
PS. There may be up to a million others that one no knows of or cares about.
Tax
Number of Individual Tax Payers, 2019-20 - 31,400,000
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The State of the Nation
Politics
The Tory party has been in charge since 2010 and their austerity measures have destroyed the social fabric of the UK, principally by cutting support for those most in need.
The main opposition party, Labour, appear clueless. There are no other parties of significance. Liberal-Democrats perform well in by-elections but do not have the heft for general election.
Party seats in the Commons
Parties Seats 2019 Previous seats Conservative 365 298* Labour 203 243 Scottish National Party 48 35 Liberal Democrat 11 21 Democratic Unionist Party 8 10 Sinn Féin 6 7 The Independent Group for Change 0 0 Plaid Cymru 4 4 Green Party
1 1 Speaker 1 1 Brexit Party 0 0 UKIP 0 0 Alliance Party 1 0
* 2017, The Conservative Party formed a minority government and signed a “confidence and supply” agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party.
Source: www.parliament.uk
The Lords
There are currently 830 lords or "peers" as they are known, sitting in the House of Lords.
The UK June 2019
Nine years of austerity under the Tory regime has left the nation with 25% cuts in local government spending, taken £22 billion out of welfare spending and removed 17,000 police officers. School budgets have been slashed. The National Audit Office says schools face a £3bn shortfall by 2019-20. Special needs support in schools is rapidly disappearing. Support for elderly citizens at the end of days is a crime.
General Election Results 13/12/19
The turnout for the election was 67.3%, slightly down on 2017. The Tories managed to gain a an overall majority of 80 with 364 seats, so now they will have to stop blaming everyone else for their lack of capability. Labour only managed to gain 203 seats. Jeremy Corbyn said he was reflecting. The Lib-Dems Jo Swinson lost her seat and resigned as party leader. Corbyn existed stage left, Keir Starmer took over as leader of the Labour Party in the wilderness.
Boris Johnson and his team now have an open goal, with no effective opposition in parliament and little opportunity to make excuses for their hopelessness. Labour are lost and the party is really over. However, the really really good news is that that idiot Nigel Farage and his Brexit gang achieved bugger all, except enabling the Tory success. We wait to see how Nigel will be rewarded?
Ship o' Fools, a portrait of the UK government 2019-2022
The UK January 2022
The UK lived with the Coronavirus pandemic from January 2020. The UK deficit is at its worst since the 2008 crash. Unemployment though is lower than it became after the crash, being held in check by the government's furlough payments and rate rebates for some firms. However, millions of self-employed are receiving no help. Queues at the Food Banks become ever longer, with many poor families living hand to mouth.
Covid 19, the story of the pandemic
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The Northern Powerhouse
Five years have passed since George Osborne mouthed the words Northern Powerhouse. Over that period less than a billion pounds has been spent on supporting infrastructure in the North. The government tout large amounts of spending but it's impossible to say where or how the money was spent. As a prop’, the government put one Jake Berry in as the minister for the Northern Powerhouse, although they did not think the matter weighty enough to make him a Cabinet member. Basically, his days consist in parroting anything his bosses have supposedly said on the matter.
Mrs May said in June 2019: “It must remain a top priority for government to do all it can to unlock the North’s vast potential so the Northern Powerhouse continues to thrive.” The unlocking process will require several billions of pounds but she made mention of any new money. And the word thrive becomes meaningless the context of a scheme that is still on the drawing board after five years of hot air.
The springboard for the Powerhouse, HS2, has hardly begun the destruction of everything in its path and may never reach Birmingham by 2025 and Leeds by 2032. The government does have a Northern Powerhouse Strategy (2016) that sets out how the extension of HS2 beyond Birmingham to re-balance the whole nation. City leaders across the North have put forward their own strategy (also in 2016), Northern Powerhouse Rail, this would link the North’s six main cities and Manchester Airport. This cross rail scheme has been costed at £39 billion. Business leaders in the North are also calling for major spending on Northern airports as the ‘beating heart’ of the Northern Powerhouse economy.
Mrs May said: “Five years on our pledge is stronger than ever.”
It appears that the press in the North do not believe Mrs May. Some 30 newspapers have backed the Power Up The North campaign - designed to raise awareness of the lack of real government action on the Powerhouse pledge.
But wait a moment... We had a new prime minister 27 Jul 2019
New prime minister Boris Johnson pledged a London style bus system for Manchester and a rail link between Manchester and Leeds, he likened his ambition to producing something akin to Crossrail - perhaps no one has told him about all the problems that Crossrail has had.
Liz Truss replaces bonkers Boris
Visit Truss Central for daily updates
Boris was kicked out following partying during a lockdown period and lying about his involvement.
Rishi Sunak repaces Mad Liz, she only lasted a few weeks. The Tories did not allow members to vote, Sunak's position was decided by his chums in parliament.
Visit Sunak Central
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UK Reality Today
A Republican candidate in the US used an image of Jaywick in a political poster - this is the reality for thousands of citizens living in coastal towns around the UK.
One Britain One Nation OBON
Schools decided not to sing the special anthem for One Britain One Nation Day, 25/06/21, despite the government encouraging them to celebrate the event. Teachers decided it smacked of propaganda.
Williamson has praised the campaign by a former policeman, Kash Singh, and encouraged all schools to take part. “Children can learn about our shared values of tolerance, kindness, pride and respect,”
If Williamson was not such a fool he would know that there is not much to celebrate.
