Porter Ponders: Are Labour still the party for working people?

Labour have been in charge for about twenty minutes and have already suspended seven of its own MPs from its party for six months after they dare question the two-child benefit cap and vote with the SNP. They are to relax planning so more houses can be built, by whom, I have no idea, but that means that many parts of the UK will be turned from green countryside to housing estates, in Marsh Green work started, before the election, on former pub land, for some new housing, including affordable too.

This is great, there are plenty of sites that could be used like this, including former industrial sites dotted around the borough. We have seen many new houses and estates in the last ten years, but how long before it spreads to our countryside. Rachel Reeves, the first ever female Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave her first speech on Monday, guess what? Things are worse than they feared, hang on, haven’t Labour been piping on about how bad things were under the Tory government?

So why are they surprised and having to reimagine their plans they had promised. Pensioners will only get the winter payment if they get extra help with their pension payments, meaning they will have to use their savings, which I suppose is ok if they are minted, not so if they are on the cusp of getting by, but don’t qualify for these payments, those can freeze, I guess.

Overall, ten million will miss out, seems fair. Scrapping plans to cap care costs, meaning if you become ill or infirm and need careers or to move to a home, you will pay costs until you have no savings left, meaning less inheritance. Meanwhile she said that cash would be saved with the new Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plan to allow migrants to claim asylum - even if they crossed the Channel in a small boat, what could go wrong there? She even said she will sell of government owned land and property to raise hundreds of millions of pounds.

Well slap my face and call me Gerald, this sounds like a really great thing to do, I hope that the element of sarcasm was not lost on you there. Things are bad, we knew that, but selling off the family’s gold, when does that ever work, long term? Don’t forget she also wants departments of government to find savings totalling £3bn pounds.

Erm. Hang on. Is that not austerity? The thing Labour have criticized the Conservatives about since they lost power? Remember Labour are the party of the working man, woman and whatever gender you choose, but are they really?

I did not vote Labour, or Tory, at the last election, but so far, I would have preferred the devil ‘we know’ than this bunch of heaven knows what. But I could be proved wrong, then again.

Meanwhile in Wigan, scaffolding has appeared next to the gaping hole in the, I trust, listed former Royal Bank of Scotland building, the one that I shared my concern about only two weeks ago. It is shocking that this building, a Wigan icon, was left for so long without any protection of its internal structure for so long, I might even go as far as to say criminal.