A government promising change has changed a lot. The problem is it is mainly change for the worse. People wanted more jobs not more unemployment. They wanted more successful businesses not more failures. They wanted cheaper energy, not dearer, fewer illegal migrants not more and lower not higher taxes.
To get out of the mess the government needs to start with U turns in most policy areas. I list the crucial ones.
Restore the Rwanda scheme backed by ECHR proof UK law so we can deport illegals, creating a deterrent.
Remove the National Insurance tax on jobs
Remove the IHT attack on small businesses and larger farms
Accelerate plans to help people into jobs whilst limiting sick notes for life to just very disabled people
Dilute the damaging impact of the Employment Rights Act which is hitting jobs
End the EU re set, taking back control of our fish to build a bigger fishing and food processing industry
Keep the Chagos islands and save £30 bn over the longer term
Keep Turing and cancel Erasmus to help more UK students at less overall cost
Keep juries
End two tier justice
Restore free speech
End dear energy and extreme net zero policies that deindustrialise us
Restore drilling for oil and gas at home
January 12, 2026
A good list which emphasises the sheer incompetence of Labour, Starmer and his crew
January 12, 2026
An excellent list but more chance of snow in Saudi than them happening
Starmer will just double down on his ruinous policies just as Milibrain thinks increasing useless windmills and solar will make us energy secure
The latest wheeze to accept a massive penalty clause if any future government wants to unwind his treasonous sellout to the EU, just shows his contempt for the electorate
I have nothing but contempt for this bunch of chancers and the sooner they are gone the better.
January 12, 2026
@Ian Wragg – the complaints are taken by those working to the ‘plan’ as a badge of honour they are succeeding
January 12, 2026
Incompetence or is it deliberate and malign agenda to damage the UK? Can they really be so stupid and it is really just incompetence. Or is it pandering to vested interests like the legal industry, some trade unions, big pharma…
January 12, 2026
@Lifelogic – spot on
January 12, 2026
Indeed also get Fracking and end the wars on road users, the self employed, pubs, private schools, small businesses, employers, landlords (which also harms tenants), non doms, the rich, the hard working, free speech, gas boilers, ICE cars… stop the evil two tier justice and policing system …
Also have some real deterrents to crimes like shoplifting, rape gangs, knife crimes…
So U-turns all round please doom loop policies lead to doom! 14 years of the green-crap Con-Socialist was dire but Starmer is far worse still.
Oh and release the health injury figures by Covid Vaccine status so we can see have damaging or advantageous they were? They must surely be hugely damning as you are not releasing them. The Japanese ones certainly were! Then perhaps we can see what if anything can be done to mitigate the harms and prevent more future harms!
January 12, 2026
The only good things Starmer’s Labour party has done so far is all his (alas only partial) U turns so far . Far more U turns are still needed. If he enters a new dynamic alignment with the EU and with a Farage you cannot get out clause this is surely binding future governments, killing democracy and totally unacceptable. Many will see it as pure teachery by the dire two Tier Starmer.
January 12, 2026
Or better still stand down and call for a General Election after the bloody balls up you’ve made so far on trying to run a country. Go on punk make my day
January 12, 2026
With 3 years and 7 months before the next general election, at which many of them will lose their jobs, and they will probably be out of power for 10 years or more, their best plan is to keep motoring on.
That’s time enough to impose their unpopular will and make it very, very difficult for the next couple of governments to undo the globalist, socialist project. Time enough too, to secure lucrative new jobs for themselves in the quangocracy.
Things could even pan out well for them. The security and media establishment could neutralise the Farage threat, digital ID and controls on freedom of expression could silence opposition, a patriotic state of war with Russia might swing people behind them and who knows, they could cling to power?
If I was a Labour MP I’d say let’s go for bust. There’s no downside for me.
January 12, 2026
@Wanderer – the ‘plan’
January 12, 2026
In reply to this depressing pro-fossil fuel and anti-net zero post:-
1) We cannot afford the huge subsidies paid to the extraction companies to make the remaining N Sea oil and gas fields economic.