Notes:
What is a low-income UK 2020?
Low-income households (those in the lowest decile group) had an average net income of £10,600 a year in 2008. By 2020 they are expected to have an income of just £9,000 a year (at 2008 prices) – a fall in real terms of 15 per cent.What is the minimum level of income?
The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line or breadline, is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by finding the total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year.What is the maximum you can earn before Universal Credit stops?
There's no limit to the amount you earn while on Universal Credit but the payment goes down as you earn more. It's called a taper rate - because the Universal Credit tapers off as your wages go up. For every £1 you earn your UC reduces by 63p."Minimum Income Standard (MIS) – MIS itself is not a measure of poverty, but is what the public has told us is sufficient income to afford a minimum acceptable standard of living. relative income poverty, where households have less than 60% of contemporary median income.
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Christianity in decline
For the first time fewer than half of people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christian, the Census 2021 has revealed.The proportion of people who said they were Christian was 46.2%, down from 59.3% in the last census in 2011. In contrast the number who said they had no religion increased to 37.2% of the population, up from a quarter.
UK Foreign Policy
The Chagos Islands: How to disappear a whole people
In the 1960s and 1970s the Chagos islanders or Ilois, were forced from their "paradise" homeland to make way for the US base on Diego Garcia.
The Americans wanted a launch pad in the Indian Ocean for their B-52s and elements within Wilson's government offered them the Chagos Islands, in return for a large discount on Polaris submarines. A memo from then Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart to Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1969 admitted that the payment was kept secret from Parliament and the US Congress.
One key condition was that the Chagos contained no people. The British assured the US that there were only seagulls. In truth, 1800 people lived on the islands; these people were intimidated off of the islands to live in squalor on Mauritius. As a bribe for accepting the Chagossians Mauritius was given its independence from Britain and £3 million to keep quiet.
Making the people of the islands disappear took some time and cunningly the British made the Chagos Islands disappear first, by renaming the islands the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT by using an order-in-council. Orders-in-council are not public knowledge, essentially a ritual takes place involving the Queen and the Privy Council, no debate takes place, the orders are read, the Queen agrees and no one need be any the wiser.
The important thing was to maintain the fiction that the islands never had any permanent residence, since residence have rights.
A telegram sent to the UK mission at the United Nations in November 1965 summed up the problem:
"We recognise that we are in a difficult position as regards references to people at present on the detached islands. "We know that a few were born in Diego Garcia and perhaps some of the other islands, and so were their parents before them.
"We cannot therefore assert that there are no permanent inhabitants, however much this would have been to our advantage. In these circumstances, we think it would be best to avoid all references to permanent inhabitants."
Sir Paul Gore-Booth, senior official at the Foreign Office, wrote to a diplomat in 1966: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours... There will be no indigenous population except seagulls..."
As the judge in the case, Mr Justice Gibbs, said:
"It is clear from some of the disclosed documents that, in some quarters, the official zeal in implementing those removal policies went beyond any proper limits."
It's interesting to note that although Chagossians didn't officially exist, they were banned from returning to the islands. The British High Court has twice overturned this ban, in 2005 and 2007, but the Government continues to ignore the Court.
British Governments, from Wilson through Heath and beyond to the present have not properly compensated the Chagossians for the loss of their homeland. Now, the cost of resettlement makes getting back home even less likely.
If nothing else, the story of the Chagos Islands tells us everything we need to know about liberal democracies like Britain and the US. Parliament and Congress kept in the dark, the public kept in the dark, for the sake of geo-political ambitions 1,800 people were disappeared without a second thought.
Note: Diego Garcia is also the home of Camp Justice, a less well known relative of Guantanamo Bay. Sami al-Saadi, paid to keep quiet by the UK government, was rendered to Camp Justice before being sent back to Libya for more torture.
The Latest Twist in this sad tale
An unexpected ruling this month (Feb' 2013) by the permanent court of arbitration in The Hague, which arbitrates in disputes over the United Nations law of the sea, that it can hear the case challenging the UK's unilateral declaration in 2009 of a marine protected area around the Chagos Islands. UK prime minister, Gordon Brown promised the Mauritian prime minister that MPA would not be put in place and then promptly put the MPA in place?
The legal battle, begun more than two years ago, raises fundamental questions about who has sovereignty over the Indian Ocean territory. Mauritian government officials believe it could lead to the unravelling of Britain's disputed claim and the eventual return of the islanders.
The Foreign Office claims:
"The no-take MPA around the British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) is the largest no-take MPA in the world. The MPA provides refuge and breeding sites for migratory and reef fish, marine mammals, birds, turtles, corals and other marine life. The MPA will help reduce regional loss of biodiversity and, it is hoped, in replenishing fish stocks in the Indian Ocean."
The Real Reason for the MPA
In 2014, the US lease on Diego Garcia runs out and Britain wants to be in a position to re-new the lease. It cannot not do that if the Chagos Islanders get their islands back. So Britain pretends to care about biodiversity and ignores the rights of the islanders.
Chargos deadline
Dec 2019
Six months ago the the UK was given a deadline to return the Chagos Islanders to their homes. They were dumped in Mauritius in the 1970s so that their island could be leased to the US airforce. The UK ignored the UN ruling, why not? Let’s face it, have you ever heard one our politicians describing the treatment of the Chagossians as crimes against humanity? However, with typical mock Brit humour the UK has begun to take small groups of Chagossians back to the archipelago for brief "heritage" visits.
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