In 1984 we had the start of the Miners strike, for those who remember that period it began with the three day week and threats of blackouts and ten years later the news was filled with flying pickets and pitched battles between the miners and the police. The National Union of Mineworkers took to the picket lines in response to the closure of a number of mines and at its peak 170,000 or so miners were involved.

But with changes in the demand for coal and the privatisation of coal mines they have vanished, to be replaced by imported coal or by North Sea gas. The last deep coal mine in the UK closed last year and the NUM, as of 2014 listed little more than a 1,000 members.

The powerful union that made governments tremble was gone.
 

Look back to the point where British Steel was a massive industry, before cheap overseas imports, high energy costs and automation and you would have seen over 300,000 people directly working in the industry. This was the 1970s.

By 1990 this had dropped below 50,000 as smaller plants closed and many jobs were lost to streamlining and technological progress. Now it’s 18,000 people.
In 1990 British Steel was a massive 0.5% of the UKs entire GDP. Now it’s under 0.1% and doesn’t even show on most charts. The high quality British steel made up a smaller and smaller part of the economy and imports from both other EU countries and from China pushed it aside. UK production was simply more expensive when you factored in energy costs, the various pollution charges and the fact that most customers were happy to buy cheaper, lower quality steel.

The Steelworkers Union has had to merge with other manufacturing unions and a wide range of other industries to survive, it is now called Community and is simply one of dozens of trades that Union represents.

If Tata closes down the steel plants there are reports that as many as 15,00 direct job losses and another 25,000 jobs in the many support industries will go leaving the once mighty British Steel workers about as powerful a union as the NUM.
 

The junior Doctors have, for many months, been complaining about the way they have been treated by the Government but this is just one part of the overall damage the NHS is suffering. In a handful of years hospital trusts that were breaking even of making a small profit suddenly found themselves making loss after loss, staff numbers fell forcing them to use more expensive agency staff, targets were missed which led to fines which made the losses higher. There are constant rumours and reports of steady privatisation of the NHS and the struggle of the Junior doctors has become an integral part of that.

Between them the BMA and the RCN represent most of the NHS staff in the UK and by speaking with a single voice (mostly) they are able to put their case and push for a better deal because they are significant power blocks. The public certainly seem to be supporting the junior doctors and the NHS, I doubt there are many families in the UK who haven’t had a family member treated by the NHS and the only place they are being criticised is the generally right wing / pro Tory media.

But as more and more hospitals become privately run and the staff have no choice but to sign up to contracts with a multitude of employers the unity they once had will be gone, there will be no single contract to negotiate and no single employer to deal with. Instead they will be faced with hundreds of separate contracts, thousands of different terms and conditions and the BMA will find itself torn apart.

A once powerful union will be chopped into little bits as the NHS is chopped into little bits and after that the government will have nothing to fear from them.
 

Schools that become Academies will no longer be responsible to local councils or any government central body. Instead they will be owned and run by a whole series of private sector companies running as charities (but there are plenty of ways to make money like that, look at Perry Beeches or Parklands High School), the teachers will be negotiating contracts and terms with the company / charity that runs each individual school.

The teachers unions will be unable to represent all of their members except by dealing with every single local situation since there is no one body they can go to try and make deals with. Instead they will find themselves chopped into many little, local groups who will invariably end up standing alone against whatever contract their new employers force on them.

Which isn’t to say all academies will be bad, some will, I’m sure, be beacons of good education and fair deals but given my cynicism I’m sure that more than a few will toss education away in pursuit of profit and we will have nothing but our current government to keep them in check.

So another of the big, militant unions will be gone.
 

Miners, Steelworkers, BMA, NUT. There aren’t that many of the big, powerful unions from Maggie’s day left once they are gone, and when you throw in the attacks on the trade unions in total with new legislation, well, it’s probably time to remember those little details like the weekend, contracts, working hours restrictions and the like.

I don’t see the steel workers being saved unless a private sector company steps in, it will be retraining and some half hearted promises from the government but to me British Steel is going the way of British coal and then it will be turn of the NHS and education.
 

The last of the once or currently nationalised public sector will be gone the way of the railways and electricity. Will that herald a better world of companies competing with each other to produce the highest quality services and the lowest prices to attract customers or will it lead to maximum profit and the customers treated worse than cattle?
 


