The Reform Party are certainly having a big impact on both national and local politics. The Labour Party annual conference was dominated by attempts to smear Nigel Farage and those who vote for Reform (like me).
Another example are the events at Kent County Council (KCC) – Bromley where I live used to be part of Kent although technically it’s now part of a London borough and hence part of the Greater London Authority. Many local residents would like to depart from London and the dictatorship of Sadiq Khan.
Why are people voting for Reform? In essence because they would like to see new ideas and policies implemented while feeling that the Labour and Conservative parties are stuck in the past. They also feel that both Conservative and Labour parties have broken promises to tackle excessive immigration and the latest proposals are still too weak, while leaders of both parties are seen as ineffective.
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Yes the sun is out and there is not a cloud in the sky – although thunderstorms are threatened for later today.
Keir Starmer has said he will reduce the number of immigrants which he now seems to accept have got out of hands. But exactly how he will do this is not really clear. Minor changes to rules imposed by the ECHR will not suffice. The real problem is some lawyers have got out of hand and have finessed the legal system to put obstacles in the way of any restrictions. They have been supported by funding from legal aid and from charities. Unless such funding is stopped, not a lot will change.
We need an Act of Parliament that stops funding of legal appeals regarding refusal of admittance.
Why the sudden urgency to do something about immigration? It’s because the Reform Party are now looking a serious threat to both Labour and Conservative Parties. Recent opinion polls and local election results put Reform well in the lead. Personally I won’t be changing my voting intentions unless I see some actual results from the Labour initiative. But Chris Philp M.P. (shadow Home Secretary) is doing a good job at promoting some Conservative Party initiatives on immigration. He has always impressed me with his ability to put forward practical and popular policies. He would be a better leader for the Conservative Party than current or recent ones.
If you think immigration is out of hand in this country and that it could not get worse, just look at Sweden. Gang warfare has broken out and even children are paid to commit crimes including murder as they cannot be prosecuted. Over the 20 years since I worked for a Swedish company, the culture of Sweden has changed from being a safe and disciplined country to one of rampant crime. This is a direct result of excessive immigration. See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/30/sweden-gangs-child-contract-killings-foxtrot-young-offender/
Another big political issue at present is free speech in the UK. There have been several examples recently of the police prosecuting or harassing people who might have said allegedly offensive words on social media (for example the case of Julian Foulkes). I certainly think it has gone to far and I today joined the Free Speech Union (see https://freespeechunion.org/) who have been supporting challenges to the misuse of legislation in this area. Even I am at risk of falling foul of some misguided police challenges after some over-sensitive person complains about my political views!
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With the Reform Party winning the by-election in Runcorn, its first two mayoral positions, and taking control of a number of local councils in England, it is clearly on a roll. Is this the end of two-party politics as Nigel Farage has suggested? Perhaps I would say but if it’s a victory for democracy it’s also surely more down to having two weak leaders in the Labour and Conservative parties while Nigel Farage represents the views of many on the big issue of immigration.
But it also demonstrates that Reform have built a local party machine with active supporters who can win elections, and have the funding to do so. They are not going to go away. Even more to the point, it suggests that we really do need a system of proportional representation to stop the “winner takes all” and divisive politics of the older parties. The socially divisive Labour and Conservative parties need to change their politics and public images so that they can represent everyone.
VE-Day Reminiscence
VE-Day which celebrates the end of the war in Europe is on the 8th May. It’s a good moment to recall what my father wrote in his diary on that day in 1945.
My father worked for Boots in a reserved occupation maintaining their power station. Although he did briefly join the Home Guard he generally avoided military service. This is what he wrote in the days before and after the celebration day:
Sunday, May 6. Yesterday afternoon I did three hours hard work fixing a 1 kw heater in the upstairs water tank. I scrounged it from Bob some years ago and it will probably come in handy next winter, when coal supplies look like being even less than last. It was raining hard all day but milder.
Today was bright and sunny but there was a cool wind. Out before dinner with Grandpa and the lad and again after dinner to the University Park [in Nottingham] and took two snaps [one below is of my mother Nell and brother Adrian].
There was nasty news last night of the Russians dealing with the so called Democratic Poles, whom they now admit, after much delay and prevarication, to have arrested on vague charges of “sabotage” etc! A shocking business, which hasn’t made a good impression either here or in the USA. The Russians are a bit too keen on setting up their own governments in the liberated countries and I fancy we are not going to stand for it very much longer.