2) Sunak’s delay to the ban on sales of new ICE cars was not wanted by the SMMT, has resulted in the transfer of UK EV production to the EU, the closure of factories in the UK, significant penetration of the UK EV market by exceedingly cheap Chinese models and the loss of jobs
3) Many people who have installed heat pumps report significant savings in electricity costs and warmer homes
4) The taxes on ICE cars should be massively increased to compensate for the loss of road tax and VAT on fuel as EVs come to dominate the market
5) The loss of EU grants for farmers – which have not been replaced by the Labour government – has resulted in less food security and more food imports by not encouraging them to grow food sustainably
6) 14 years of stonking increases to the national debt have bankrupted the Treasury. The taxes on extraction of hydrocarbons should be doubled and those on renewables should be eliminated
7) The wind has failed to blow on only 5 days so far this winter, we have had no “blackouts”, we need more N Sea windfarms, onshore wind and solar and the EU interconnectors which give us energy security
The Conservatives had 14 years to control migration and build RR’s modular nuclear reactors. Why did they not do so? Why has it taken a Labour government organise?
January 12, 2026
“The Staggering Cost of Ed Miliband’s Net Zero Drive Finally Revealed: £4.5 Trillion… That’s More Than the UK’s Entire GDP”
The figures, quietly published last month by the National Energy System Operator (NESO) – a Government quango responsible for Britain’s energy systems – includes an estimated £585 billion to be forked out by ordinary households to pay for the move away from gas boilers towards heat pumps. And new wind farms and electricity pylons across the country would cost £1 trillion, it estimates, while switching to electric vehicles and building more charging stations could add further costs of up to £2.6 trillion.
In total, NESO estimates Britain will need to spend £182 billion a year (WE HAVEN’T GOT) to reach its targets by 2050. And it won’t make a scrap of difference to the climate.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15452411/The-staggering-cost-Ed-Milibands-Net-Zero-drive-finally-revealed.html
January 12, 2026
Explain how the Countries providing us with Interconnector power don’t need the 10% we badly need else we would indeed have daily blackouts?
January 12, 2026
SG this is satire, isn’t it.
January 12, 2026
What planet are you one Mr Gold?
1. They will be profitable they just need permission and sensible tax rates.
2. The bank should have been cancelled completely.
3. Gas if far cheaper and more convenient than heat pumps when properly accounted for.
4. Why should ICE cars pay more tax for EV car users.
5. They were not EU grants really just a partial refund for fees we paid to the EU
6. Yet more market rigging you want to pretend that renewables can compete?
7. We solar in winter produce virtually nothing, no power cuts thanks to gas and imported wood at Drax (young coal)
Large Nuclear should be far cheaper than modular if done properly but government never do things properly. In the mean time frack, mine, drill, gas, oil coal will keep us going until we crack fusion or other better nuclear.
January 12, 2026
Heat pumps and even less efficient for building not used most of the time and they are so slow to reheat a building you often have to keep them on all the time! Particularly inefficient in cold temperatures when more heat is needed and when we have little or no spare electricity or grid capacity!
January 12, 2026
SG: “The wind has failed to blow on only 5 days so far this winter, we have had no “blackouts”, we need more N Sea windfarms, onshore wind and solar and the EU interconnectors which give us energy security”
Don’t worry, SG, the blackouts are coming. NESO’s Clean Power 2030 plan even requires rolling blackouts, called euphemistically, Demand Side Response (DSR), at times of peak demand and when electricity over the interconnectors is not available or insufficient. See Table 2 on P47 of NESO’s Clean Power 2030 Report.
January 12, 2026
Just to challenge you SG on your very first claim.
Real subsidies are paid by our Government to renewable energy companies.
Oil and gas companies pay loads of tax to our Government.
January 12, 2026
1) There are no subsidies – only crippling taxes. Norway is developing adjacent fields profitably.
2) Industry in the UK is being crippled by NetZero.
3) There have been very few heat pumps installed because they are uneconomic for most.
4) ICE cars will continue to pay duty and VAT on fuel. It is EVs that have been under taxed.
5) Labour have chosen to attack farmers in pursuit of Net Zero. As a net contributor before Brexit EU grants were not a net benefit.
6) If you want to increase revenue from hydrocarbons then don’t shut down production with high taxes.
