Well since the Tories and Labour have their threads, we can keep an eye on how Reform manage expectations after their big success in the Mayoral and County Elections. Our new Reform led council with huge majority believes it can cut Council Tax simply by eliminating waste. In fairness we should give them a chance to deliver, but can we really believe they will have the wisdom and talent to do as they promise, or is the frustration / apathy that led to this protest vote going to backfire horribly? Guess we shall see...
Voters hoodwinked into electing inadequate paper candidate who didn't expect to win shocker. How many more of these coming up...?
Reform councillor steps down after a week
A Reform UK councillor has stepped down a matter of days after being elected.
Desmond Clarke won in the Newark West division last week, helping Reform take control of Nottinghamshire County Council.
The party has now confirmed, however, that he has resigned his seat.
The BBC has attempted to contact Mr Clarke for comment.
In a post on Facebook, Reform UK Newark said: "Significant recent changes to Desmond's personal circumstances have led him to conclude that he is not in a position to deliver the level of service to the people of Newark West that they deserve and require."
Two Labour MPs have called for Reform UK to suspend one of its newly elected councillors after a photo of Adolf Hitler was shared on his official Facebook page.
Hyndburn MP Sarah Smith and Blackpool South MP Chris Webb shared a screengrab of a post from Lancashire county councillor Joel Tetlow's account.
Condemning the post on the councillor's social media account, Smith said: "During this country's VE Day anniversary week, he deemed [it] appropriate."
The BBC has approached Tetlow, who told Sky News he did not "mean any disrespect", and Reform UK for a response. Lancashire County Council declined to comment and said it was a matter for Reform UK.
Tetlow, who represents Accrington North, is part of the newly elected ruling group on Lancashire County Council.
The new council leader is due to be elected by the Reform group's councillors on 10 May.
Following last week's elections, the party now holds 53 of the local authority's 84 seats.
Smith's office said the post appeared on Tetlow's Facebook page at about 13:00 BST on Tuesday and remained visible at 08:00 on Wednesday.
The post was later deleted.
It featured a picture of Hitler looking at a map and was overlaid with the words "Why don't we invade them slowly? A few men at a time in small boats".
The accompanying text then read: "Let's be grateful this idea was never put to him... or the world as we know it would be a whole lot different."
tabascoboy wrote: Fri May 09, 2025 11:51 am
Well since the Tories and Labour have their threads, we can keep an eye on how Reform manage expectations after their big success in the Mayoral and County Elections. Our new Reform led council with huge majority believes it can cut Council Tax simply by eliminating waste. In fairness we should give them a chance to deliver, but can we really believe they will have the wisdom and talent to do as they promise, or is the frustration / apathy that led to this protest vote going to backfire horribly? Guess we shall see...
Voters hoodwinked into electing inadequate paper candidate who didn't expect to win shocker. How many more of these coming up...?
Reform councillor steps down after a week
A Reform UK councillor has stepped down a matter of days after being elected.
Desmond Clarke won in the Newark West division last week, helping Reform take control of Nottinghamshire County Council.
The party has now confirmed, however, that he has resigned his seat.
The BBC has attempted to contact Mr Clarke for comment.
In a post on Facebook, Reform UK Newark said: "Significant recent changes to Desmond's personal circumstances have led him to conclude that he is not in a position to deliver the level of service to the people of Newark West that they deserve and require."
Would be amazed if a new political party didn’t have its own collection of law breakers, nonces , corrupt and violent types, same as the other parties.
What were the changes in circumstance , did he get jailed ?
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 3:46 pm
by SaintK
tabascoboy wrote: Fri May 09, 2025 11:51 am
Voters hoodwinked into electing inadequate paper candidate who didn't expect to win shocker. How many more of these coming up...?
The Frog faced cunt has said that their vetting and selection procedure was the most robust of any of the political parties.
When asked about the procedure Reform chairman Zia Yusuf could not explain it and mumbled about how they were using AI to speed the process up!!!!
Should be some good ones appearing on social media and in Private Eye before long
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 3:59 pm
by tabascoboy
New Reform KCC leader wants to initiate a DOGE style audit on the County Council's books. That sure worked out well across the pond...
And this is purely anecdotal - and of course not necessarily restricted to just the one political party. Seems that many don't realise that CC meeting are held in daytime, not evenings too.