Wednesday, May 9. Well at long last, the announcement came of the end of the war in Europe. Rumours were circulating at 3 o’clock on Monday but I didn’t take much notice until CHJ told me and Fred Sutcliffe that it was semi-official and that the news would “break” at 9 pm. We argued for an hour about what to do; but in the absence of definite news, we decided we’d wait and see. At 8:30 pm the announcement was made that Churchill would speak at 3 pm on Tuesday. I rang CHJ and he was in a fog and told me he would get Bull. He did and told me that Bull also couldn’t make up his mind just whether it meant 2 days or only 1 day’s holiday. But at the 9 pm news it was made quite clear, so I went down there and got the arrangements made.
Yesterday I went to work, just to make sure but found the boys all shut down and away (by 8:40 am!). Jack Spenser rolled up also by 10:30 am and we adjourned to the Chequers, where a crowd was congregated waiting for opening time at 11:30 am. We got a pint each and by 11.50, the beer was all sold and we had to content ourselves with a Guinness each in a pint mug. I paid for that in a headache, which lasted the rest of the day. After tea, Nell and I went to the pictures but after three quarters of an hour, I couldn’t stand any more, so we left. Where such drivel comes from I don’t know. I forgot that after dinner, being fine and sunny after rain, we went into the University Park, where I got two snaps. The evening was quiet except for a few fireworks in the garden 2 doors away. Bed by 11 o’clock, very thankful that the job is finished.
VE Day Today was a grand day of sun, though with a fairly high wind. We took Adrian out before dinner and after, I went with Nell to play tennis but we only got 20 mins play when Adrian began to howl, so we were forced to abandon the game. We were home by 3:30 pm and after taking my last snap, we have just packed him off.
Well, I wonder what will happen now. All the shouting is still to do but on the whole, I fancy we may see a steady rise in our standard of living for the next 10 years; after that I’m not so sure. But there is much reconstruction to be done and I think Germany will be no great competitor for many years. Russia and the USA will take some holding though and whether the Commonwealth will hold together much longer is an open question. Sentiment alone counts for little now.
<End>
My father clearly foretold the threats from Russia and the USA which we are still living through. But the UK economy was in a dire state in 1945 and the difficulties are made clear in the book by Ed Conway which I reviewed here: https://roliscon.blog/2025/02/24/book-reviews-j-d-rockefeller-and-ed-conway/ . It covers the Bretton Woods conference which set the structure of international finance since 1945.
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The Investors Chronicle editor (Rosie Carr) led with an article this week on the tariff wars that have broken out – headlined with “Facing up to America First”. High tariffs (i.e. taxes on imports) are certainly extremely damaging and should be avoided if possible. They reduce trade and raise the cost of products that cannot be easily replaced by domestic production. Inflation tends to rise as a result.
She concludes with this statement: “Even if these fears are overdone, lack of diplomacy and disregard for consequences do not bode well”. But I just see it as the consequence of ignoring the trade imbalances that have been allowed to rise in recent years with unfair tariffs and taxes imposed on US products by other countries.
For example, UK car exports to the US attract a 2.5% tariff, while US exports here face a 10% tariff. This is one reason why there are not many US manufactured cars on UK roads and that has been the position for many years. With this price barrier, it is not practical for US car manufacturers to build European model cars as the market is simply not large enough.
In other words, Europe and the UK have brought US attempts to rectify the imbalances upon ourselves. Donald Trump has been right in taking steps to rebalance the situation even if he has done so rather abruptly.
The Japanese and Europeans almost destroyed the US car industry in the last 50 years by lower costs and technological innovation while protecting their own home markets by tariff and other regulatory barriers. This needs to be stopped. Other products and markets have been corrupted in similar ways.
Reform Party In-Fighting
As a supporter of the Reform Party, I am somewhat dismayed by the latest spat among the leadership. Rupert Lowe, M.P., has been making public some of the issues. But having a public debate on them is not the way to behave for a Party that wants to be seen as being a responsible organisation.
They need to all calm down and resolve their issues and complaints in private! If Rupert Lowe cannot follow the leadership he should depart to other pastures.
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According to a report in the FT, the development of the Jackdaw gas field is not quite as dead as I suggested in a previous blog post, which was based on a decision in the Scottish courts. The FT says:
“The government is currently drawing up new guidance for environmental impact assessments in response to the Finch decision, which will be published in the spring. The guidance is expected to set the bar higher for fossil fuel projects. The energy companies will then have to resubmit environmental impact assessments to the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning, a quango which answers to Miliband.
But Rachel Reeves said last week that ‘we were really clear in our [election] manifesto that we would honour all existing licences including at Rosebank and Jackdaw and we will stick by those commitments’”.
