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
Ah yes Companies House, what an absolute fiasco it is to try and prove your identity and file an annual return now, spent hours and hours on site trying without success, even using their own talk through service failed four times, tried to download a photograph failed four times.
I did ask the operators if anyone else was having a problem, and the reply was absolutely, have you reported it to your management, answer yes many times.
Clearly this site is not user friendly, not logical, and simply not fit for purpose, all operators said sorry numerous times, and that their life would be a lot easier if the system was simplified.
What is it with Government computer systems that they are rarely user friendly.
The ones that are, are driving licence renewal, and passport renewal, everything else is a shambles especially HMRC.
Yes I got the same message as you JR being a Wokingham resident.
Oh for the return of pen and paper. oh perhaps not, think of the trees, and the coast of postage !
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
Yes, Baroness (so called) May.
What does she do apart from claiming her tax free £350 pounds+ per day ?
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
+1
August 20, 2026
@Wanderer – +1
August 20, 2026
Indeed it is!
August 20, 2026
even the NHS receptionists think we are underlings and must obey every bit of nonsense they come up with
August 20, 2026
@Wanderer – in a free Country, a Democracy you are monitored when there is in the first place suspicion of wrong doing. Humans the People are not corralled, monitored, spied upon without in the first place a suspicion of wrong doing.
Yes 1984 is the new Bible, no longer just a warning. These people that have risen to positions of ‘control’ need to maintain surveillance, control, keep fighting the people in case they are found out and it dawns on everyone that they have no other purpose.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
If 10% of the effort was put into monitoring our borders as is put into being a jobs-worth we would live in a far nicer place.
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
If someone dumps trash on your land they fine you or demand you pay to remove it quickly but do little or nothing about the real offenders. So much easier and more far profitable than going after the real criminals. Charge the non criminals fines, licensing fees, ULEZ, tyre in an empty bus lane, 23 mph fines etc.
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
A little tongue in cheek there, referencing the illegals, and those from EU voting in elections??
Well they shouldn’t be, and I’d add others to the list too such as those from the Commonwealth who are also allowed to vote but then have somewhere to go back to when it all goes wrong.
I wonder how many of those voted in Labour, but now see their policies affect their purse and have gone home leaving the rest of us with nowhere else to go to suffer the consequences.
As for the Trump administration efforts to remove illegals, well it’s never easy cleaning up other people’s mess is it?
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
Indeed all looks very over valued to me – especially the huge international high tech ones – but what do I know. Markets can often remain irrational for rather longer than you think – or if you are going long on some shares longer than perhaps you can remain solvent.
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.
August 20, 2026
Nick, unfortunately a lot of truth in your comments.
August 20, 2026
@Nick – the difference between democracies ‘government by the people for the people’ and the tyrannical dictatorships my ego and do as I say – the Norman Conquest that wasn’t fully shaken off ‘Lords & Serfs’
August 20, 2026
The opening line of A. J. P. Taylor’s famous book English History, 1914–1945 is: “Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.”
Can we get back to more like that please?
August 20, 2026
The UK is experiencing a record-breaking shift toward both clean heating and cleaner transport, with the upward trend continuing for both technologies, though they face very different paces and regulatory hurdles
The UK heat pump market reached a milestone of 250,000 certified lifetime installations. In 2025 alone, 125,037 heat pumps were sold, with around 52,000 of those being retrofitted into existing homes
There are now over 2.15 million fully electric (battery-electric) cars registered on UK roads (surpassing the 2 million milestone). If plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) are included, the total jumps to more than 3.3 million vehicles
The trend is up significantly. In mid-2026, electric car sales surged, with battery EV registrations jumping 44.5% year-on-year. Fully electric cars now represent roughly 30% of all new cars sold in the UK depending on the month.
Many people are worried about what happens to the price of fossil fuels when it rockets in the autumn, as global oil stocks run down and the Iranians keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. Now would be a good time to fix your price of energy for the coming winter
August 20, 2026
“Clean” = subsidised.