Of course, I work in a role across different councils and honestly, Reform are a complete mess. There are councillors in talks about resigning because of commitment issues, we’ve got lots who are refusing to complete their onboarding (because of non-existent DEI training they are refusing to do). My home Council has elected a Lead Member for schools and education who has either failed or who is refusing to disclose their DBS check, a councillor who is now under consideration because they are 18 and in September are going to study abroad for 3 years…
At my neighbouring council they are doing a stop on the sale of Halal food in the canteen (which doesn’t sell Halal)- this meeting took precedence over a cabinet meeting to approve £6m of additional highways spending as part of the Local Transport Grant…
Honestly, it’s a complete shitshow. If reform want to cut waste at councils, at the moment the best thing they could do is piss off. I hope they sort themselves out because otherwise local government is going to really struggle, just like the US.
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 4:24 pm
by Rhubarb & Custard
tabascoboy wrote: Fri May 09, 2025 3:59 pm
New Reform KCC leader wants to initiate a DOGE style audit on the County Council's books. That sure worked out well across the pond...
why the swap to the curly c? one could just stay with the kicking k
tabascoboy wrote: Fri May 09, 2025 11:51 am
Voters hoodwinked into electing inadequate paper candidate who didn't expect to win shocker. How many more of these coming up...?
The Frog faced cunt has said that their vetting and selection procedure was the most robust of any of the political parties.
When asked about the procedure Reform chairman Zia Yusuf could not explain it and mumbled about how they were using AI to speed the process up!!!!
Should be some good ones appearing on social media and in Private Eye before long
Just the 12 after the first week!!!
Up to 12 newly elected Reform UK councillors are facing allegations of sharing social media content ranging from support for the far right to explicitly Islamophobic comments.
They include councillors at three different county councils who have shared social media content from Britain First, a far-right party known for staging provocative marches and stunts.
When Reform UK sent five members to Parliament last July, Nigel Farage, the populist party’s leader, called it a “bridgehead”. Thumping wins across England’s local elections on May 1st marked the next stage of the assault. Now, Reform is neck and neck with Labour in the polls.
Success means scrutiny. As a protest party, Reform, like earlier Farage ventures, was distinguished mainly by a penchant for scandal and an uncanny ability to nudge the Tories into unforced errors. Now, the notion that Reform could be a party of government no longer seems fanciful. Its ideas should be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the mishmash on offer so far is highly alarming. Reform’s policies add up to an agenda of fiscal recklessness that rivals, and may well exceed, the disastrous 49-day, hair-raising, market-tanking premiership of Liz Truss in 2022.
Reform’s manifesto from the 2024 election is a starting-point. The party has since crab-walked away from the document, but it remains the only entry under “Policies” on its website. More tellingly, Mr Farage has specifically reaffirmed, or expanded on, nearly half the tax cuts listed in recent months. The manifesto puts Reform’s giveaways at £140bn ($190bn, 5% of GDP) per year, but claims to offset them with savings worth £160bn. Even on a generous-but-realistic accounting, The Economist estimates that the annual costs are in the region of £200bn and savings around £100bn (see chart). The gap between the two would amount to a colossal fiscal shock, blowing up the deficit and straining the gilt market to its limits.
Why the mismatch? Take taxes first. The changes are so vast that precise costings are futile. But Reform has made serially generous guesses. The party claims its personal-tax cuts cost £70bn a year. But the proposed lift to income-tax thresholds alone would cost at least that much, probably more, based on rules-of-thumb from HMRC, the tax agency. Adding cuts to fuel duty, stamp duty, VAT, inheritance tax and more adds tens of billions.
Recently, Mr Farage has doubled down on his single costliest pledge, to lift the personal allowance for income tax from £12,570 to £20,000. And he now wants to fully abolish inheritance tax. The manifesto promises businesses £18bn of giveaways too. But the promise to cut corporation tax by ten percentage points alone is worth double that. And the realistic take from one of Reform’s main revenue-raisers, dropping some interest payments on Bank of England reserves, is a mere fraction of the £35bn stated.
Then comes spending. Reform wants £30bn-40bn more for health, defence and fighting crime. To pay, and cover tax cuts, the party relies on hand-waving and austerity. Questionably, it asserts that its policies will add one percentage point to growth (a near-doubling) and take 1m Britons off benefits. In addition, it suggests a 5% cut across government (austerity not far off the 2010s), plus unfathomably vast savings from ending net zero.