This is all very well but the companies involved are surely going to have difficulties planning future capital expenditure given the outstanding uncertainty as to whether Labour politicians such as Miliband will stick to their party’s commitments. Foreign companies and investors will surely be scared off by this duplicity and dissimulation.
The UK stock market has been trending down. Is this the post-Christmas hangover or just the trend following caused by index tracking funds? I don’t know as Paul Scott might say. He wrote a very amusing blog post recently putting the boot into an AIM company who shall remain nameless that claims to have a cure for erectile dysfunction. He simply said he had tried it and it did not work. I certainly recommend doing some shopping to try products and services before investing in a company.
Meanwhile, AIM continues to lose companies via de-listing or moves to the Main Market. The ones delisting are generally too small to be on AIM where listing and regulation costs are too high. They should rightly leave.
The ones moving to the Main LSE market (see GlobalData today) do not seem to justify the reputational problem of being on AIM compounded by the recently reduced tax benefits. The AIM market has a major problem and will continue to decline unless it is substantially changed with improved and tighter regulations. A change of name would also help.
The Reform Party is now on a roll and is leading in opinion polls. This may not last as people tend to support minority parties between general elections when their minds get more focussed on reality. But Reform is certainly proving more credible even if not everyone likes Nigel Farage. The Labour Government is even panicking to the extent of cancelling elections in some local councils on the basis that the pending local government elections will mean some votes will be wasted as boundaries are redrawn. They are also gerrymandering by proposing to reduce the voting age and allowing anyone who is UK resident to vote (i.e. not UK citizens alone). These moves are certainly very deplorable to anyone who believes in democracy.
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As I have a postal vote for the General Election, it was time to decide who to vote for. I covered some points from the main party manifestos in previous blog posts. None of those manifestos excited me and I have now read the Reform Party manifesto (or “Our Contract With You” as they call it – see link below).
There is much in there that I endorse and little that I would disagree with so I have voted for the local Reform candidate. They may not win in my local constituency or win enough seats to have an impact in Parliament in the coming election but I would like to see Reform continue to develop so as to have a major impact on UK politics. They do have a number of good leaders with sensible views – I include Farage, Tice, Habib, Bull, et al.
In conclusion Reform has a better platform than the other major parties and a more practical one. So I have voted for them.
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It’s the start of a new week covering the run up to the General Election and there are a few things to comment on. Europe seems to be moving to the right – particularly in Germany and France but also in the UK with Reform getting more votes based on opinion polls. But the national media, particularly the BBC, is wallowing in nostalgia for the good old days when we won World War II. Is it not time when we spent less time on this now very historic event and looked more to the future?
Personally I could not care less if Rishi Sunak chose to miss part of the D-Day celebrations. He needed to ration his time and spend it on more important matters.
The main UK political parties are talking about policies that they feel will be attractive to the public – more police, more prisons, an attack on anti-social behaviour, National Service to instil responsibility in teenagers; but until the full party manifestos are published (hopefully this week), it may be premature to comment.
The key issues that need tackling are surely uncontrolled immigration, housing provision and the capacity of the NHS – the last two of those made much more difficult by the first. That is why some political parties are doing better than others.
But the Labour party has not changed – they are now promising to save more jobs at Port Talbot by keeping one blast furnace in operation when Tata is losing £1 million per day at present on its UK operations. Keeping unprofitable steel making businesses afloat with Government hand-outs is as mad as keeping coal mines open in the 1980s. Mrs Thatcher put a stop to that nonsense and we need someone with courage to do the same now for steel making in the UK plus another Dr Beeching to rationalise the UK rail network which consumes billions of pounds in subsidies every year.
But the national media instead like to spend time on trivia – such as the unfortunate death of Dr. Mike Mosley – a minor TV personality who was unwise enough to go for an arduous hike in 40 degree temperatures and with no phone.
I will defer a final decision on who I will be voting for until I have read the manifestos and seen how all the hand-outs are to be paid for when the real priority is to cut taxes not increase them.
The Tories have promised to reduce the burden on motorists by outlawing the London ULEZ expansion among other things. But as others have pointed out, they could have done that two years ago but didn’t. The same applies to their promises to reduce immigration. That is one reason why Reform are doing so well.
When you have the power to change things, you have to use it!
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Raspberry Pi who sell very cheap single board computers are proposing to list on the main UK stock market. They have issued a “Pathfinder Prospectus” which is available from several brokers, although a lot of the detailed information needed to evaluate the business is not there.
However I thought I would give it a quick read although I hardly ever invest in new issues. I did buy one of their computers for my oldest grandson some years back and had a play with it. At the time it was clearly aimed at the educational/hobbyist market but has also been used to embed in other commercial IOT systems. You can use a Raspberry Pi product to learn programming although as a past programmer in my early career I am always sceptical about teaching kids to learn programming – it may put them off software development for life. Learning BASIC just seems very tedious and prone to simple grammatic errors but it teaches you that complex programs are built up from simple constructs.