7) We have had several days of stressed supply because of a combination of lower wind and sun, reduced export availability from the Continent and breakdowns of aged plants. Indeed, we had to crank up gas generation to cover European shortages. Prices soared, resulting in rationing by price for those on ToU tariffs: Octopus now charge almost 70p/kWh for such supply. There was inadequate reserve margin at times, so a further breakdown would have resulted in some further rationing.
January 12, 2026
@SG.: Oil and gas face a 78% effective rate on profits vs. ~25% for renewables. Also they face significant downstream taxation (53p fuel duty per litre, ie about 40%). Electricity users by comparison only pay about 15% tax (so called “green levies” – paid to make green energy production economically viable).
I’d reduce taxes on hydrocarbons to help domestic businesses and consumers, thereby increasing economic activity and net tax take
January 12, 2026
Plus one
January 12, 2026
SG: “In reply to this depressing pro-fossil fuel and anti-net zero post:-“
SG, would you care to explain please how the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) can estimate the net cost of reaching net zero at around 0.2% of GDP annually (approx. £4bn/yr), or £108bn total to 2050 whilst NESO calculates a cost of £182bn/year or £4.5 trillion by 2050. Clean Power 2030 has been estimated by NESO to cost “over £40bn/year”.
January 12, 2026
Relying on the EU interconnector is the exact opposite of energy security – they will weaponise it and use it to blackmail UK if we try to do something they don’t like – they already did this during the post-Brexit fishing negotiations.
Fossil fuel isn’t subsidised, it is highly taxed and is a net contributor to Government revenue, but renewable are massively subsidised even to the extent of paying wind turbine owners over £1bn a year to turn them off !
January 12, 2026
That’s hitting the nail on the head, John
January 12, 2026
Or admit Labour/Starmer are useless and call a General election. (I can but dream)
January 12, 2026
Indeed their manifesto said little about all of those changes you list, but us wiser ones out here knew from past experience that Labour always leaves the Country in a worse State than when it came to power, thus they did not get my vote, and it has proved to be the case again.
Likewise the Conservatives failed big time over their 14 years (after the Last Labour “no money left” note) , some of it in part with the LibDems who agreed an increase on University fees, again against their original pledges.
So who do you trust, the new kids on the block ?
With such little choice I voted Reform, as at least the leader believed in Brexit Proper, and also has some business experience.
January 12, 2026
Then they tried to have Rupert Lowe arrested and expelled for daring to mildly criticise the leadership, one of their greatest assets, along with Ben Habib it suggests the current leaders can’t work well with people with big ideals and ideas. Big mistakes in my opinion. What’s worse is that these two men won’t consider the Conservatives an alternative, which suggests Kemi has changed nothing of substance. With Lib Dem figures like Tobias still harping on at every chance.
January 12, 2026
Correct, but you are basically telling Two-Tier to destroy the Labour Party and to cancel himself so it isn’t going to happen.
He is on a mission to destroy the UK as an independent nation; trap us permanently into the EU and create his idea of a Socialist EUtopia. He’s a man in a hurry since both he and the EU have basically admitted that the next Government will be a Farage-led Reform, one which is why they are creating a “Farage-Clause” in the Brexit Betrayal they are currently concocting.
January 12, 2026
Starmer wants to agree to heavy penalties on future termination of new EU rules being applied to UK.
Farage says he would cancel such agreements.
January 12, 2026
One point we may note among the Hard Labour wreckage is the complete contrast with 1997, when Blair and Mandelson were focused from day 1 on the need for electoral approval for two terms, so as to implement their programme of reform (wreckage as we saw it, but let’s not split hairs). Starmer, on the other hand, is setting about his programme of wreckage in a scorched earth manner. Is this attributable to his certain knowledge that he has no chance of winning fairly in 2029? Or is he following a barely disguised set of globalist instructions in pursuit of Agenda 2030 and Schwab’s Great Reset?
January 12, 2026
I’d like to modify:
Leave ECHR.
Review UN membership.
Raise NI threshold.
Raise IHT to minimum £1m.
Turing has faults which need correction and better funding.
Increase Magistrate courts and ensure speedier cases.
Reduce and then freeze airport parking/drop off fees.
Reduce city congestion fees.
Reduce and freeze daily standing charges on gas/electricity provision.
January 12, 2026
You’re quite the restraint gentleman…I’d go a lot further
January 12, 2026
What about the employment rights act?
