I have just spent a couple of days South of the Border visiting a few friends.

Normally Politics is a no-go area but this time it was different, they all wanted to say something and of course I obliged!

To say services are bad is an understatement, they are dire, in particular, Health and Education.

In the city, the availability of being able to see a Doctor is almost zero and if you need elective surgery your only hope is to agree to go anywhere in the country.

If your child has Mental Health problems your up a river with no paddle! Even if that child has tried to commit suicide and has other health problems. For any treatment to begin you must have a diagnosis, you will wait months in some cases years for that. My friend had to go private to have her grandson seen by anyone.

To add to the problem, the local Health Authority has spent millions building a new Health Center, it is absolutely huge almost like a small hospital. Within it they will bring all the cities Doctors, together and have a number of specialised clinics. Sounds great, but here’s the rub, it’s not on a bus route and the bus companies say they are not going to start one due to narrow roads in that Industrial Estate which incidentally is situated on the outer edge of one side of the large city…….not central!

Which in itself is not very helpful if you are elderly or have no transport!

Planning……what planning?

With regards to Education, if your child is not of average intelligence or has any kind of medical or mental health problem they are stuck at the back of the class and forgotten, and I mean forgotten to the point that even their teachers only know them by a name on a register but not personally!

Guess what, I am talking about a City which is Tory!

If people don’t start speaking with their FEET there will soon be no services left.

We in Scotland are marginally better off, but if Sunak starts interfering with our finances then we too will be down that river with our neighbours.

Never in my whole life would I have expected the Tories to decimate the country in this way.

They may look after their own in Westminster but that does transfer to the country or even their own constituencies.

Lest anyone has forgotten we still hold the Chair of COP and he should be there to officially hand over.

What does this say to the rest of the World?

We don’t care anymore, it’s no longer a priority and I’m not letting The King come either!

The policy now seems to be to get and use all the fossil fuels we can and to hang with it!

We will pay for this recklessness through adverse weather systems and loss of life.

The cost of this recklessness will be more than the cost of the Climate policies. The policies we are making today are being made because of the disastrous economic decisions made over the last year or so, not to mention the vast amounts of cash wasted and lost through COVID still not recovered.

This is reactionary politics. The kind of decisions made in panic mode.

Word is that we are to be hit with enormous tax rises and cuts. In other words, we will be paying for their mistakes for many years to come.

For those of us in the twilight of our years that means austerity until we die!

Not a lot to look forward to then!

Change of topic!

When it comes to education we don’t always get our priorities right. Over the past few years, the benchmark of success by any government has been to raise the numbers of pupils getting into University above all else.

Yes, it was important to make the path easier for those from different communities to enter that level of education.

Yes we need the degrees and the brains that go along with all of the high-level occupations, but you don’t need a degree to work in a supermarket or Just Eat where unfortunately so many ex-students with degrees end up.

This country has become a low-productivity country because we have lost the technical skills we once had and need desperately to regain.

Today I read about a young man who desperately wanted to be a cabinet maker but was pushed into University by his family and teachers, today, with degrees he works in a supermarket! So many years lost, so much pressure, so much unhappiness. Getting a degree does not always put you up the social ladder if that was the motive for it.

What our country needs is people who can not only use their brains but also their hands. The makers, the fixers.

2 yrs ago I bought a well known make of lift away Hoover, the other week the brushes stopped working, I know what the problem is, but here’s the thing I can’t get in to fix it and what’s even more disturbing is, there is no one in Glasgow can fix it either!

We have become a thow away society, if it’s broke chuck it!

It is Technical skills that keep a country moving, it is cooking skills that keep a country eating, it is farming skills that produce the food we eat.

Cheap imports made in sweatshops do not enrich our country.

Many small towns in Scotland have become but a shadow of their former selves because cheap imports have replaced the finest of materials.

Materials that lasted years, not months!

This country has the ability to become self sufficient but lacks the political will not because there are no profits in such goods but because the profits are not high enough for investors.

It is corporate greed that has destroyed this country, not the workers, the grafters who kept it going.

The difference between levels of skills does not equate to the number of brain cells but how you choose to apply them. A mechanic is as gifted as someone who works on the floor of the Stock Exchange they just use their gifts differently.