August 20, 2026
‘shift toward both clean heating and cleaner transport’ …..and the rest of the world is either not doing this or have stopped doing it
August 20, 2026
It’s a bit of Northcote Parkinson, officials finding ever more work for each other to do, to justify their positions and fill in their time.
This will get worse as Labour expands the Civil Service and all its bossy offshoots in Quangos, Councils and various committees.
August 20, 2026
I’m quite sure that the Lib Dem’s only exist to annoy people, just watch the antics of the clown Davy. Small minded people drunk on power.
August 20, 2026
@Barrie Emmett – it is sometimes forgotten the the ‘LimpDems’ are a faction of Socialist Labour that couldn’t get their own ‘personal’ way within that Party. The have no connection to the defunct sandal wearing Liberal Party
August 20, 2026
Politicians see themselves as our rulers rather than our servants. This is particularly noticeable with local politicians and is why Burnham’s drive for devolved powers is foolish. He’s no better himself of course , issuing decrees with no debate on what shops can and can’t sell.
August 20, 2026
Burnham today being interviewed on all news media said ”’if an immigrant breaks UK law they’ll be deported”’
August 20, 2026
Certainly no-reply emails should be made illegal from government, quango & large companies such as BT, EE etc. It should be law that a monitored email address is required.
August 20, 2026
+1
August 20, 2026
@Know-Dice – over time, the more that a ‘no-reply’ email gets reported and/or blocked as spam the mail systems start to register the offending email sending and their host as a spam agent. They then get blocked themselves by mail services.
Never ever unsubscribe from emails you don’t know or trust, that only confirms you are real
August 20, 2026
So many have grown terribly afraid of looking after themselves, probably because so many in Politics don’t know what it is to earn a real living.. they misunderstand the private sector and punish it due to fear. And all the while they control everything they can, terrified that free citizens will uncover the truth, that a real, unfettered human life needs to earn its daily bread.
August 20, 2026
more importantly I know multiple councils have used their electronic voters register to populate and automatically check their council tax bill customer file. strictly against the law, they know it, and the joke of an information commissioner knows it too. but not once have any of them been prosecuted. laws you see are just for the white working class not the state or other demographics.
August 20, 2026
JRM, in his early days as a high profile backbencher: “Politics should not be about making people’s lives difficult.” This applies just as much to local government and its elected members and apparatchiks as it does to the inhabitants of Westminster and Whitehall. Will they ever listen, or do they get some strange, twisted pleasure from finding fault and giving orders?
August 20, 2026
The self evolving superiority complex of the Public Sector continues at pace and is endorsed by Labour at every turn.
The aggressive anti car policies now ubiquitous across the country are a constant reminder of the degrading of the tax payers rights to unfettered life, with ever more petty restrictive rules and restrictions.
The tail is wagging the dog.
August 20, 2026
Three and four way traffic flows for road works are a particular bete noir of mine. It should be a required part of the tender/awarding process (if not just considerate behaviour from the contractors) to have sensors on the minor roads so that the lights only change to green for those routes if there is traffic there.
Access to the dump should be be proof of residence but ubiquitous and based on manual queuing systems. Anything else is surveillance or prevention. Much the same as different coloured bins. It is the councils’ responsibility to sort what they collect.
“I have had a good idea!” Oh dear, these people have bought us DEI and intervention in the name of doing good and efficiency.
August 20, 2026
If I had received an email like this I would have deleted it as a suspected scam. The authorities need to communicate with me via post.
I toy with the idea of setting up “paymail” e-mail service. Anyone trying to send you an e-mail has to pay 10p per e-mail, unless they are on your approved list where you have friends and family. Any e-mails from “donotreply” get a reply from a “donotreply” e-mail address. If it’s good for the goose…
August 20, 2026
+1
August 20, 2026
The libdems are a lost cause when it comes to common sense, but it is they that follow the net-0 map very closely to create LTNs and other obstructions to normal life. Time they went the way of the dodo – they are of as much use.
