Some good ideas and encouragingly the shadow chancellor

Just a thought really, when the pension system as it is was bought in, most of those who were retiring within the following 50 years had started work at 14 and would retire 51 years later. Now, the average age to start full time work is 24 yet retirement is only just going up to 68 so just 44 years of paying in.

By rights we should at least retire at 75 and promise not o live too long either but if we can change retirement to 70 for both the state pension and public sector pensions, we can also retain skills.

The loss of the council seat in Dover comes just weeks after the Greens took a seat from the Tories in Reigate. In both elections, support for the Tories fell significantly and therefor cannot be wholly explained away by the presence of Reform and Restore candidates.

What in God's name are Conservative voters doing? Do they seriously imagine that the Green party is still the cuddly greens of yesteryear, the party of Jean Lambert and Sarah Parkin?

Tories must be made to realise exactly WHAT and WHO they are backing when they switch their votes to Polanski's Green party. If they cannot be made to do so then the Conservative party richly deserves the label of 'the stupid party'

I remember during the 2024 election campaign many on the left were gleeful about the possibility of the Tories polling lower than Reform. They also said the Tories were just giving Reform credibility and publicity due to Sunak's constant pledges to 'stop the boats'. As if it would have been better to just completely sweep it under the rug or something.

Fast forward 2 years and the left is terrified of a possible Reform government, saying we are on the road to facism or smth (even though Reform is no more radical on immigration than most countries globally, eg Japan, China,, Poland, America etc).

I get they were engaging in a bit of Shadenfraude after 14 years of Conservative government, and probably assumed the Tories wouldn't actually be displaced as the Number 1 party of the Right, so were just celebrating the vote splitting. But still, at least we can laugh at how short-sighted they were, as a bit of consolation.