 
If you're having trouble with that question, take a train journey across the UK.

Between several projects, transcribing some really horrible scans of old printouts and life I've been slacking on posts here again after I said I would try to post more often, for this I apologize but I think the big stuff recently has been fairly well covered.


Anyway, something not about Politics, the Tory Government being cruel to the poor or disabled, or various nations creating massive markets for the defence industry by starting wars everywhere.


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Well well. It has been an interesting week so far and it’s only Saturday.
 
We’ve had the government ram through the ESA cuts by using parliamentary procedure to prevent the Lords blocking it a third time, we’ve had changes to working tax credits sneaked through late in a sitting, without debate, then we had Osborne’s budget and what a mess that was hidden behind the dead cat of the tax on sugar drinks.

Then last night we had the latest front page news, IDS quit.

 
Millions across the nation cheered.

 
I’m not going to cover every complexity of the political in fighting over the budget and the EU referendum, you would be falling asleep before you go halfway through the massive post but the situation is complex and confused. The Tory party is basically in three parts, the openly Pro EU, the openly anti EU and those who are either hiding their views or don’t have a strong opinion.

Osborne is one of the strongly pro EU, IDS is one of the strongly anti EU.
 
How does that relate to IDS resigning over the budget and cuts to benefit payment?

Well at the risk of being called hateful and an idiot by someone else on Facebook who disagrees with me (Yes, shocking but there are people on line who disagree with me, some of them argue and articulate, some of them just use insults. It’s the internet), it has everything to do with the resignation where as the benefit cuts have very little to do with it.

 
This has a strong smell about it, sinking ships and rats heading for the lifeboat.


IDS has overseen six years of crushing cuts and attacks on those who should have been protected by his department. Not so much as a hesitation before now. He has defended the actions of his department, or hidden them and used the courts to protect them.

When challenged in a way he couldn’t ignore such as in the house he just sent a poorly briefed lackey who refused to give straight answers in his stead. A few people have charitable said the IDS meant well and intended to enact fair reforms, he just didn’t understand the way to do it. Most people I know are of the opinion that he is a hatchet man fronting Osborne’s massive wealth transfer (also called Austerity) by slashing support for the most vulnerable.

IDS has hardly given anyone the idea that he gives a damn about the mixture of cruelty and incompetence that is the hallmark of the DWP under his six year rule.


So what is different I ask myself, why now and not before?


Is it that he has suddenly had some sort of Christmas carol discovery and become a nicer person? Did someone buy his soul from the devil and release it? Did he check behind the sofa and find his conscience?

None of the above I would say. This is politics, purely and simply looking out for himself first and always. Cameron is going, within months or by the end of the year, no point hanging onto those coat tails. As for Osborne, no one who is on Team Osborne is going to survive this. That last budget was too blatant, too obvious. The back benches are doing more than just the usual muttering, the name and shame campaign highlighting those who voted to cut ESA while at the same time grabbing every penny they could in expenses seems to have the rank and file worried.

Charities sacking MPs who had places on boards or who acted as representatives, well for a politician who is mostly or completely dependent on marketing and PR to get re-elected, having a host of charities turn against you isn’t a good thing.

And it’s all come to the surface with Osborne’s budget.

 
I have long been of the view that IDS was there to be seen as the thug fronting the government and there to take the blame for the suffering and the deaths that can be directly laid at the feet of the DWP and the government policies that the Department of Workless Persecution enacts.

A year ago I was thinking he was the sacrificial goat, to be thrown under the bus mid parliament when Cameron is replaced by the new leader, a widely hated figure who can take the blame and allow the new leader to build a new cabinet that doesn’t have the baggage of the last seven or eight years (at that point) of Tory rule.

This would have worked as long as IDS was more hated that the other senior figures who would then gain credit for sacking him, the same case as we see with Hunt and Gove, publicly they are seen as responsible for the actions of their departments and as such they are widely hated, taking the blame for what is a Tory policy rather than a specific departmental policy.

Anyway something happened this week and that something was Osborne suddenly became vulnerable. The media and the nation at large took a look at his budget and started asking questions and even the HUGE smoke screen of the tax of fizzy drinks couldn’t hide the rest for long.

