Mike Meredith

Is Starmer a Red Tory?

Jan 062024

There’s quite a bit of noise online about how Keir Starmer is really a “red tory” because he isn’t socialist enough (or at all). Now don’t get me wrong – he’s nowhere near left-wing enough for my taste, although neither was Jeremy Corbyn.

But a red Tory? Well perhaps, but at least he’s red rather than blue. But whilst he’s dropped socialist policies, he doesn’t seem to have dropped all socialist policies – he’s still in favour of nationalising the rail industry.

That doesn’t sound very Tory.

He’s in favour of extending free breakfasts to every primary school in the UK if he’s dropped the plan for free lunches in every school.

That doesn’t sound very Tory.

Does It Matter?

Well of course it matters!

But if the choice is effectively between a hopefully competent red Tory leading the Labour party in government, or a pathetic waste of space leading a dysfunctional blue Tory party in government, the choice is easy. The kind of government I want just isn’t a choice at this point.

Unfortunately we have to compromise and settle for the least damaging government we can feasibly get.

The Conspiracy Theory

Now most “he’s a red tory” commentators out there are probably perfectly innocent, but the Tories have started pushing their message as if a current unscheduled election in May is on the cards. And they aren’t above pushing black propaganda – after all their 2% National Insurance cut is very conveniently timed for a May election when the stealth tax rises are about to kick in.

Are some of those “red Tory” allegations, propaganda by the Tories to discourage left-wing Labour supporters from voting? Or for voting for no-hopers?

If we want to be sure that the current bunch of corrupt clowns is removed from government, we have to vote tactically (and avoid potential “fake” tactical voting sites).

Immigration Is Just a Distraction

Politics No Responses »

Dec 172023

The twitterverse (or the 𝕏-hole) has been awash recently by far-right whinging about immigrants stealing our houses, jobs, and forcing us all to behave according to their notions of societal norms. And of course they are really spitting lettuce when it comes to the “invasion” of small boat refugees.

Really about what you would expect from a bunch of people with the intellectual capability of a syphilitic squirrel on acid.

The truth of the matter is that immigration is just a distraction from the real problems of the country and the Tories are quite happy that their mismanagement and corruption is being hidden by some extent by the ‘immigration issue’.

The ‘Small Boats Invasion’

Which the slack-witted will insist on labelling ‘illegal immigrants’; they are of course nothing of the sort. Refugees have a legal right to apply for asylum status and the sneaky Tories have very conveniently blocked every other method of seeking asylum. Leaving refugees no other way of getting to the UK other than the dangerous route of small boats.

What are they coming here for? Benefits? No of course not – asylum seekers are not entitled to benefits and are probably one of the most deprived groups in the UK. They are probably on their way here for a number of reasons :-

The UK is a relatively safe place with a stable (if currently dysfunctional) government.
English is a very widely spoken second language – if you were moving to a foreign country wouldn’t you prefer one where you already speak the language?
They may well have existing connections to the UK – family, friends, or relatives.

The other thing to note about the small boat refugees is that the total is trivially small. In 2022, there were just 45,000 refugees coming by small boat (source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-december-2022/irregular-migration-to-the-uk-year-ending-december-2022). To put it a more visceral way, if you were at the back of a queue to make a GP appointment that was 10,000 people long, you could shoot all the small boat refugees and reduce it by 7 people – not enough to really make a difference. Or even 12 if you were to include all the small boat refugees from 2018-2022.

Economic Migrants

There is a great deal of confusion amongst the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who go berserk at the mere mention of immigration – who seem to believe all the so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ are here to take British jobs. Which is complete rubbish of course – asylum seekers are not allowed to take jobs, and they’re a tiny proportion of the population as a whole.

And indeed a small proportion of legal immigration. As an example, in 2022 ‘net migration’ reached 745,000; an unusually high number. The net migration figure is immigration minus emigration, so there were actually 1.2 million legal immigrants.

We could stop that immigration overnight – just stop issuing visas.

And the NHS would collapse. And the universities would collapse. And plenty of other industries would collapse.

We need immigration to keep the economy moving.

Is housing shortage a problem? Of course it is, but it has been a problem since the 1960s – we simply don’t build enough houses and keep not building enough houses. Way back before most of us were alive (1970), the cost of a house was 0.7 times the average salary; today it is more like 9 times the average salary.

Are NHS waiting lists (and queues for GP appointments) a problem? Of course they are, but immigrants are less likely to use them than our ageing population. Frankly the problems of the NHS are down to under-investment and Tory corruption.

The figure of 1.2 million immigrants is unusually high, but we’ve coped with hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants for decades. Almost all of the problems supposedly caused by immigration are in fact caused by government incompetence.

Is it any surprise that all this fuss about immigration comes at most 13 months away from a General Election? When the Tories want to distract from their 13 years of malicious and shambolic government?

Diagnosing A Phishing Scam

Computing, Security No Responses »

Dec 042023

Just for fun (I have admittedly a very weird sense of fun), I thought I’d have a look at one of the phishing emails that came into me. I’ll go through this bit by bit, picking out bits that first occurred to me …

Subject: LastPass : Required action needed regarding your account

Eh? Do I even have a LastPass account? I keep my passwords stored somewhere else, but it’s not impossible – I’ve been known to sign up to things just to test them out. Including cloud-based password managers.

But all the same, let’s give it a point on the suspicion scale. Running total: 1.

