In a gaffe-prone conference speech, Keir Starmer called for the return of “sausages” from Gaza and suggested he had to cut pensioners’ winter fuel allowance or “risk” a Liz Truss-style market meltdown.
Keir Starmer claimed keeping winter fuel payments in place could have sparked a Liz Truss-style meltdown on markets as he launched a bid to reboot his fledgling premiership today.
The PM acknowledged fury at the decision to strip the benefit from 10 million pensioners – but said he could not “risk” showing the world “as the Tories did that this country does not fund its policies properly”. …
Ahead of a showdown vote on winter fuel with unions tomorrow, Sir Keir told the hall that there would be “no return to Tory austerity” and he would “protect working people”.
“If you can’t take that on faith, perhaps because you’re concerned about the winter fuel allowance, then I get that,” he said. “But the risk of showing to the world – as the Tories did, that this country does not fund its policies properly… that is a risk we can never take again.”
At one point Starmer mixed up his words and called for a return of “sausages” instead of Israeli hostages.
I call again for restraint and de-escalation between Lebanon and Israel. I call again for all parties to pull back from the brink.
I call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the sausages… the hostages, and a recommitment to the two-state solution, a recognised Palestine and a safe and secure Israel.
The sausages were just an unfortunate bodge, of course. But the claim that he had to cut the pensioners’ fuel allowance to avoid a market meltdown is plainly disingenuous – even Starmer can’t seriously believe the markets were perched ready to throttle the U.K. had Labour failed to make that £1.4 billion cut, particularly in light of the huge spending commitments implied by the bumper public sector pay rises being handed out at the same time. Starmer will be pilloried for offering such a flimsy rationale for his unpopular policy, and deservedly so.
Stop Press: Allison Pearson, who’s just returned from Israel, says in the Telegraph that the reason Starmer said “sausages” instead of “hostages” is because he doesn’t care about them.
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Isn’t it ironic that she appears to have taken a job with an organisation located in a somewhat anti-Communist part of the world? Perhaps she’s got a bank account registered over there as well.
Let’s hope her new office is in Beijing, seeing as she likes authoritarian governments so much she’ll no doubt be very happy over there and as a bonus she is out of our backyard as well.
Sadly though I suspect that she will still find time to pop up on the BBC to issue her lockdown edicts.
If she is telling people she’s 40 that says a lot about whether she’s trustworthy because she was born in 1955.
“40 year *member of*”, not “40 year old”
Ah fair enough ! It was a bit early in the morning !
I admit I double took too.
I’m not normally in favour of ageism, being a bit of an old trout myself, but if she was born in 1955 then it’s definitely time she bowed out into retirement gracefully. Clearly she still craves the power.
Well, what do you expect? She’s just another boombaby convinced that the sole purpose of the world is to play nice with her fancies and that nobody else, neither older nor younger, matters in the slightest. We’re all supposed to wear masks and be subject to close monitoring for Dangerous Pathogens[tm] forever because she’s – unselfishly – convinced this will protect her and her pals. See also Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s stance on The Science of Vaccination[tm]. We don’t matter so much.
A classic case of Jumped as a tiger, landed as bedside carpet.
Why would a scientific organisation need a nudge unit in the first place?
Maybe health is not a science.
The WHO is NOT a “scientific organisation.” The WHO is the lead organisation for something akin to a cult religion known as “The Science.”
There are crucial differences between the two; Science as most rational people understand it is always open to testing, questioning, debate and subsequent change.
‘The Science’ is regulated by the WHO and is not open to the vagaries of ‘Science.’
Indeed. Ayn Rand was warning about the dangers of state science 70 years ago. Of all the various dystopian novels, the COVID-19 lockdown era most resembled Atlas Shrugged. Many of the people involved in lockdowns and the many of the things they said were straight of the book’s lineup of bad guys.
I shouldn’t be surprised she was given a job at the WHO. Birds of a feather and all that!
Well the WHO have certainly put down a marker. Giving this despicable, traitorous pensioner a job is a statement in itself – the madness has not gone away and will undoubtedly be ramped up shortly under her edicts.
Youth are entirely disposable else why give this 67 tear old trout a job?
Yet again the WHO is clearly stating that it is an organisation that will operate outside anything remotely connected to science and rationality. Michie’s track record is proof of that.
Why is the UK still a member?!?
I thought Brexit was all about sovereignty!?!
All these UN organisations started as part of the mechanism supposed to ensure eternal world domination by the so-called allied powers of the second world war. Britain can hardly walk away from Churchill’s international legacy, even despite the massive amount unintended consequences.
Not good that she is now able to push her communist agenda throughout the world in the name of ‘science’ and ‘health’.
If they had given her an honorary membership of the CCP for services to the revolution instead, that would have been a bit too obvious. OTOH, there’s a silver lining to every cloud: The lady now formally being an halfway extraterritorial international expert means she’s domestically out of the way as she can certainly no longer claim to be concerned with British interests.
Or perhaps not quite so out of the way.. From the WHO pandemic preparedness treaty proposal:
“[The treaty] could include promoting high-level political commitment and whole-of-government whole-of-society approaches, addressing equity, enhancing the One Health approach, and strengthening health systems and their resilience.”
Sounds a lot like the UN aren’t very keen to stay in their lane..
