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Services. 2026-06-24 19:20:07 - Paul D. Foy - PoliticalComment I don't think I've made a post on anything political before or made any political comments at all. I don't view myself as politically aligned and I don't adopt a position of support for one party or the other. I do have my opinions on "political matters", opinions on everything. I don't think I hide away from expressing an opinion in one particular direction because it is not aligned with another party's policy if I think it is the right opinion. I'd just like to give my opinion on the latest situation in our government and the change of Prime Minister. It seems two years ago we had a landslide victory in which Keir Starmer was the leader of the winning party and had a unanimous mandate for change, as is often the case. It seems two years later this has been completely reversed. He has, for some reason which is inexplicable to me, become deeply unpopular and he's been forced out of office because of the democratic wish, will, or mandate of the general public. I can't see what he's actually done wrong. It seems the most serious thing he's done to me is accept without some kind of proper process a free ticket to a football match. It doesn't strike me as being the most grievous of things to do wrong. The man has had to deal with some unprecedented situations: the continuing war in Ukraine and the botched economy attack and war in Iran and Israel. He's had to deal with these in a very statement-like manner, in a way in which he's handled all of his interactions with foreign governments. Britain being an exporting country which is reliant on foreigners for our income, our wealth is extreme. It's an extremely important position to be on good terms with everybody else. It's one of them, I would say, one of the most important things in the world today to do in this interconnected world. He's led a government which, I can't see, has done seriously bad. It's given what he set out to do and what he says he does, that he's on the side of the working person and he wishes to put power into the hands of those working and earning an honest daily living, not power into the free wheelers and the people scrounging the system or too wealthy to care or not needing to work because they're too wealthy. I mean there are those people about as perfectly common but to put an emphasis on the working man, with a bit of a cliché term, seems perfectly valid. Why shouldn't you support those doing the work? That's the most important thing. Your lifetime of work is very important so to make that state of affairs better for him, ameliorate his conditions whilst not lessening the need for people to work, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't scrounge the whole of your life and expect to have a good, pleasurable standard of living. Somehow you got to create the water supply, grow your food and that kind of thing. To be a prime minister on that side, the side of the working person, I don't think is a, I think it's a perfectly good badge for office. I don't think I'd be too interested in the working person, the way he seems to have been regarded and I have nothing to do with the working person there. The working person is a bit of a stupid, stupid individual, in my opinion, and about the way he's being regarded by the working person (in their quotes). I find the situation completely inexplicable and puzzling: to manipulate the democratic process to parachute into the fray somebody else to replace that, that's what the person with a democratic mandate. I just don't understand it. I feel it completely baffling and I don't understand it. 2026-07-05 11:05:22 - Paul D. Foy - Right I'm back to doing what I love to do, using this software to speak freely and have it write it all down for me. Who needs a secretary? I'll have to reserve them for something else. Now I think I've reached a state of life where I can validly make a few political comments. I've had a working life as a technical matter, keeping my head down, and whilst the AI has come along, it came along just after I retired. Presumably so I only have a certain amount of insight into it. I don't know the details of the tokens or the attention algorithm and things are like that. I don't know the details but I'll comment on political things because political things are important. They are about the direction of things and they sway people's opinion and how people feel about themselves so they have some importance. Now on the question of Andy Burnham to be the next Prime Minister, I think he's saying some sensible things to start with. I've heard that he's put an emphasis on the provision of locally sourced food where he has control, that is in public organisations. That's laudable. Britain for a long time has been dependent upon others for food, which is a bit of a weak situation. The more we can self-support our own food and create a virtuous cycle of generating our own food production and consuming it locally, particularly, is a very good thing. However one will find that it's easy to say these things but far more difficult in practise because it all revolves around the cost of things and how much you charge and how much you want for your labour. Of course the farmers, like everybody else, want to drive nice car and live in big houses and have a pleasant standard of living so they want to charge as much as possible for their food. That might not square with the hospitals and hotels etc. and the restaurants who are wishing the food. They might want to get it a bit cheaper perhaps from foreign people who don't have as many restaurants and are prepared to work for less to generate the food and to give it to us. This has got something to think about. I don't feel you can move very quickly on these matters because they are all to do with money and the cost of things and the cost of labour. No individual or organisation or large company is going to suddenly start working for free or halve its prices or halve its labour out of some kind of ethical altruistic sense of doing the right thing. I think these happen very gradually. You've got to get the environment right. You've got to have the right people leading the place who are not ripping off their organisations for their own selfish purposes. You've got to get all these kind of things right. I think moving gradually is generally what has to be done, which is a bit of a shame that the government has been criticised for not moving fast enough whereas all you can in reality is move fairly gradually and make very small steps in these matters. These matters are price and cost. It's a problem of life, the problem of living. Cost and money. Post a comment: |