From: LastPass <yoji-okugawa1975@tg8.so-net.ne.jp>

Well LastPass certainly use a funny looking email domain (the bit to the right of the “@”), but Marketing departments sometimes aren’t aware of how important that email domain really is. On the other hand, “tg8.so-net.net.jp” does look particularly uncorporate, so let us give it a suspicion point.

Running total: 2

On the other hand, it is too easy to fake domains – I could very easily send you an email from the-management@lástpáss.com (and even more subtle equivalents of “a” – “а”, “ạ”, “ą”, “ä”, “à”, “á”, “ą”). And just to demonstrate something that looks identical can actually be quite different :-

In [8]: print(ord('а'))
1072

In [9]: print(ord('a'))
97

Now this isn’t to suggest that you should run your email headers through some Python code, but just that because something looks like lastpass.com doesn’t mean it really is. The next thing that jumped out at me was the body of the email – I may be well trained, but something new and shiny is still distracting :-

Now the first thing that jumps out at me is that red “Confirm my information” box. Screams “click here” doesn’t it? Well don’t click on it! In my email client (something you’re quite likely not using – claws-mail), if I hold the mouse pointed above a link, it’ll tell me where that link goes in the status bar of the client. In this case it shows up as https://tg8.benchurl.com/…. doesn’t look very much like lastpass.com does it? That’s sufficiently suspicious that I’ll award it 3 suspicion points.

Running total: 5

Notice how they don’t add a “Dear ${name}” to the top of the email? Not personally addressing email is ever so convenient to scammers that want to get your details – because they don’t necessarily know your name. That’s a suspicion point all on its own.

Running total: 6

Next note how it tries to rush you … “log in before January 16, 2024”. It’s subtler than many phishing scams, but it’s still trying to rush you. Add another suspicion point.

Running total: 7

There’s further details we could dig into, but that’s more than enough that the Delete button is the only thing this email should attract. That running total? It was just for fun, it’s not intended as a guideline for when to count something as a phishing email.

In the case of doubt, contact the company via other means.

Tactical Voting: Compromise, But That’s Okay

Politics No Responses »

Nov 192023

Some of us who are anti-Tory are encouraging the use of tactical voting – voting not necessarily for the party you would most like to represent you, but instead voting for the party most likely to defeat the Tories. The Tory government has been so inept, corrupt, morally bankrupt, and generally icky, that giving them a total hammering is only right.

But there are plenty of people out there who don’t feel that Labour (or one of the others in certain areas) really represent their views. Labour has moved too far to the right – which is something I would agree with.

But politics is about compromise and with first-past-the-post system, we have to compromise more than other systems of voting. There will never be a political party that exactly represents my views, so I have to select the one that closest matches my views. In an ideal world anyway.

In a less than idea world, we have to compromise more and vote for the candidate in our constituency that is most likely to defeat the Tories. There is no point in voting for the Green party in a constituency where they typically get 2-3% of the vote when switching to the Liberal-Democrats are in second place and most likely to defeat the Tories.

The left in Britain is somewhat more fractured than the right (although if we give the Tories a bloody enough nose that might just change) which with the FPTP system gives the Tories an inherent advantage. We need to overcome that advantage and without a change in the voting system, tactical voting is the way to do that.

Give the Tories a bloody nose and vote tactically.

Why Abolishing The ECHR Would Be Catastrophic

Politics No Responses »

Nov 112023

The frothing-at-the-mouth loons on the far-right are trying to get the country to rip up the ECHR and reject the ECHR. That’s two different things – the European Convention on Human Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights. Essentially the first is an agreement on what rights we should all have, and the second is how those rights are enforced.

We’ve all heard about (thanks to right-wing propaganda media) ridiculous stories about some inane judgements of the ECHR (although not a few are complete fiction), but before we listen too long to lying scum-bags with hidden agendas should we consider whether throwing out the baby with the bathwater is a good idea?

In the wake of World War II, the nations of Western Europe founded the Council of Europe to adopt measures that would stop that sort of war even occurring again (and to combat the rise of Communism). A time when Britain’s influence in Europe was at a zenith – the British lawyer David Maxwell Fyfe was probably the biggest single influence on the new convention of human rights. In normal circumstances it would be churlish to suggest it, but there is an argument to say it should be called the British Convention on Human Rights for Europe.

Ripping up the convention on human rights also requires us to leave the Council of Europe. Which would horrify the hero of the far-right – Winston Churchill who was the biggest single proponent of the post-war Council of Europe. And have a similar catastrophic effect on Britain as the disastrous Brexit that we have undergone.

But let us look at what the ECHR actually does – it can force governments to admit they’ve gone too far and make them step back. Now the propagandists for abolishing the ECHR will quite rightly point out that this is not democratic.

Indeed.

But imagine a situation where a democratically elected government is of a flavour you despise – perhaps a far left government that intends to take away your company because you haven’t “shared” enough with the workers, or because you pay yourself more than 20 times the pay of the lowest paid worker.

Doesn’t sound fair does it?

And if the ECHR forced that government to stop its plans? Doesn’t sound quite so bad now does it?

It is all too easy to look at the “bad” the ECHR does – when it stops a government you like doing what it thinks is right. But that’s not how to examine something like the ECHR – you have to imagine the ECHR stopping a government you despise doing something awful.

And always remember – those talking about ripping up the ECHR are all spitting on Winston Churchill’s grave. Do you still want to join them?

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