Each to their own but it should never be seen as one class above the other!

The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.

First mistake and it’s a huge one!

Today the new PM spoke about integrity, sadly that word can not be used in the same sentence as Suella, or is it Cruella Braverman. Because she is the most cruel, heartless person on this planet.

Apparently, she dreams of sending people on a plane to Rwanda.

Another strange one is ‘Coke man’

Maybe he was rewarding him for telling Boris to go a couple of months ago.

At least there are some fresh faces and at least Coffey has been demoted, I am pressuming that Environmental Polices and Climate Change plans will end up on a shelf until further notice. The NHS however might benefit from that move.

Given the amount of time she spent in number 10, I think some bargaining went on.

And so the powerful Tory machine keeps chugging along, how many more times will it stop and start before it ends up in the junkyard?

A miracle is required and Rishi is no God, not even a Saint. He will be desperate to make some notable moves forward before the next Election, that kind of pressure could lead to more monumental mistakes just like his predecessor.

Turning the economy around is going to take time, a long time and time is the one thing they haven’t got.

But I will not fault him for trying……yet!

The Good.

The first Asian PM showing diversity is alive and well, although I do believe it is by accident rather than design. Out of all three runners, he in many respects seems the most adept.

Hopefully no more Rees-Mogg, Coffey or Boris ever again. The question however remains, has the ERG lost it’s control of the Tories? [Europeon Research Group] They have already declared they will not endorse Sunak and remain a very powerful group.

He may however foster a better relationship with the EU, in particular with France bringing a more successful ending to the NI Protocol problem.

The bad.

He’s still a Tory.

He is very right-wing but probably less so than the ERG. In the past, he has shown his true colours with little empathy for those on Benefits.

He is a very wealthy man but the UK does not benefit from that through taxes. His wife and his fortune are registered elsewhere therefore he is likely to continue to favour the wealthy in his policies.

He has been crowned not by the people or even members of his own Party but by a small clique of MPs, this will not go down well with members and could rebound on him later down the line. Many are already calling for a GE.

The very ugly..

The Tory Party is at war with itself, how much mischief his opponents will get up to remains to be seen but it could all get very ugly and we will pay the price. Even with 2/3 of a majority of his MPs, he does not command overall authority within Parliament. All the other 1/3 have to do to bring him down is to either abstain or vote with Labour and many of his enemies are angry enough to do that.

He has but a narrow line to walk. Like Truss, he will have to keep his backbenchers happy, with no hard Brexit. I say that because despite what Boris said Brexit is not done, there are all those rules to deal with. Rees-Mogg wanted to burn them all with nothing to replace them but many were good and protected us from things like food poisoning, and dirty drinking water through to workers rights. You don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!

To do all this and get the economy onto a better footing whilst always looking over one’s shoulder is no mean task. Is he strong enough has he got the character?

Only time will tell but will there be enough time?

If Sunak is crowned tomorrow don’t for one moment think it’s all over.

There is only one word rippling through the ERG [Boris and Rees-Mogg] camp tonight and that is revenge.

The Tory Party is ideologically split right down the middle with any PM held hostage to the Backbenchers. So even Sunak will not get his own way.

If the Backbenchers think his methods are too harsh they will block him fearing public backlash. He has very little time to show he can fix the economy with the next GE IN 2024.

People do not have short memories as some would suggest, if that had been the case Boris would not have cut and run. He had backers, yes, but he also read the public mood. The public was not for forgetting.

So, what can we do?

I received a very good piece of advice from my son Kevin today, he said don’t look too far forward just hunker down and get through the winter first, then see what happens. He is right, one battle at a time otherwise people will be too overwhelmed.

We can look out for each other even when our government fails us.

A day of reckoning will come for the people in England and also for Scotland if we dare to take a different path. The Devolution settlement is being eroded year after year.

Enough is enough.

If the SNP government won’t do it, then the people must.

We are Sovereign!

If Sunak is crowned tomorrow don’t for one moment think it’s all over.

There is only one word rippling through the ERG [Boris and Rees-Mogg] camp tonight and that is revenge.