Reduce welfare and cap it at minimum wage.
January 12, 2026
Most SMEs, in my opinion, haven’t become fully aware of the new Employment Rights Act. Their so-called small business advisors, such as The FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) and the Forum of Private Business (FPB), membership organisations, aren’t providing sufficient warnings.
For example:
Contracts of employment will need to be rewritten with adequate notice to adapt to the ERA changes from April relating to sick leave and pay. Then there are the changes to guaranteed hours over a 12-week reference period, so seasonal peak contracts that ebb and flow at times of the year could give you a headache of fixed hours over a full year. Business flexibility has been brought to an end, and if you don’t make changes by 2026, you can get yourself in a bind in 2027. Too much has been left up in the air. Fire and rehire restrictions from Oct 2026 will stop you hiring for 3 month peaks then rehiring later for another peak (potentially automatically unfair).
Take someone on from April who does a couple of weeks then goes sick immediate day 1 sick pay. If they only work 2 days for you per week you have to pay them 5 days sick pay.
January 12, 2026
* 5 days’ ‘statutory’ sick pay. Rayner wants to make this 80% of the normal pay rate instead of £118.75pw. There is no earnings threshold of £125 pw from April 2026, so someone doing 1 day per week on minimum wage say £100 pw will be eligible for whatever the new rate is, or 80% of average weekly earnings from day 1 £80 pw, not qualifying day 4. Don’t forget this can last 28 weeks, and they accrue holiday pay for 15 days during that period at their full rate.
A self-employed Dad can sign on with your company and immediately get paternity leave, a ‘day one right’, so they can give leave of notice from the first day of employment, not 26 weeks after a year’s service. You will need to keep his role open and not recruit a replacement, unless you can find a temp. Welfare is being moved from the State to SMEs.
You need an action plan for menopause leave, you need to record evidence you have no gender pay gaps, this is all extra workload for free.
Lots more than this NS to read up on.
January 13, 2026
increased responsibility to prevent sexual harassment (not act on reports of – prevent so mind reading is required).
January 13, 2026
“The responsibility to prevent sexual harassment rests primarily with employers, who have a new legal duty (under the UK’s Worker Protection Act 2023) to proactively take “reasonable steps” to stop sexual harassment of their workers, shifting from reactive responses to a preventative culture, involving risk assessments, robust policies, regular training, clear reporting, and tackling third-party harassment. Individuals also play a role by reporting incidents and promoting a respectful environment, with bystander intervention encouraged.”
It’s getting more like the overly sanitised and politically correct future in Demolition Man, oh how we laughed when Stallone kept getting tickets for wrong speak.
With the new PREVENTION DUTY is sexual harassment (serious enough for reporting back to whom?) if someone is calling you “love”, “sweetheart” (degrading), or if they touch your arm when they’re showing you something (intimidating, humiliating, offensive?), we need serious clarity about what we are to warn people not to do or say at work that could get them into trouble to be regarded as an employer taking ‘reasonable steps’ to ensure it doesn’t happen, I’d guess the two page procedure in the manual isn’t going to be sufficient to undertake ALL REASONABLE STEPS. The government should issue a video (YouTube) to get everyone to watch in their appraisal, induction, with a questionnaire for every company, free of charge, to cover them.
If a woman says that’s not my job its a mans job, when referring to picking up a box seen as an example of harassment that relates the the sex of a person as an example provided is if a man says to a woman “Its not my job to do that, its a woman’s job” when referring to changing the sheets on a bed.
January 12, 2026
Gets my vote
January 12, 2026
A U-turn on scrapping trial by jury is certain now that a Labour MP has threatened to stand down if he doesn’t. Starmer is motivated entirely by short-term political motives.
January 12, 2026
And DO NOT sign up to expensive Exit clauses with the EU. You have no mandate to do so. You know this and so does Brussels.
January 12, 2026
I think lawyers will be looking at the options under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. There are various circumstances which permit a treaty to be abrogated. Some may involve prosecution of those who negotiated the treaty.
January 12, 2026
EU is demanding a so-called Farage Clause if a future government pulls out of the Starmer Reset whereby we pay heavy penalties! This is going to be a major issue for the country.
