Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

I'm really ticked with our postal workers. They've been on strike for two weeks now. They are demanding a 25% wage hike. And now some are in the news whinging about how tough it is going without a paycheque!

I don't think unions have any place in any government or crown corporation. The wages, benefits and pensions are already dream territory for most workers in the private sector.

And now I can't mail any Christmas cards or regular letters to friends and even sympathy cards can't be sent. The costs of private couriers would be a non starter.

 

After every election there are obviously many who didn't vote for and didn't want the party which has gained power. There has never, to my knowledge, ever been a petition of this size and certainly not within a matter of months after the General Election. Even Boris didn't 'excite' the populace enough for them to get a petition going to oust him.
Starmer will doubtless claim all the signatures are from disgruntled Tory voters.

 

I think that Starmer laughing, when questioned on the TV last week, about the petition didn't help.
It showed a certain amount of contempt.

 

His moral compass was shown pretty clearly by his appointment of somebody he knew to have criminal convictions for lying, to a senior role in his government. His quote "'lawbreakers cannot be lawmakers'" certainly came back to bite him on the posterior.

 

There has been that petition about Brexit with 6 million signatures. However, there have been far more who signed from abroad (100k+).

If someone reads newspapers, this particular petition has been mentioned in some of them, like DM and Telegraph. The Guardian and Independent didn't mention it.
The statistic for this petition shows that the signatures from other countries are in the low 100. These 3 million signatures are actually made from the constituencies, with the Tory constituencies leading the signatures. But even Labour constituencies have several thousand signatures.

In my constituency, the map on the petition page says 113.000 constituents, but we have only 72.500 who are registered to vote. Of these 72.500 have only 62% voted which are 45.000. Until now almost 4.000 have signed, which means that 5% of the people who are constituents have signed.

 

Very interesting @simone_in_wiltshire. I didn't know about the Brexit one. The Times also mentioned this one. The signing has slowed down now, but still a long time to go. Plenty of time for a new political party to pop up.

 

I agree that the petition is pointless as far as getting any kind of result, and also it shouldn't either.
But it just gives you a certain amount of satisfaction.

I think it's more and more becoming the norm that people don't accept the outcome of a vote.

 

I agree, but ...

If a party gets into government and can then do anything it wants, that is an elected dictatorship rather than democracy. If within a very short time of getting into office, a party starts imposing things never mentioned, or actively ruled out, in its manifesto, people have a right to say "Hold on a minute ...". Now, of course, as a parliamentary term progresses, unforeseen situations arise that require specific measures (eg pandemics), and that's fair enough. But, in general terms, govs should not only be accountable once every 5 yrs and then allowed to run amok in the intervening periods.

Of course this petition is not going to result in a GE, and neither should it. But if petitions are the only way the electorate has any sort of voice during the parliamentary term, I'm all for them.

I would be happy to sign one on moving the current position of the WFP cut off to £15,000 and getting rid of the pension credit cliff edge which means a pensioner just below the limit can access lots of financial help and one just above gets nothing. I'd also sign one on removing MPs' right to a heating allowance.

 

I wish my parents had done this for me. They were both terrified of cars having been in a bad crash in their youth. I was able to learn to drive a motorbike because in those days you could just buy one and practice on your own and take your test and either pass or fail. I passed and went on to drive quite big motorbikes but the fear of cars was ingrained in me and I never tried them. I stopped driving bikes when I reached sixty and I miss the freedom that driving gives you.

 

I think that is what has got the backs up for so many people. There is a difference in my opinion between not fulfilling a pledge, or even doing things they didn't mention, and doing something they actively said they weren't going to do.
The leading members of this Government getting their snouts in the trough so quickly and so totally has also shown just how out of touch they are. A claim they levelled at the previous Government!

 

The problem with drivers is that you only actually need to be be able to drive for about 40 minutes in your whole life. Once you have passed the test your fine to drive badly.

 

We have a road with a big, wide cycle path on one side and a narrow pavement on the other. Of course, there are always cyclists on the narrow side, and they expect pedestrians to get out of their way. One day I was walking on the narrow side and a bike came up behind me fast ringing her bell. I didn't budge and she had to brake hard. She wasn't alone - there were two more women cycling behind her and they piled into her! The resulting language wasn't very ladylike.

 

Yes, I didn't get any help learning to drive from my parents. When I started work I took driving lessons and eventually passed the test at my 3rd attempt, but then I never drove again because I didn't have anyone to go out with me to gain confidence.

Looking back at my lessons, I remember not having a clear idea where the 4 corners of the car were and hence struggling to manoeuvre it or position it correctly in the road. It occurs to me now that it was because I'm short and I needed a booster seat, but such a thing was never suggested.

 

Being tight i tried to pass my test without any lessons from a driving school, had two goes but they failed me twice, ended up getting about 5 lessons from a driving school and did my test in their car, so I passed.
I think an hour lesson was about a £1 then, but I only earned £4 a week so one hour was costing me 10 hours work.

They complain about the waiting list for tests these days but I remember having to book months in advance and there wasn't even a local test centre in those days either.