Oh in case anyone missed it, that’s exactly why the fizzy drink tax was included at the last minute, it won’t do no more than a token amount to help with childhood obesity but it’s such a big thing that it was easy for the government friendly media to blow it up and everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. Front pages and TV debates have all been about FIZZY DRINK TAX.

But that wasn’t enough and the underlying anger broke past the smoke screen and suddenly Osborne was the guilty party, it was his budget, his policies, everywhere you looked MPs were pointing the finger at Osborne.
 

So this is why I think Mr S Goat acted now, because he can shift much of the blame for his actions onto someone who has suddenly become an even bigger villain,  his letter made that fairly clear.

So suddenly it's all Osborne's fault, Gideon made me do it, I never liked hurting people, I was just following orders. The backbenchers seem to have suddenly noticed that lynch mobs or unemployment are in the future and IDS is just being more public about distancing himself from the soon to be ex chancellor.

Instead IDS has shunted the blame onto Osborne and run for it, leaving the whole stinking mess behind him as he goes. Such a senior figure openly blaming Osborne for the cuts and the cruelty is a serious blow for both Osborne, Cameron AND for the pro EU group.

Yes, I did say a blow against the Pro EU group, Osborne is very Pro EU, he even used his budget of all things to preach the pro EU agenda and make a few veiled threats about what would happen if the UK left. But now, who is going to want to be part of team Osborne, who is going to be supporting a pro EU campaign that has suddenly been linked to taking money from the disabled and giving it to those on £40k + in tax breaks, people in wheel chairs going hungry to pay for handouts for the wealthy. Osborne represents both and by his presence links both even though there is no such correlation.

But when people are angry they don’t think about clear distinctions, it’s easy to lead the mob to think Osborne and the EU are the same thing.

 
I expect IDS is going to be throwing himself fully into the anti EU campaign fairly quickly, working with the other Tories who are part of the leave campaign and re-establishing his credentials as a Tory Leader.

Oh and get into the good books of the next leader whoever that will be, either by working with them in the leave campaign, or if the UK votes to stay and Boris isn’t the next leader then being in a strong position with a solid block of MPs behind him to get back onto the cabinet or a senior position again.
 
Very little of this affair is to do with benefit cuts IDS has known about for weeks or months and everything to do with politics and looking out for himself.


I suspect Osborne is going under the bus simply to save the government and no one wants to be anywhere near him when the 'Accident' happens. Too many people now blaming him directly and too few (that matter) supporting him. Widely known and respected economic organisations and experts are openly questioning Osborne's economic policies, even the economy is in on the act by doing worse that Osborne promises.


So it's time to quit, plead innocence, jump on the Brexit campaign full time to look good to the back benches and butter up the party for a cabinet seat under the next leader.


Of course I could be me being cynical as usual but it has a smell about it.

 
 
 
Sinking ships and rats.

Over the last few years I have covered this subject a number of times, the likely impact of rapid automation on jobs and society at large. Other voices have been raised on the same subject, warnings from far more important figures, and a few that may be a bit smarter than me.
 
Suddenly this weekend it’s as if the media have noticed what has been said for so long, either that or it’s just another attempt to distract people from yet another bad government policy, it happens so often it’s hard to spot these days, they all sort of blur together, the bad news and the cover ups.
 
Anyway it’s about time this started getting looked at rather than just being dismissed as a few nutcases spreading silly stories.


There are massive problems with the rapid pace of technology being developed specifically to replace humans in jobs, widespread unemployment being one, a further concentration of wealth in the hands of those rich enough to own the robots another.


For those who point to history and mock the loss of jobs. Yes, historically technology made large numbers of people and jobs redundant, the Victorian industrial revolution for one. But in each case after periods of difficulty people migrated into new industries that were creating jobs, mostly by relocating to the cities. Decades or generations went by between the jumps in technology that made the farm workers redundant or cut the mill workers jobs. Even so there were years of local hardship as those who had lost their jobs struggled to adapt and find work elsewhere.

This is not the case today nor will it be the case in the future. Technology is advancing at such a pace that automation is quicker than retraining those made unemployed by automation at their last job. Manufacturing, the service sector, all are looking at high levels of automation. Those factory workers replaced by machines will find the call centre jobs gone to a Turing emulator long before they can get through the three month interview stage.
 