Delivering even the viable cuts would be hard. Reform’s leaders act Thatcherite, but many of their voters are big-staters. An early test was Labour’s cuts to winter-fuel payments—an unnecessary subsidy to richer pensioners. Reform has loudly campaigned to restore them. Outside of tax-and-spend, its wider agenda of (net) zero migration and expensively burying electricity pylons is hardly more promising. The general election is still years away, but at some point sooner the infrastructure investors Labour hopes to woo will start pricing in the risk that Reform could be serious about implementing these ideas.
Britain has to keep bond vigilantes onside to fund its borrowing habit. Ms Truss’s recklessness and the Brexit saga have already strained patience. More such episodes would start to look not like aberrations, but parts of a pattern. Even the man Mr Farage calls his “friend” in Washington lost a staring match with the bond market over tariffs. Reform now has four years to choose between a serious rethink or the risk of a fiscal calamity if it wins. Maybe being no-hopers wasn’t so bad after all.
He's even already not attending Parliament, so he's already adopting their work ethic.
tbh I'm assuming there will be a recall and Reform will win the byelection
pfft, not even worth suspending the whip tbh
Groucho club so prob just Mrs Bimbo and her mate noshing him off & now realising they can get some cash off The Sun or Mirror for the story
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Tue May 13, 2025 4:03 pm
by TedMaul
Not judging Yeeb but when I read your posts I never have to look at the author to know it's you
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Tue May 13, 2025 4:16 pm
by Yeeb
TedMaul wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 4:03 pm
Not judging Yeeb but when I read your posts I never have to look at the author to know it's you
I know my audience.
8===> ~ ~
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 11:54 am
by tabascoboy
Anecdotal again but...
I currently work elsewhere (my job means I work across Councils sometimes). My local Reform Councillors have been working really hard making important decisions like:
What flags we fly?
Do we ban rainbow lanyards?
Can we stop the Halal food in the canteen? (note, there is no halal food in the canteen)
Can we rip out the EV chargers from the car park?
But on the plus side, we missed the deadline to approve £7.5m in Highway infrastructure improvements as part of the governments Local Transport Grant scheme. So that has been knocked back a week, which means that at least one project won't get done due to time constraints.
Also our Lead Member for Schools and SEND Transport currently isn't able to sit because they are refusing to complete their 'woke' DBS check.
TedMaul wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 4:03 pm
Not judging Yeeb but when I read your posts I never have to look at the author to know it's you
8===> ~ ~
This is the internet equivalent of that traditional heee Larious post match game when wags attend of ‘Willy on shoulder ‘ or the more extreme ‘cock in ear’ or ‘cock in pint’ variants
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Thu May 15, 2025 8:26 am
by sturginho
tabascoboy wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 11:54 am
Anecdotal again but...
Also our Lead Member for Schools and SEND Transport currently isn't able to sit because they are refusing to complete their 'woke' DBS check.
This is what really worries me since my daughter's EHCP is going to a funding panel next week and the council has now been taken over by a swarm of little RFK Jr impersonators
tabascoboy wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 11:54 am
Anecdotal again but...
Also our Lead Member for Schools and SEND Transport currently isn't able to sit because they are refusing to complete their 'woke' DBS check.
This is what really worries me since my daughter's EHCP is going to a funding panel next week and the council has now been taken over by a swarm of little RFK Jr impersonators
Reform will not make any more of a mess of it than Labour or Conservative already do. The system is totally broken and has been for over 20 years.
tabascoboy wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 11:54 am
Anecdotal again but...
This is what really worries me since my daughter's EHCP is going to a funding panel next week and the council has now been taken over by a swarm of little RFK Jr impersonators
Reform will not make any more of a mess of it than Labour or Conservative already do. The system is totally broken and has been for over 20 years.
Ah now that’s a fallacy , the ‘surely they can’t make things any worse’ is unrealistic as ‘voting in someone else will really help change things for the better’.
tabascoboy wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 11:54 am
Anecdotal again but...
This is what really worries me since my daughter's EHCP is going to a funding panel next week and the council has now been taken over by a swarm of little RFK Jr impersonators
Reform will not make any more of a mess of it than Labour or Conservative already do. The system is totally broken and has been for over 20 years.
