The other evening as I sat down to relax the following came up amidst my personal emails:
”You must take action so we can check who is eligible to register to vote at your address. Complete the steps below by 3 September 2026.
It takes just a few minutes online.
Visit the website
https://www.householdresponse.com/wokingham
Enter your unique security code
Part 1: supplied – where is pen and paper to record it?
Part 2: supplied
then your postcode
Update your household information and submit
Include the names and nationalities of everyone who lives at this address.
It is important you remember to add any eligible resident aged 16 or over (they will not be able to vote until they are 18).
If you add any new people they will also need to complete a registration application. They can do this at https://gov.uk/register-to-vote. We will send each person a form if they do not apply online.
Only one person from your household needs to respond.
We will send a reminder email next week then a letter containing this information before the end of September if no response is received.”
Etc Ed
This is typical of my local Lib Dem Council. Bossy, annoying, wasting money on things that do not need doing. First registrations of people should be thorough and based on evidence. Annual renewal should go back to being a process where you only need to respond if there are changes. This bossy email of course comes from a Do not reply address so you cannot get back at them with a response or feedback.
There are so many things now that require registration, confirmation, on line identity checks and the like. Taking rubbish to the local tip now requires overcoming digital hurdles before you dare drive to the dump. You need a slot and an electronic permit. Parking in a Council car park your taxes have bought needs downloading an app and supplying them with more data. Driving is a challenge with the revolving street closures, excessive potholes, roadworks, unused cycle lanes and permanent reductions in roadspace.
Yesterday the Lib Dem Council was wasting our money on a new torture for motorists to impede us driving to the shops. There was a three way traffic light to block one of the two carriageways of a main road into town for no stated reason. They managed this by having a needlessly long green phase for the side road with no traffic needing to exit. Theis held up 64 vans and cars that I counted on the main road whilst we were all awaiting a chance of a green light to squeeze through.
Law abiding tax paying hard working people now feel bombarded with demands and stultifying rules. The government local and national does not offer us friendly public service. It treats us as worker drones to pay its bills. It creates rules to milk more money from us in licence fees and fines for mistakes with compliance. It lectures and hectors us.
August 20, 2026
If you have businesses, are a landlord, have dealing with HMRC (making tax digital), companies house the dire new ID registration rules, the council… you are bombarded by endless treats and demands. If you join any trade associations or landlord association they further bombard you with reminders you must do this or that as this become a money earner for them in offering software, help lines, advice…
Then I get demands for the bank due to new government red tape for endless copies of passports, utility bills and the likes and an email one a week to say they have changed our contract agreement. Accept it or get lost.
I hear that the moronic BBQ mobile alarm – from this appalling government came first in Welsh if you were in Wales (as does some Companies House stuff). Only about 15% of people in wales speak decent Welsh and almost non of them speak it better than their English. So why political indoctrination I assume.
August 20, 2026
While agreeing with your comments, i would point out the obvious, it was only last May that the citizens of Wokingham voted in 29 controlling, nannying Lib/Dems. If the 19 Conservatives mirror those in the Commons, 60% will have lib/dem wet tendencies too. You get what your fellow citizens vote for. Solution, openly support Reform or move to the Cotswolds.
Reply No the Conservative Councillors do not have Lib Dem tendencies.
August 20, 2026
Countinho, some other chap Ed was it (?) and Kemi did an energy talk yesterday. Coutinho also on Mogg last night.
They are slowly coming round half way to reality, but still Kemi opens with “Climate Change is real” well of course Climate always has always changed and always will – but she means it in the sense that man made CO2 is causing a “climate emergency” when it is not. They seem finally to have grasped the vast extra grid costs and back up costs in switching to more so called “renewables”. If you switch to heat pumps and EV these become even more massive a totally idiotic agenda.
Coutinho drew a parallel with Ryan Air tickets being more expensive than you think due to extras but on Ryan air you can avoid all these extras – not so with the mad renewables agenda. Shifting from a hub and spoke grid to a mesh needed for the large number of renewable sources and for heat pumps will need a grid of circa 180 times the cost.