Outside of the craft industry which is mostly a cottage level and dependant on people with the right skills working in small workshops or from home manufacturing is going the way of the dodo. Raw materials dug up by robots, shipped on drone trucks to companies that will make parts in automated facilities then shipped in robot drones to automatic assembly plants where yet more robots turn them into cars. Outside of very specific areas where handmade and crafted brings in a premium and in a limited number of creative areas few jobs are safe from the rapid pace of automation.

As a society the west places high values on workers for their ability to work and not for what they are as human beings, the political catch phrase 'Hard Working' is used in every other sentence by our leaders and this attitude is deeply set within out political culture.
So when people cease to be ‘Hard Working employees’ and instead become economically inactive, suddenly their entire worth to society vanishes, they are ignored or actively attacked by our leaders. Almost as if a person is of value only while they are a cog in the corporate machine.
 
This is the attitude that will condemn millions not just to poverty, many workers are there already, but to humiliation, and the cruel treatment that is a daily event for those at the mercy of our government and departments of the same such as the department of workless persecution.
 
Those unable to work due to illness or disability have been in the news a great deal recently, people who need help from the state instead being dealt harsh blows, the £30 cut in ESA, the removable of Personal independence payments, tens of thousands of disabled cars taken away from those with no other way to get about. This is the way that the most needy are treated by our society under the guidance of our Tory government.
 
The disabled can’t work and so they are treated like this because only the ability to work seems to be valued in our world. But what is the difference between someone who cannot work because they are disabled or too ill and someone who has no job to apply for because everything within range has been automated? Even that staple of teenage job seekers, the burger place, have been experimenting with automation rather than give out pay rises.
 
Anyone think it will remain small scale or restricted to the US when it is proved to cut costs by sacking staff?
 
Without a massive and I mean MASSIVE change in the attitudes of our political and corporate leaders, mass automation and replacement of humans with robots will be a disaster for two thirds of the population and ten years from now current levels of poverty will seem like the golden age.
 
 
Then we have the ever accelerating wealth transfer, the overriding desire by corporations to cut costs and increase profits and by the rich to get ever richer. This money comes from those who are not rich and as jobs are lost to automation the amount of money in movement across the whole of our society falls steadily.

With austerity at its current levels and yet more cuts expected to pay for those tax cuts to the already wealthy in next week’s budget a huge number of people are effectively out of the economy.

Subsistence level income going toward a limited number of must pay costs with little left for the extras like consumer goods. After rent, rates, utility bills, food and clothing there are millions of people left with not much.
 
Certainly not enough to be out shopping for all those items they would like but don’t need. Which isn’t good news for the people making and selling those items. Which is the point, the more wealth is concentrated the less it moves around, people with some money spend it because they need to eat and cloth themselves and pay bills, the money is in circulation. When they lose their jobs they stop spending money, the corporation that sacks them may make an extra billion a year in profit but who exactly is buying what the corporation sells?
 
 
There are now quotes and calculations circulating that over the next few years US companies could cut $9 Trillion in Labour costs (wages), for every corporation focused on nothing but the profit margin that is a fantastic figure, huge profits all round, pop the champagne. But what they and our leaders fail to look at is that much of that $9 trillion is wages that will then be spent back into the economy. Who is going to buy the things you make or the services you provide if most of your population have no money to spend.

The every richer tiny percent of the population aren't going to buy the millions of items in the shops or the hundreds of thousands of new cars or use the services of all of those support companies.
 

Automation, robotics and the use of Turing emulators could help everyone by giving them more free time and a better, more rewarding life. But to achieve that we need a huge about turn in our attitude towards work and working, something I don't see as likely given our current political leadership and the corporate and market driven headlong charge for profits.
 
 


 
 
The future could be bright but only if we don’t let our current corporate and political masters control it.

From time to time I have posted blogs about the struggles I face with the Department of Workless Persecution and the stress that comes from being at the mercy of an organisation that seems to go out of its way to be tyrannical and oppressive.

This morning we came to round 76 of the battle.

 
Over the last few years my back has been causing me a lot of problems, the results of an injury in 2008 coming back to haunt me. This has meant I can’t do any prolonged standing or walking and no lifting heavy stuff, something that the Jobcentre seems not to understand since they tried to sanction me for not applying for a standing and heavy lifting job not so long ago.