Our local Tory council is not quite so bad, when when you look at the rules that go along with the new rubbish collection system you find similarities to how the libdems and labour councils operate – I suspect that such rules were crafted by this government to make their confounded national scheme a success, even if only to raise more money in fines.
The onus is placed on taxpayers to do what councils demand so that recycling targets can be met. Now we must use extra water in washing out cans and plastic containers, while some people question what happens to different categories of rubbish. How do we know it doesn’t all end up in the same landfill.
In it’s wisdom HMG decided not to take rubbish collection and reuse into the current century, relying on us to be good citizens and do as we are told, while they have failed to create/use technology to separate collected waste into basic components that could be used more effectively to sustain our need for glass and paper etc.
But of course they wouldn’t be doing any of this if they didn’t have this desperate need to control everything we do, using alleged climate change as the excuse for their bullying behaviour.
August 20, 2026
Why do councils behave like this? Because they were told they could. The government used local councils as enforcers in the Covid crisis to ensure the public were ordered about, to do what the government wanted (or was made to want). It was local councils who enforced ‘social distancing’ and who managed ‘Track and Trace’, and all the other clap-trap. The Covid narrative was also used in May 2020 as cover for the government’s ‘Active travel’ agenda, which we are now seeing played out across the country, as local authorities restrict road space for motor traffic, in favour of occasional cyclists using a road. Yes, local councils do contain some pretty crazy ideologues, but very often they’re just acting to implement what the Westminster government wants… or is made to want.
August 20, 2026
@Hat man +99
August 20, 2026
Ah yes, the NON REPLY address.
Just like the website with no telephone number, or a proper location address.
I often wonder what they are trying to hide !
So bloody frustrating.
August 20, 2026
@Berkshire Alan
It’s not so hard to do to provide contact details – my Tory council does it all the time, whatever the subject. Sometimes they even tell us the name of a councillor in charge so we can contact them directly.
Someone actually replies to my emails when I request clarification or complain. They list contact details on their website.
So far they have imposed no LTNs, although we do now have miles of brand new unused cycle tracks funded by HMG when we actually need road improvements. I am a tad concerned though about how they have marked out boundaries for villages and so on – looks like early plans for 15 minute cities.
August 20, 2026
+1
August 20, 2026
We live in a ‘mummy’ state …..just wait till ’15-min cities agenda 2030′ kicks-in
August 20, 2026
@glen cullen – more correctly a ‘big brother’ state
August 20, 2026
‘Bossy and unpleasant’ that is not even half of the situation ‘you’ minions face. The site is run by Civica not Wokingham Council, Civica is a facility that collects data, personal data which is then ‘sold’
On there terms of service (truncated by me) – Civica may also obtain personal information indirectly from a variety of sources including:
Third parties, such as joint marketing partners and data brokers that share business contact information with us.
Advertising platforms provided by third-party social media companies. and so on…
It is the same with the Wokingham Council parking app – its is a data collection facility to sell in the first instance then a fee to park.
It’s all a sort of ‘click-bait’ war against the people, collect data, sell data, with very little being contributed to the service intended. These apps are provided to councils etc for next to nothing, with massive disproportionate rewards/earnings going to the app provider
All this is happening and announced in the Apps T&C’s, accept the purpose and to whom the data eventually goes too is obscured. It is always buried behind an entity called a ‘partner’, the partner has T&C’s and so on. Who gets to use the data and for what purpose the person whose data it is will never know
August 20, 2026
The whole ethos of public servants today is that the voters are there to serve them, rather than the other way round. Perhaps the Conservatives might consider making the reversal of this situation part of their manifesto, but our local council, when it was Conservative controlled, was no different to the current Lib. Dem. one, that is to say, just like yours!
August 20, 2026
Lord Redwood, in essence you appear to be suggesting the war waged by the UK Parliament, the Authorities has gone to far, we want our lives and our country back .
To even start on that trail we need our democracy, ‘government for the people by the people’, back . Democracy means what is says. The people are not the servants, minions, serfs, the fodder of the authorities, the people need to be allowed to vote for those that will serve them and the country, not fight them tooth and nail.