The last time I wrote anything in BASIC was for my MBA course over 40 years ago but unlike most people on the course who had no IT background I managed to impress the course tutor with my perfectly crafted mortgage calculation program.
Raspberry Pi have come a long way in the last few years. They appear to be profitable with revenue of $265 million last year. The market value is likely to be over $500 million. The company which owns the IP was founded as an educational charity back in 2008 and it has partnerships with ARM and Sony so the legal structure is complex and it’s worth reading the “Risk Factors” carefully. The charity is still the ultimate parent company. It does not manufacture the hardware it sells. I suspect it could be a popular listing as there are few high-tech companies that have built a market niche in the world like Raspberry. But the company has many competitors and no obvious barriers to entry in the markets it serves.
Investing in new IPOs is a recipe for underperformance as the listing price is based on optimism and opportunistic timing. But it’s certainly worth reading the Prospectus.
Political news. The big political news in the UK is that Nigel Farage is taking over leadership of the Reform Party and is standing for Parliament on the 4th of July. In a recent public opinion poll the Reform Party was only 2% behind the Conservatives so do stand a chance of winning some seats. And of course damaging the Tory vote.
I have met Nigel Farage a few times and he does make good speeches so I wish him the best of luck. Whether he can get elected is difficult to judge as he is divisive personality in some ways. Some people don’t like charismatic persons.
The policies of the Reform Party are sound and Richard Tice has been doing a good job leading the Party so I hope he will stick around.
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On Monday there was a debate in Parliament on assisted dying – see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5wPhNupqXc . I have been a long- standing supporter of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society – now called Dignity in Dying. It is long overdue for Parliament to change the law so it’s worth listening to the debate. One speaker argued that not only might some people be persuaded to kill themselves by others but they may persuade themselves. That is a most peculiar argument. There was the usual call for palliative care to be improved but relying on that is problematic. When I want to leave this world I don’t want to be blocked by complex rules or laws.
Today we have the elections in London and other regions. In London other contenders have been catching up on Sadiq Khan according to the latest opinion polls. But he is still likely to win the vote for Mayor as the opposition is split and so many people don’t vote.
So it is extremely important to get out there and vote today!
Personally I have voted for Susan Hall as the only person with a real chance of ousting the liar Sadiq Khan, the destroyer of London’s transport network with his Transport Strategy. But I voted for Reform Party candidates for the other positions. Some tactical voting is the order of the day.
For lighter entertainment, I have just finished reading the book Brazilian Adventure by Peter Fleming (brother of James Bond author Ian Fleming). This is was first published in 1933 and is ostensibly the story of a search for Colonel Fawcett who disappeared in the Amazon jungle 7 years previously. But in reality it’s the ripping yarn of a few young and inexperienced men seeking adventure.
It’s well written, brings the milieu to life and therefore is recommended. Here’s one sentence from it: “The sun had just risen. It’s light no more than grazed the world, gilding the crests of ridges, from the blue hollows between them picking our little save the tallest trees and the wisps of vapour which hung wherever there was water.”
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Labour might be celebrating the wins in Kingswood and Wellingborough but apart from the fact that by-elections are rarely good forecasts of general election results there are some things worth pointing out.
In reality the Labour vote did not increase, but the Tory vote dropped because it was eroded by support for Reform candidates. The problem for the Conservatives is that they have failed to retain the support of right leaning supporters when Reform have adopted the policies that attract traditional conservative voters. Such as much tighter control on immigration (the Conservatives have talked about this but action has been insipid and ineffective).
But Reform have some way to go to win seats because unfortunately many people vote the same way as they always have without looking at manifestos or the historic track records of the candidates. Democracy in the UK has become sclerotic because of those factors. We do need proportional representation but that is as far away as ever.
For example, look at the winning Labour candidate in Kingswood – Damian Egan. He was an Irish immigrant to Bristol but was elected as a Lewisham Councillor and then Mayor of Lewisham. His track record there included strong support of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) which has created strong opposition from those opposed to road closures which he ignored. But he did not talk about that in Kingswood but more on the deficiencies of the NHS.
Reform are attracting good candidates and building local representation but they still have a way to go to obtain mass support. They and the Labour party have won protest votes in these by-elections but it takes time and money to win general elections.
Note: I support both Reform and Conservative Parties but the Conservatives need to be much more effective in governing the country if they are to win my future vote.
Roger Lawson
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