Things got so bad that I went to a Physiotherapist and then started twice weekly physio sessions before Christmas. At the same time I reported this to the Jobcentre and was told that I should get a GP’s note and they would log me as being ill and not hassle me to attend jobs I couldn’t do.

This ran until 15th February at which point since I was and am looking at six months to a year of physio I got a second GPs note to explain my ongoing situation.

On Feb 22nd I went into the Jobcentre and sat down with one of the advisers, we talked through what was going on and I was told that I couldn’t claim any more sick time on JSA and that the best thing would be to switch to ESA, this wouldn’t stop me trying to find a job I could do but would stop the Jobcentre sending me on a work placement (which they were about to do) where they would not and could not guarantee it would be a position that I could medically do.

The very fact that they would try and force me into a work placement with a private sector company but were unable to say if it was something that I could physically do under threat of sanction if I refused says a lot about how twisted and cruel the whole system is.

Anyway the Jobcentre have been pressuring me to switch to ESA for some time, I’ve been reluctant to do so, in part because I don’t want to admit I’m that bad, but we reached the point where they gave me no choice. So since I had the GPs notes and reports of my medical condition I left the Jobcentre and walked to a phone booth to call the ESA line (the Jobcentre no longer having any phones customers can use)

20 minutes of standing in a phone booth in agony later (try bending to relieve back pain in something as small as a phone booth) and I was heading home to wait for the ESA to call me back (which was nice of a young man called Michael at the ESA).

So forms all filled in, then it was wait till everything came through which it did the following week, checked, signed and on the way back, originals of all medical evidence sent and more waiting to see when they would start me on ESA, there was some worry because the GPs note was dated 15th but wasn’t ready for me till the 22nd so there could be a missing week or two.
It turned out the ESA was started from the 15th and they will be back paying from that time. Overall the people at the ESA team have been helpful.

But the JSA was listed as having ended on the 11th which was the end of the last two week period, the missing days between then and the 15th had vanished so I checked at the Jobcentre after I got out of hospital yesterday. I explained the problem and was promised a call this morning which I dully waited for.

Phone rings and it’s a lady from the ESA team, explaining that the ESA started from the date of the GPs evidence and not seeing where the problem is, I explained to her that it isn’t an ESA problem but a JSA one so she checks my records and informs me that according to the Jobcentre my claim for JSA was, in fact, stopped on 14th JANUARY and they were listing the payments after that as recoverable overcharge ! ! ! !

I didn’t swear, I was polite, it wasn’t her fault. I didn’t shout or anything but my pulse must have gone up 10 or 15 points.

I talked to her about the coverage of the GPs notes, the medical evidence and the dates, she said the Jobcentre must have made a mistake and that with all the evidence I shouldn’t worry but she would alert them and get someone to call me.

Which they duly did, very sorry, can see all your evidence here, mistake at our end, we’ll write off the overcharge and pay you the missing days.

The man was on the phone, explained everything and vanished like a shot.

 
Now this was over the course of an hour this morning, but this was yet another period where I am sitting there, stressed out and chain drinking coffee while the DWP and the jobcentre plays god with my life.

As it turned out, because I had all the documentation and had sent every piece of data to the jobcentre (AND KEPT COPIES) the whole problem vanished, just like the two recent attempts to sanction me on ridiculous or spurious grounds, where I had the evidence to defend myself.
 

It makes me wonder, when this happens to me, just how many other people are treated like this, how many people aren’t able or prepared to fight back and defend themselves against this system. How many people would not have the paperwork or kept copies and so been unable to defend themselves when the Jobcentre comes after them for a month’s money it decided was an overpayment.

Can the DWP be this incompetent by accident, or is this simply another way in which IDS and his empire of cruelty seek to attack people who have no other recourse than to go to the state for help?
 



 
I know what I think !

Just after winning the 2015 election and becoming the majority party, which meant they didn’t need a coalition with the Lib Dems (who had been decimated anyway) the Tories announced that they would undertake a review and balancing of the electoral boundaries which would reduce the number of MPs to 600.

Given that it was the Tories saying this I expected neither balanced or fair and evidence since then has showed that my fears seem justified. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean the Tories aren’t out to get us.

In a series of steps the Tories have clearly been trying to create a single party system that would keep them in power for the foreseeable future.