January 12, 2026
So Starmer seems to wants to sign up to EU “dynamic” alignment with a Farage penalty making it very difficult to leave when voters finally vote in a sensible government. Surely this is pure antidemocratic treachery? He want the UK to be a colony of the EU.
We also have the first female Chief Constable of Suffolk wanting to bring religion into everyday policing. Why on earth would you want to do that. Surely policing and justice both need to be blind equal for all and not adjusted for various irrational belief systems of police officers nor of the people being policed!
Well in my religion poor people are allowed to steal £200 of things from the shop if they are hungry or to molest women not wearing sufficiently modest clothing you see constable!
Or worse to even physically attack people who offend my religion or damage my sacred books. Yes Rachael let’s bring religion into policing a great plan dear!
January 12, 2026
@LL. Can’t Farage just announce that if Reform have a majority, they won’t pay the Farage penalty? Stick 2 fingers up at Brussels?
January 12, 2026
rwanda was only ever a distraction, if you talk about that people will know you are taking them for fools.
I would be having a much better joined up vision than your bits and pieces approach there.
the uk is in such trouble we need a radical shake up.
I would be studying what is going on in Argentina, and seeing what we can learn.
January 12, 2026
I think the US ICE agents are doing a great job rounding up illegal immigrants in US cities. They are not relying on some nonsense deal with Rwanda. Trump really will just send them home. No blob will stop him.
This is part of what we should be doing.
January 12, 2026
That’s some wish list…..
This government has so failed the people it was supposed to be helping, the only decent thing they can do is ask for approval by calling a GE. Then we would see just how much the public agrees with their policies, most of which were not even mentioned on their election manifestos.
They won’t surrender their position willingly, of course, they love power too much! They will continue their destruction, take us back into the EU with foul and deceitful lies, like; ‘IN THIS DANGEROUS WORLD IT WILL BE BETTER TO BE WITHIN THE EU’. Being controlled utterly by the EU will do us no good at all! Far from it, we will lose any potential we have to survive better.
If the King had any powers left I’d petition him to end this parliament and call an election. It seems that we the public have very little power when it comes to dissolving a rogue parliament – That has to change – We need a better contract!
January 12, 2026
Agree with all the points made but I just cant see the Government changing. it looks more like civil unrest will bring about a change of Government
January 12, 2026
Let us hope we don’t end up with thousands being shot by state enforcers as in Iran. The fortitude of their people is remarkable.
January 12, 2026
Sir John, Inheritance Tax is fundamentally wrong. It is a tax on savings made from lifetime earnings that have already been taxed. Tax payers who make prudent arrangements for their own care in later life are uniquely disadvantaged. IHT regulations such as the “7 year rule”create an evil lottery that would embarrass the gambling industry and would probably be illegal. Yes, Sir John we should repeal IHT for small businesses and farms but at the same time it should be repealed for everyone and in its entirety – it is both an incompetent and evil tax.
January 12, 2026
J M
Agree absolutely, as all IHT does is restrict people investing in either their own, or their children’s future.
I wanted to pay for my Granddaughters University eduction fees.
Have been told by my financial advisors it will be seen as a “gift” by HMRC and will come under the 7 year rule.
Thus if I die within 7 years, she will get a tax bill for the fees paid.
Likewise other people we know have said they cannot pay such fees out of their own Companies either.
The tax on unspent Pension Funds also means that now you need to spend all of your Pension Fund before you die, or your survivors will pay double tax on what is left, IHT at 40% plus income tax at their own rate (another 20% minimum) when sums are withdrawn.
The Pension industry must be very worried about the future of Personal Pension schemes, because there are now better alternatives to save for your future.
January 12, 2026
I agree. I’ve worked hard to accrue the wealth I now have. It’s my money, why can’t I give it to my family? Only allowing gifts of £3000 per year to my children and £250 (which doesn’t buy much) to others is absurd. Yet we see the elites with their trust funds and offshore accounts pay little to no IHT. And don’t get me started on the Royal family. We now have the middle class who are trapped into paying this evil tax, whilst foreigners and the super-rich bypass it. Two-tier Britain strikes again.