They still talk of clean energy (CO2 is not dirty Coutinho), and want more electrification as a general policy (why?) no answers when asked about fracking… at one point they apologised to the non specialist journalists but they were clearly not very specialist energy ministers.
The Tories are still on the fence on this. Even a doubling of CO2 plant tree and crop food is not a problem and indeed on balance it is surely a net good. Plus nothing the UK does will chance CO2 in reality anyway. Time to grow up and Kick Net Zero Barroness May and her types out of the Party for her appalling Brexit, modern slavery and Net Zero vandalism and face reality.
Reply No, not on the fence. A clear cheap energy policy using our own oil and gas where possible. Baroness May has no influence over the Shadow Cabinet and does not come to the meetings about energy policy.
August 20, 2026
It’s very good of you to highlight this issue, and push back on it.
You ask, “why”? Government is bossy and unpleasant for various reasons, ultimately due to the mindset of the people who comprise it.
The biggest issue is that they do not see themselves as servants of the public. They see themselves as rulers, rule makers and rule enforcers. From the PM to the lowliest Council officer, individual and institutional power along with personal character and corporate mindset lead to the extension of their control over, and interferene in, our lives.
This is why AI so concerns me. It is the perfect technology for the interfering, authoritarian technocrat. Combined with such things as a CBDC, digital ID, drones and CCTV in public and private spaces (e.g cars, where a form of it is being mandated) it’s a bureaucrat/autocrat’s dream technology.
August 20, 2026
Why is government so bossy and unpleasant?
That is what governments usually do they do not serve the people or respond to voters (other than by lying before elections), they demand money and action off the public with menaces and want to suppress free speech at every turn. We live in the UK and elsewhere in an Anarcho-tyranny. A political concept describing a system where the government fails to enforce basic laws, control borders and care about public safety against real criminals (anarchy), while simultaneously using heavy-handed, oppressive power and red tape to tax, regulate and punish ordinary, law-abiding citizens (tyranny).
August 20, 2026
There are far too many expensive jobsworths employed by councils and not enough cheap AI robots. Because of the universal tendency for managers to indulge in office empire building, the jobsworths need to be tasked. Otherwise they sit around all day WFH while drinking tea, taking the dog for a walk, doing the cleaning etc.
So work must be found for them. Checking the electoral rolls are a good idea. The last thing we need is asylum seekers, boat people, illegal immigrants, people from the EU who have lived here for 15 years etc getting to vote in our elections. They might vote against their Reform candidates.
There are so many illegals voting in American elections, the United States Department of Homeland Security spent $115.3 billion in fiscal year 2025 trying to catch them with approximately 260,000 to 270,000 personnel.
After the 2024 presidential election 41 people were federally charged nationwide for illegally voting or committing other election-related crimes. Thank goodness Trump has got this under control in time for the November mid-terms, which he has already declared to be null and void because of electoral fraud
August 20, 2026
Two weeks after publishing its buyback schedule for the quarter, the US Treasury said Wednesday it is “increasing, by at least double, the size of liquidity support buyback operations” for securities dated from the 10-year to the 30-year sector.
The bond market read it as intervention. Thirty-year yields fell as much as 10 basis points to 5.18%, backing away from their highest level since 2007. Ten-year yields dropped six basis points to 4.65%.
The front of the curve went the other way. Three-month, six-month and two-year yields all rose on the session. The debt didn’t get cheaper. The curve changed shape.
The US Dollar Index dropped between 0.72% and 0.88% yesterday, sliding to its lowest level since mid-May. As is usual when governments start printing money, gold bullion rose by ~4% to $4,524.50/oz, clearing a congestion zone it has been in all summer.
This site does not give financial advice. Earlier this year the Bank of England did, warning of excessive global debt levels and high stock market valuations. September is crash season. Caveat emptor.
August 20, 2026
In some countries government owns the people, in others the people own government. We used to be the latter; famously the only contact most had with the state was when they visited the post office.
Now the state is ubiquitous. It gladly takes on any task we pay it to do, and that it does it badly or not at all is apparently no concern of ours. Enserfed with our own taxes, I fear we have joined the nations where government owns the people.