Its the reason the UK is declining fast, it has been high-jacked by egotistical idiots that keep the fight up to avoid being found out they are just frauds
August 20, 2026
I have noticed an increasing number of traffic lights, even in quite residential streets, for a minor repair that narrows the roadway no more than would a parked car, yet motorists are required to stop and wait on an empty road when they can easily see whether it is safe to pass. It is all part of the all encompassing H&S that stops us being responsible for our own actions.
August 20, 2026
I have experienced traffic lights on quiet residential roads…generally, I being the only car waiting, I give it a moment or two, then drive off! Like you it seems to me, entirely unnecessary.
August 20, 2026
It took the previous national administration from 2010 to 2024 to let the grass grow under its feet and do nothing about creeping bureaucracy.
Presumably the people that voted for our LibDem Council are delighted with the outcome and can bask in the light of their decision, while the people that failed to vote have only themselves to blame.
August 20, 2026
Our Council just let the grass grow, in the cause of nature excuse (and saving money) !
August 20, 2026
Go figure, EU Law and the Sovereign Parliament that has signed ‘A No Compete Clause’ with the EU
Farmers face a doubling of fertiliser prices when a EU net zero border tax is introduced in January.
Who does the UK Parliament and UK Authorities work for? All part of the fight against the people and the nation
August 20, 2026
A demonstration of ‘do what I say or else’
August 20, 2026
This process was exactly the same when the Conservatives were running Wokingham BC.
So what’s your point?
Reply I did not get emails like this. My point is this is bad treatment and a Waste of money
August 20, 2026
Totally agree the worst is HGE highway general enquiry. I loose the will to live with this raise a enquiry about a previous enquiry and so on. I have raised it with my local councillors and the leader they appear to see no problem. Council officers can do no wrong while they do a good job its possible to make mistakes. The question needs to be asked highways state we have delt with 2000 enquiries this month looks good on paper but how many are duplicate ? . All of councils reporting and consultation need to be simpler.
August 20, 2026
2000 eh? a lot of unhappy residents?
August 20, 2026
A year or so ago we had a family from Germany staying with. The father worked in recycling technology in Wokingham’s twin town, Erftstadt. He said how the various bins for different waste materials for recycling are put into separate compartments in the collection lorry. “Not here in Wokingham” I told him, “they all go into one.” “You must be mistaken” he said and when the collection was happening he and I watched as the paper and plastic and tins were all tipped into the same compartment. “This is crazy!” he said. I just shrugged my shoulders and felt a bit embarrassed.
August 20, 2026
David.
Remember when we had to separate different coloured glass bottles, no need to now ,they all go in the same bin marked mixed.
So we have made a little progress over 20 years.
In another 20 who knows ?
August 20, 2026
Harry and Meghan should be told to hop it am sick of listening to it – am sick of the whole royal thing.
August 20, 2026
Governance:not all that unpleasant if part of it.House of Lords.The latest stats for “SITTING” is 23/24 so probably not much changed.In session 102 days average session 6hrs and 15 mins.For “signing on” £371.
Earning:£37.842.Hours debating or just bums on benches 629.3 hrs.£60.33p per hour.Of course I’m assuming
the lords and ladies are there to help the “Commoners” to re-build our failing country
Reply Lords work includes Committees, meetings with interest groups, talking to Ministers, studying issues to draft amendments and speeches, explaining legislation and criticisms of Bills to various audiences and media, dealing with email correspondence etc
August 20, 2026
absolutely correct that SOME do and perhaps we may ask for a”House of Lords Ombudsperson” to weed
out the moneygrabbers.Keep the title but don’t sign in.
Co-incidentally the figures for the Commons is 145 days 7hrs and 15mins.£93.79 p/h.Why am I not surprised.
You’ve been around and involved for long enough to experience the underlying faults with both houses.
Who said a plague on both?
August 20, 2026
Sir John, I agree, but in your other posts you seem to think that more IT is the answer.
It really is not, as you find out when you come up against it, like in this episode.
It never works because it does not have the flexibility.