January 12, 2026
Indeed but all taxes are a taxes on wealth. In the UK the combination of absurdly high taxes is the problem. They can easily take 80% of your would have been wealth off you over 20 years even before the 40% IHT. The real problem is taxes that are too high destroy incentives to be responsible and encourage evermore (often rational) feckless parasites to be even more parasitic!
January 12, 2026
Agree
January 12, 2026
The main thing needed is to halve the size of the state by firing all those who do no good or do net harm.
Some people waiting 5 years for new hip replacements in Scotland it seems. The envy of the world “OUR”, “FREE” – at the point of the 5 year delay” NHS – at its very best!
Very many people are actually dying early due to delays in cancer, heart and other investigations & treatments! Referrals are up post the Covid Vaccines it seems but stats by vaccine status are still being hidden. So why would the government choose to hide these I wonder?
January 12, 2026
We are the state
January 12, 2026
Confidence in this Prime Minister and the Government’s policies is very low and any ‘U’ turns will only help to accelerate this.It’s therefore unlikely they will change significantly on any of their current decisions.
This should be seen as an opportunity for the Conservatives and Reform who will no doubt benefit from Labour’s failures at the next election.Unfortunately Labour have broken their promises on which they were elected and if they are to have any credibility they need to quickly change key personnel including Starmer/Reeves/Miliband.
If they don’t ,we will be stuck with another 4 years of incompetence by when the UK will be in an even worse situation.
January 12, 2026
You forgot to include . End Net Zero, and let’s not ignore, unregulated migration, though your reference to Rwanda touches on it. I don’t feel the Rwanda policy is the most effective route out of unregulated migration. Having a clear repatriation policy backed up by firm and fair border force actions would be more appropriate and would be less involving of legal chancers milking the system.
January 12, 2026
I get what is being suggested today, but think it through these guys might not be as thick as we like to conceive.
They are a wreaking ball out to achieve change, to change the Country and its People into being surfs in a Marxist State. Extreme Socialism has always perused the actions of destroy, destroy so as to build society a personal image that a tyrant wants.
Not one thing has been done to build, secure, create a future. Everything is contrived to remove democracy, free speech and personal freedoms. Its all been malicious damage that makes no sense in this modern world, it robs the Nation and its People of a future, where they(the people) decide, they have a say and the get to contribute on an equal footing.
What is playing out is ‘The Plan’ a highly intelligent plan, by deep thinking people that are practised, trained and taught to manipulate situations.
January 12, 2026
It was always on the cards when Parliament lost its purpose, its reasoning, the refusal to have elections that seek approval every 2 years as happens in free sovereign democracies. Shielding Parliament, its MPs and their personal egos doesn’t happen in a democracy. Parliament is about ideas, concepts and directions being challenged, not protected – the rot of ego is at play…
January 12, 2026
The Magna Carta was put in place to protect the people from the State. Successive Parliaments have tried and managed to turn the clock back by eroding everything the challenges their ultimate authority so much so there is very little of it left.
People freedoms have been dismissed for State Control, the right to freedom of speech removed, by personal orders of those being challenged by banning and trying to ban outlets that facilitate those challenges. Election therefore democracy is being banned, and Parliament supports the removal of this challenge to them. Juries for trials banned with a politicised Legal Industry dictating personal views of the Politburo as Law. Its an endless list. The attack by parliament on the people has become so vast that it can be seen as being fragmented and the focus can get lost, so the outrage gets muted.
Look at the ‘plan’ it would be naive to suggest that those that reach the top tier of the legal profession can’t be dismissed as not being manipulative, not having an ulterior motive. They cant be dismissed as to not knowing that what to some see as reckless miss-steps as not being ‘part of the plan’
January 12, 2026
“A government promising change has changed a lot. The problem is it is mainly change for the worse.”
Spot on! It’s unbelievable the harm this government has inflicted on the country!
January 12, 2026
This is a staggering example of incompetence from Starmer’s administration. I cannot remember such appalling lack of research and preparedness from any previous government in my lifetime. And Starmer & Co had 14 years to prepare! A flawed obsession with EU and Foreign policy generally, constant overseas travelling, has resulted in a Prime Minister out of touch, insensitive and incapable of understanding the needs of British people. There is also a woeful absence of business/industrial experience within his cabinet. They are all products of the public sector and its institutions. There is now a huge lack of confidence and trust in this government within the country. Policy reversal equals failure, there is no way this administration can recover.