Oh I know how broken it is believe me, what I meant was if the new influx of totally not racist councillors decide to start randomly blocking people's care plans because of "wokeness", we're so nearly at the end of the process that we can almost see light at the end of the tunnel, I really didnt need this extra worry hanging over me now
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Thu May 15, 2025 8:09 pm
by tabascoboy
Don't know if this will turn into a anything more than a bit of a spat but
Farage is running a cult, says ex-Reform MP Lowe
Former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe has accused Nigel Farage's party of being "the cult of Nigel" and says he was the victim of a "political assassination attempt".
Speaking to Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Newsnight, Lowe suggested his relationship with Reform UK changed when "Elon Musk came out and was complimentary about me and less complimentary about Nigel".
The Great Yarmouth MP made the comments in his first broadcast interview since the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to press charges over threats he was alleged to have made.
Reform UK declined to comment on Lowe's latest attack on Farage, who has previously dismissed the row as irrelevant to the continued advance of the party.
Sarah Pochin, who earlier this month won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election for Reform, described herself as Lowe's "replacement" on the party's benches in Parliament and also played down the Lowe spat.
"I really think it is white noise around what is a huge, energetic movement now, Reform, coming across the country and coming for the other two parties," she told the BBC.
Lowe was elected as a Reform MP in last year's general election but was suspended by the party in March, amid claims of threats towards its chairman Zia Yusuf.
In his Newsnight interview, Lowe said of Farage's "brutal" leadership style "If people become, if you like, too tall a poppy, he tends to lop off the head of the poppy".
On Reform UK's leadership, Lowe said Farage has "a team of what I call, very long-term lightweight sort of servants, which is what you tend to find in a cult."
This is the internet equivalent of that traditional heee Larious post match game when wags attend of ‘Willy on shoulder ‘ or the more extreme ‘cock in ear’ or ‘cock in pint’ variants
This is the internet equivalent of that traditional heee Larious post match game when wags attend of ‘Willy on shoulder ‘ or the more extreme ‘cock in ear’ or ‘cock in pint’ variants
Luckily, I never encountered that...
That you know of. They are games of stealth, and the psychos who play it can be quite adept , especially since cameras on phones
This is the internet equivalent of that traditional heee Larious post match game when wags attend of ‘Willy on shoulder ‘ or the more extreme ‘cock in ear’ or ‘cock in pint’ variants
Luckily, I never encountered that...
That you know of. They are games of stealth, and the psychos who play it can be quite adept , especially since cameras on phones
That you know of. They are games of stealth, and the psychos who play it can be quite adept , especially since cameras on phones
Luckily, my time was way before mobile phones
Think back to whenever you had a pint that tasted funny, and or you got back to your rugby mates after having a piss and they all seemed in good spirits and laughing for no real reason. Perhaps even after a obvious distraction like golf ball in glass so you had to down it.
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Wed May 21, 2025 12:17 pm
by SaintK
Farage will be delighted he booted him out!
Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, made an antisemitic comment during a meeting in parliament earlier this year, the Guardian can reveal.
Lowe, who was suspended from Reform UK earlier this year after a fallout with Nigel Farage, made the remark at a meeting where parliamentary staff were present.
In a leaked recording, Lowe can be heard remarking on the size of the camera being prepared to take footage of him. “In days gone by you’d call it a Jewish camera, but that would be politically incorrect. Because it’s so small,” Lowe said.
Maybe I'm showing my youth here, but why would someone have called a small camera a Jew's camera "in days gone by"?
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Wed May 21, 2025 12:45 pm
by Hal Jordan
sockwithaticket wrote: Wed May 21, 2025 12:34 pm
Maybe I'm showing my youth here, but why would someone have called a small camera a Jew's camera "in days gone by"?
Small = cheap, like those penny pinching Jews, I would expect.
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Wed May 21, 2025 5:05 pm
by SaintK
Done in record time
Reform UK’s pledge to remove all low-traffic neighbourhoods from the council areas it controls looks to be achieved in record time after the 10 local authorities said they do not actually have any in place.
SaintK wrote: Wed May 21, 2025 5:05 pm
Done in record time
Reform UK’s pledge to remove all low-traffic neighbourhoods from the council areas it controls looks to be achieved in record time after the 10 local authorities said they do not actually have any in place.
I really, really wish the Irish Government could find a flaw in his application for an Irish Passport, or just plain change the Law so that cunts like him couldn't exploit it.
Re: Reform - new force or same old farce?
Posted: Fri May 23, 2025 3:12 pm
by Niegs
Before crypto was a thing, otherwise it'd be in there too.
