Dear Reaction

Great Leader and also opinion piece by Jenny Hjul on Sturgeon. 

To add to the points made, arguably it is also the case that the FM has willingly, and also cynically, backed policies favoured by her coalition partners, the Greens, in return for their support in Parliament. The FM’s blind obsession with her pursuit of independence sadly does Scotland a disservice, especially as Scotland’s two governments could achieve so much more if the SG was willing to work jointly and in collaboration with the UK Government. But that would not serve the SNP agenda of grievance and seeking to undermine the UK. 

Another relevant point, which will hinder attempts at finding the truth on the current issue of the convicted rapist, is that the FM runs her government in secret, avoiding and ignoring proper record keeping by handling business with a group of senior Ministers, Advisers and senior civil servants via WhatsApp messages. These are routinely deleted to prevent them becoming part of the government record and avoid them being accessible by parliamentary committees or via FOI requests. 

Aletheia

The Conservative Party has lost its capitalist spirit

I much enjoyed, if that is the word, reading Gerald Warner’s article about the Conservative Party becoming a husk. I think his analysis, for the most part, is spot on but perhaps he should have written more on how the Party has given up on capitalism. He does mention that Sunak, Hunt and their predecessors in the 21st century have no time for SMEs, the beating heart of enterprise,  but surely the issue is broader? The virtues of capitalism is never mentioned any more by Sunak & Co, instead they run scared of such, retreating into meaningless blather about how they are determined to grow the economy. Well no chance of that without business investment and the accumulation of sufficient wealth  to keep investing.

Hunt, in a speech on Friday 27th, says it his ambition to foster a low taxation enterprise economy, but then immediately ditches such by underlining his, and the Treasury’s, number one priority is halving inflation and everything else must wait for that. This is disingenuous. Anyone with even a modicum of financial understanding knows that the direction of inflation is entirely out of the Treasury’s hands. It rests with the central bankers and markets generally.

Actions speak louder than words and there is nothing happening that demonstrates the Conservative Party has the capitalist spirit anymore.

Stephen Hazell-Smith

Democracy, Caribbean-style: I hate to be nit-picky but…

Good day from Antigua,

Although I hate to be nit-picky and it is always great to see my island from an outsider’s perspective, there are two items that don’t sit well with me. There are as follows:

“They don’t do green on this island, not even the most basic recycling.”
Granted as a whole the island does not do green, but there are a few of us that do the trek to the recycling center just outside of the airport to recycle. I must say the various administrations have not held this as a priority but I am of the opinion that they just don’t have the money and the desire to do so. But I’m not a fan of sweeping statements so I’m a bit nit-picky here.

“The outgoing ABLP government has for the first time introduced personal income tax.”
Now I’m not sure if it was alluding that this was the first time that ABLP is introducing personal income tax or if it was to mean that this is the first time personal income tax has ever been introduced in Antigua. If it is the latter, please note that under the UPP, personal income tax was introduced and it was one of the issues ALP (at the time) campaigned against. Granted that it was a very small number of people who were paying income tax. Don’t quote me on this but anyone making over $3,000EC had to pay income tax leading up to when ALP won in 2014 and they abolished it. I would know because, on a monthly basis, I had to fill out those tax forms.

Now as I said before, I hate to be nit-picky, but I have this weird thing where if something just doesn’t seem to be right, I automatically read it over and I’m thrown from the narrative.
Overall, the article held sad truths about my island. And as more time passes, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is for the best. Gaston Browne has done a lot of damage but now he has to clean it up with a robust opposition looking over his shoulder. 

Thank you for your insight and I hope you enjoy/enjoyed your stay in my fair land.

From the edge of the Atlantic, Kimolisa

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