January 12, 2026
“End dear energy and extreme net zero policies that deindustrialise us
Restore drilling for oil and gas at home.”
Correct, Sir John. But we need to go much further. We need to end all net zero policies to ensure cheap, abundant and reliable energy. We need to not only drill for our own oil and gas but in the case of gas employ fracking on our mainland. We urgently need put in place sufficient energy storage. This means building oil storage and storing gas in our abundant salt caverns. Although around 50% of our gas is still from our own North Sea production, the next 30% comes from the petrostate, Norway, and this supply can no longer be considered to be secure with Russian vessels currently mapping our North Sea undersea pipes and cables and developing the underwater drone technology to blow up these connections. We need to develop SMRs, possibly locating them underground. One US company is already building underground micro nuclear reactors. There is no energy security when replying upon China for our renewable energy infrastructure and transition to electrification – turbines, solar panels, and all the metals and minerals and kit for evs, heat pumps, transformers, motors, generators and cabling etc.. And when the wind turbines and connecting cables covering vast expanses of the North Sea are undefendable by our depleted armed services. We need to return to coal as not only is coal cheap it is also easily and cheaply storable. Modern coal-fired power stations emit only CO2 and CO2 is not a pollutant but the gas of life.
January 12, 2026
All spot on, but with this bunch of incompetent clowns, there is no chance these changes will happen. They will all do the exact opposite, making things worse. After 18 miserable months, you would hope Labour would learn
from its mistakes. But looking at the lineup of potential new PMs, all of them seem to think we need more socialism, not less. Starmer is a disgrace as a PM and hates the UK and its people. His determination to force us to become subservient to, and eventually force us to rejoin, the EU, is the act of a traitor. Reeves could not run a household budget, let alone the UK economy. If she had an ounce of integrity, she would have resigned.
Meanwhile, they both allow Miliband to destroy the UK industrial base and push energy costs ever higher, in pursuit of a never-to-be-achieved goal of Net Zero! A bloated state is not that great!!!
January 12, 2026
Keep Turing and cancel Erasmus – then restore free speech etc etc
None of this makes any sense to me – the outside world is going into meltdown
January 13, 2026
I’d be happy if tory & labour started to repeal the EU laws …..but by keeping them, its easier for them to return us into the EU, maybe thats always been the plan
January 12, 2026
Stop attacking landlords and incentivising tenants and councils to behave badly. Why should a tenant have more “right” to live in a better home than a home owner has and why is it the landlord’s responsibility to provide it? Not ‘change’ so much as bull in a china shop.
January 12, 2026
Plagiarising and editing a speech made to day elsewhere, because it main core and thrust highlights the UK today.
“We can all see that our beautiful, ancient, kind, magical island story has reached a dark and dangerous chapter.”
“To anyone who wants to express an opinion on X or even just down the pub. To anyone who wants their children to be taught facts, not harmful fictions at school.”
“To anyone just trying to earn a living and not get crushed into the dirt by ever-growing taxes. You know in your heart of hearts that our wonderful country is sick.”
SJR in today’s diary, as others and the media generally do is suggesting it is just one man and his team that is causing the rot, decline and distress to the Country. I would suggest its the whole of Parliament those MPs we empower and pay to hold that shower to account is really at the root of all our woes – the majority of them support the UK turning into a Socialist/Marxist State
January 12, 2026
Hi sir john
If reform make your list their policy
We will return to being a great country again
But this government are destroying the uk beyond repair
the next government ( REFORM )
Will have some really bad desions to make and will get the blame for what the labour government have done
it will take years to put thing right
But the people will not have the patience to see it through
Thank you
January 13, 2026
‘a great country again’
– name me one country in history that ever became great without God?
The problem with the UK / the West is that we’ve ditched Christianity compared to the past. Compared to say Queen Elhzabeth, who although not a saint, still took her faith very seriously and ruled by it.
Bach said his music was only great because of God.
Cyrus the Great – one of the greatest leaders in history (in times of both war and peace) who was a hero of Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander the Great is described as anointed or holy in the Bible.