 
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”

 
I’ve seen a number of analyses of the proposed Tory manipulation of the electoral boundaries and the number of extra Tory MPs is generally around 20. That’s 20 more Tory MPs out of a smaller house.
In addition the reports are that the review will be based on the December 2015 census, remember that one, where hundreds of thousands of people including large numbers of students living away from home found themselves removed from the lists without being told.

That December 2015 census.

By basing any electoral boundary changes on that census the Tories would lock out hundreds of thousands or perhaps several million voters and make their votes all but meaningless due to the way that the first past the post system works.

How would they do this, well they have the previous census and the, ahem, amended census so they have a good idea where the Tory voters are and where the labour voters are. By moving the boundaries they can shuffle large numbers of  Labour voters that no longer show on the electoral register into areas that already vote Labour, if the Tories know that an area has 10,000 registered voters and goes heavily Labour but after the 2015 census now only shows 5,000 voters they could include that entire area as part of an MPs domain that is already likely to vote labour. If at some later point all of those misplaced voters re-register, well it’s too late, they are now locked into that district until the next boundary review which could be 15-20 years away.

Under first past the post a region that provides 100,000 votes for Labour returns one MP, an area that votes 55,000 Tory and 45,000 returns one MP. So by moving enough possible Labour voters from contested areas into solid Labour areas they can create a number of seats completely Labour and a much larger number of majority Tory voting areas.

Number of votes don’t count, only that an electoral district has more votes for one party than another. Without proportional representation our system is very vulnerable to boundary manipulation and every party has dabbled in this but the current Tory government are likely to be the worst.

 
“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”

 
But this isn’t the only move the Tories have made to weaken every other political party. We have the parliamentary ‘Short Money’, a payment made to all parties in parliament who are not in government, to cover the costs of MPs offices and staff and to enable the parties to function as an effective opposition.

What Osborne is pushing through is a 19% cut in the Short Money, in terms of the overall UK budget the Short Money isn’t much, less than £10 million a year at present so about as much money as the big multinationals avoid in tax each half hour. But 19%, while hardly a drip in the swimming pool of the UKs budget is a big chunk out of the payments that opposition MPs use to run their offices.
Note that this isn’t expenses money, that’s a different scandal. This is a payment, by the Treasury, to help fund a viable opposition and prevent a monopoly of power in parliament.

Labour as the largest opposition party get the largest part of the Short Money, this cut would reduce the money they have to pay for MPs offices and official activities by over a million pounds, money that they will have to find from other sources OR they will have to cut back on official activities or close MPs offices.

Either way the Tories with a host of rich donors aren’t going to be affected whereas the opposition parties who tend to lack old school friends with multi million pound bank accounts will have to tighten their belts.

 
Now add the reports recently of Tory fraud with regard to how much they were spending bringing in senior figures to by elections and the general election, significantly exceeding spending limits in a number of places with hotel bills and the like. The by elections were over a year ago and so the statute of limitations has passed but the general election is still inside that one year window. Though if anyone believes there will be a serious investigation into Tory election fraud I have a bridge to sell you, nice view of the Thames.

What effect this had on the 2015 election is difficult to determine but it’s likely to have had some sort of effect, parachuting in Tory big names to get the voters out may have swung the numbers by a few thousand, problem is there were several Tory MPs who won by several thousand votes.

 
If these three are allowed to happen they will have a big impact on the 2020 elections, the electoral boundary change on its own will mean that Labour will find the system stacked against them before a single vote is cast and the Tories will have the election to lose. Cuts to funding and spending more than is allowed per district will add to an already unbalanced contest and make it far more likely we will return a Tory majority again and again.

Unfortunately we have enough people in the UK who fear a Labour government so much that they prepared to put up with a Tory one, despite the fact that most Tory voters are suffering along with the rest of us. By changing the electoral boundaries the Tories can ensure that roughly the same number of votes in 2020 will return them with a majority of 30 or so MPs and even if they lose a million voters due to Tory Austerity and cruelty they can still win a majority.

The clearest indicator of just how unbalanced the electoral boundary changes are will come when the total Tory vote is less than the total Labour vote but the Tories return more MPs. A crazy situation but that's first past the post when it’s been engineered to return a Tory government no matter what.
 
 
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face.

Forever.”