Of course not. But Michie is no longer the official witch of the British government supposed to expertly advised it how to remote-control the British people by suitable magic charms (Look him into the eyes and … et al) aka hard hitting personal messaging. That’s at least an improvement. She’s now on the payroll of the World Hysterics Organization for service to keeping the panicdemic going, ie, collecting the reward for a usefulness and loyalty.
“The treaty] could include promoting high-level political commitment and whole-of-government whole-of-society approaches, addressing equity, enhancing the One Health approach, and strengthening health systems and their resilience.”
Clearly as duplicitous as it reads. No idea what it means and it’s a raging cert neither did the author.
Orwellian gobbledegook.
I remember that interview with her a year ago.
She likened the rigor of now wearing face masks always to picking up dog poo in parks.
“We didn’t use to pick up dog poo, but now we do. We’ve willingly changed our habits to accommodate good societal behavior, and we should do the same with face masks.” (or something to that effect).
Ironic her subject matter closely aligned with what I thought of it and her.
That Michie likens other people than her importinent self breathing (or talking) to dogs crapping in the streets is quite telling. Good societal behaviour would be picking her up and dumping her in the next bin should she be seen anywhere outside. I prefer the society of those whom she regards as mere dogs (or of real dogs, for that matter).
I didn’t use to want to dump all my dog’s (I don’t really have a dog!) poo through her letterbox but I do now…. I think we can put her own way of seeing the world to good use!
The nudgers want to harness social norms. But Novak Djokovic won’t be harnessed.
https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/the-nudgers-want-to-harness-social
Laura Dodsworth
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“But what can I do? I am just one person”, said 7 billion people …
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“…so I’m very happy to speak about science, which is what my job is, and to limit it to that.” Michie is a behavioural psychologist with no background in epidemiology or infectious disease.
So, not a scientist at all, not in the proper sense anyway, and someone who is clearly uncomfortable talking about her political affiliations despite her occupying positions of power. It is really not surprising though. Tedros Ghebreyesus was/is a Marxist and I imagine there are others in the WHO with similar backgrounds and it has a strong tie to China. So, if anything, it is very important that Mitchie talks about her background and her beliefs especially as she will head up what is essentially a Nudge Unit for an organisation that is seeking global power through its pandemic treaty.
The perfect justification to cancel the direct debit.
Just another reason why the WHO and UN have now become an existential threat. Neither organisation ever made much sense anyway.
I mean, how can you have a Security Council prosecuting a war when people supporting the opposing side were also deciding on UN actions? For example, the Korean War had the UK and US on the UN Security Council discussing policy in the South alongside Chiang Kai-Shek’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, who were communists supporting the North.
Nudge Units are an extremely worrying trend and really need proper exposure, as brainwashing the electorate is a violation of democracy.
‘Nudge units’ are worse than outright bullying of a population through physical force, as this sort of intimidation through fear, panic and emotional manipulation – as in any abusive relationship – absolves the bully or the totalitarian from any acknowledgment of the dark forces motivating their actions. CS Lewis put it nicely:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Spot on! Nudge units need serious media investigation. Thirty years ago, this subject would have been the subject of double-page spread exposés in newspapers and there would have been major investigations on the likes of Panorama and Dispatches.
I expect any objection from the UK Government would have stopped the appointment. Indeed her dismissal, along with the rest of SAGE about a hear ago would have done for her and them.
This is the problem with not having a proper government right now. Also, of course, many of our politicians were probably subject to more aggressive ‘nudging’ than the rest of the citizens of this country. Alexander Johnson looked positively stare-eyed sometimes (although I wonder if he was brain damaged in hospital.)
There is something amiss here and only Greenacres has made the point – why does an organisation reputedly devoted to health even admit to needing a “nudge” unit? This in itself is an admission that a substantial amount of underhandedness is and will continue to be deployed. It’s not as if the majority of any population needs to be nudged to do the right thing is it?
Are we simply becoming inured to this type of behaviour by those who believe they are TPTB?
The future so-called One Health Approach of the WHO is supposed to be jointly about the health of humans, animals and the planet. At least health of the planet is meaningless nonsense. Hence, it’s about pushing principally arbitrary policies, presumably principally about climate change. That’s why they need a nudge unit. It’ll hopefully convince people that everything we did since we stopped being hunter-gatheres was a dreadful mistake and urgently needs to be undone.
Good. I might as well disregard the diktats of the Boss class rather than a tuppence ha’penny academic. I feel more like I’m targeting the organ-grinder, somehow, instead of the monkey.
She’s already rich so another accolade for her will make little difference to me.
That’s right, the “chair” of the Who (if only), not “chairman”. Landsakes…
And once and for all, China’s WHO!
Nudge units have only a single purpose purpose to spread panic and propaganda. Michie’s appointment is therefore fitting. WHO desperately needs a new Director-General. The current incumbent has lost the plot.His recent declaration about Monkeypox has exposed his lack of credibility for all the world to see. If only our eyes had been opened about him early in 2020.
It interests me, how did the likes of Michie, Pantsdown Ferguson (and many others) get to be appointed and annointed as “The Science”?
Someone picked and recommended them. That someone didn’t just use a pin and an old telephone directory. It is impossible that they were NOT aware of Ferguson’s long history of total incompetence. Michie’s Marxism MUST have been known.
So, as well as these two malicious chancers, we need to know who thought it appropriate to use taxpayers’ money to employ these toxic barstewards. And ensure that whoever it was, is immediately fired and imprisoned for Gross Misconduct in Public Office.
That’s us fecked now…