The Tory Party is ideologically split right down the middle with any PM held hostage to the Backbenchers. So even Sunak will not get his own way.

If the Backbenchers think his methods are too harsh they will block him fearing public backlash. He has very little time to show he can fix the economy with the next GE IN 2024.

People do not have short memories as some would suggest, if that had been the case Boris would not have cut and run. He had backers, yes, but he also read the public mood. The public was not for forgetting.

So, what can we do?

I received a very good piece of advice from my son Kevin today, he said don’t look too far forward just hunker down and get through the winter first, then see what happens. He is right, one battle at a time otherwise people will be too overwhelmed.

We can look out for each other even when our government fails us.

A day of reckoning will come for the people in England and also for Scotland if we dare to take a different path. The Devolution settlement is being eroded year after year.

Enough is enough.

If the SNP government won’t do it, then the people must.

We are Sovereign!

https://twitter.com/utd_ben18v3/status/1582802268071481345?s=61&t=DqOkoxncxhI_Rz5IJ3HsHA

I did try and write something about the exit of the Home Secretary but events overtook me!

Believe it or not, these people only days ago passed a Law making it unlawful for you and me to protest peacefully!

And to top it off, those MPs who did not obey the Party line are to be disciplined, but here’s the thing, Truss herself didn’t even vote!

It appears she was locked in a room trying to persuade the Chief Whip and her Deputy to unresign!

This really is jaw-dropping stuff.

More and more MPs are openly telling the PM to go, and probably even more writing letters privately. Her shoogly peg is getting even more precarious by the minute.

Instability will only be removed by a GE, another Tory PM won’t cut it any longer, because the boil burst last night and all their poison spilled out for all to see.

Has reality hit Liz Truss yet?

Would she even see it if it hit her in the face? Or would we just get that blank face again that looks like a rabbit in the headlights?

Today is another day, but what will the day bring?

…..and the bad news this Monday morning is, your lecky bill is not after all safe for 2yrs!

I never liked Mondays but this is a particularly grim one.

That huge promise that our PM kept repeating when defending her mini-budget has gone and the anxiety of millions returns.

The Tory excuse for not announcing a General Election is it would destabilise the Country, does anything feel stabilized to you at this moment as we lurch from one crisis to another?

I think people would welcome the thought that they could change things, it would be that hope of something different that would to some degree settle the anxiety felt by all most everyone including the markets.

Today Jeremy took an axe but he didn’t replace it with anything!

The government have run out of ideas like a ship in a storm with no one at the helm strong enough to stop it from sinking.

This government didn’t just try to ride the storm they created it, and we will pay for it.

All the usual excuses will be tripped out, COVID, Russia etc…

Yes, other countries are suffering due to those things but they have the strength of each other to hold them up. We are on our own, through choice.

It appears standing alone isn’t quite all it was promised to be when we left the European Union. Made worse by the sheer incompetence of this Government.

Brace yourselves for a tough week, other axes will fall and more nerves will jangle.

The axe may be at work but there is no more light entering the forest!

Unfortunately, the Chairman of the 1922 committee is away until Monday afternoon so Truss can relax this weekend. But if I were Jeremy Hunt I wouldn’t bother unpacking, in fact I wouldn’t bother even moving house!

Given the feelings within the Tory party our new PM is very likely to become our past PM very soon and who ever takes over will have their own team which may not include Jeremy. Not through any fault of his own but simply because he has no fiscal experience.

Phone lines between MPs will be red hot this weekend all trying to save their jobs as MPs, anything but a GE will be the cry. There will however be one pretty soon as the red wall gets rebuilt.

I’m not a fan of Starmer’s but he has some great women in his team and we are well past the point of saying anything is better than what we have just now.

We need sweeping changes, a different kind of politics. Whether Labour can do that I don’t know but they certainly can’t be any worse. An economy can only grow if people have money to put back into it.

Spending priorities need to change and less privatisation. The myth that privatisation brings competition has been exposed. All that happens is companies collude to secretly gain an advantage, ensuring high returns for themselves and high prices for us.

No, I am not a Labour supporter but I am a Socialist at heart!