Reform’s claims to making UK great again are like Ozymandias when such claims are made with focus on The Christian God to ultimately bring this greatness (like God blessed Joseph of Egypt in the Old Testament)
January 13, 2026
Queen Elizabeth I meant (although Queen Elizabeth II was also a Christian monarch – in deeds not just nominally so).
January 13, 2026
And the opposite, in negative sense, to big claims of greatness without God who don’t believe in greatness at all but in mediocrity. Who have no ambition. And are WOKE / socialistic / without a sense of humour (like Labour / Lib Dems so often).
Humour. That’s another thing. In the old days, we had Dad’s Army, Jeeves and Wooster, Oscar Wilde and so on. People now so serious. And humour is essential in life.
January 12, 2026
Hear! Hear!
January 12, 2026
The news that NESO have finally admitted a slightly more realistic £4.5trillion cost of their Net Zero plans is surely an admission that their plan is unaffordable and infeasible.
I am presently travelling to London for the official launch of Kathryn Porter’s latest report on the parlous state of the grid and the lack of plan to keep it reliably functional. I hope meet with many others who can help work out a more sensible plan and the legislative reform needed to implement it.
There needs to be a cross party consensus on this to make change inevitable. Claire Coutinho has been doing a lot of thinking and campaigning (and is sponsoring the meeting). Malcolm Offord used to be her shadow minister in the Lords before he moved to be the Reform leader in Scotland, so there is hope he may inject the benefit into Reform’s policies. There have also been sensible contributions to debate from the SDP.
The task is to derail the Miliband plans by explaining just how uneconomic and damaging they are. The AR7 offshore wind round of CFDs are due to be announced on the 14th. But the cost will not just be the CFD strike price – it will be the cost of all the grid facilities required to connect them, the cost of grid stabilisation and backup, and the cost of curtailment on windy days.
January 12, 2026
The former tory Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi does u-turn to reform
January 12, 2026
“A government promising change has changed a lot.”
Yes, the direction of travel is now clear. We are now going to have a politicised police force, academia, civil service and judiciary using political internet blocking in the UK, cancellation of elections, scrapping of trial by jury, the imposition of digital ID, mass immigration, both illegal and legal of migrants with cultures completely alien to the indigenous population, give away treaties and net zero to sabotage our energy, economy and national security. A scorched earth policy to destroy the country is the plan for socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor.
January 12, 2026
Let’s have a U turn on Ukraine. No £3bn per year for up to 100 years, anx claw back the £22bn pledged in the last 3 years. Start trading with Russia again, if they are still willing.
January 12, 2026
Everything noted here today is well founded and clearly about structures and acts that are not required and a have nothing to do with anything, the logical conclusion these are just distraction to the requirements of running/managing a country. It would hard to rationalise that all members of Parliament don’t recognise that.
The point of distractions, the so-called ‘dead cat on the table’ is to deflect interest away from what the real story, the real objectives are, the importantly the ones that affect everyone.
Take the noise about banning ‘X’ on spurious grounds, then we have the State wanting to control the internet on 2 level, to block ‘free-speech’ and then to spy to control everyone. They are wanting to control thoughts. In doing so they are exposing the whole country, its people and its industry, by blocking basic use of sensible security arrangements that stop nefarious acts. Simply it is a Parliament, the State being the ones in fear, the fear of the people.
January 12, 2026
Ms Kendall in Parliament today wants to ban AI. Clearly she doesn’t understand it and hasn’t realised that who her ludicrous speeches are written by, along with the bulk of those in this UK Parliament.
We, the UK, needs Tilly Norwood as Technology Secretary or better still PM
January 12, 2026
Esther McVey says the Prime Minister is ‘just as unreliable abroad’ in today’s Express also adds to this conversation
“The Prime Minister’s ‘Keir today, gone tomorrow’ promises are making him just as unreliable and untrustworthy abroad as at home”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2156720/donald-trump-keir-starmer
January 12, 2026
Spot on. Please may I add the following:
– punitive business rates
– quarterly tax returns and Making Tax Difficult
– loss of homeowner rights with the Renters Rights Act. If the landlord needs to evict a tenant on the grounds that she/he wants to sell, if the sale falls through then the property has to be left empty for a whole year. If the landlord then attempts to get another tenant in they will be fined £25,000.