King’s Speech key announcements – from the economy to public transport

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but on conversion therapy, it says “**Draft** Conversion Practices Bill: A draft bill to ban conversion practices”, which is strange given that multiple versions of the Bill have been proposed by Labour and Lib Dem over the past few years. I’m worried that Labour will water down the ban on conversion therapy against trans people by carving out some major exemptions to satisfy the likes of Streeting.

Would love more details on what they mean when they talk about ‘a genuine living wage’ because details are slim. I am personally hoping this is a decent increase to minimum wage at least. I did see something about parity of wages across age groups which is great, hopefully it also means an increase.

Some of that good, some of that shit. A difficult one to process really, I’ll never morally accept the progressive smoking ban and I am very disappointed that they didn’t start repealing the police and crime act

Did anyone else noticed that hereditary peers will no longer be allowed to vote in the House of Lords?

Awaab’s Law will be applied to private landlords to force them to fix damp and mould within strict time limits

Crown Estate Bill will allow the Crown to borrow more money and pursue green projects

Nice to see all of this progression after 14 years of kleptocracy.

I’d like to see a ban on rentals and sales for houses that don’t meet a minimum EPC rating and more grants for electric heating and mobility like new fleet/taxi/rental vehicles must be Plug-in ahead of the 2030 end of ICE sales. Specifically for home batteries and bi-directional charging.

The Digital Information and Smart Data Bill.

“establishing Digital Verification Services, which make people’s everyday lives easier through innovative and secure technology. These measures support the creation and adoption of secure and trusted digital identity products and services from certified providers to help with things like moving house, pre-employment checks, and buying age restricted goods and services.”

Digital ID cards…

These are all strong, necessary bills and I commend their priority for all of these. 

“accelerate housebuilding”

Yeah, that sounds like a total nothingburger.

Right at the bottom… Build a holocaust memorial education centre next to the houses of parliament? Didn’t realise we are now Germany. Sounds like a gigantic waste of money aimed at convincing people the Labour isn’t antisemitic, to me.

Liking the rest of it though, this just seems incredibly random. Why the holocaust and not an education centre about atrocities historically committed by our own country like the Boer war concentration camps, Amritsar massacre & famines and partition of India, the rape and torture of Kenyans during the Mau Mau uprising.. etc etc. That virtually nobody knows very much about because we don’t cover it for most of secondary school like we do the Holocaust.

Not keen on a nanny state smoking ban either but that one was coming with any government we got.

I love the child welfare bit but if they really gave a shit about kids they’d end the 2 child benefit cap instead of building some daft monument to history.

As a foreigner I am surprised the amount of key services that Brits sold to foreigners. I am more surprised when I talk with my buddies about it: many say: “if it’s public it wont be managed that well” – my answer is “why? leave staff, leave same payroll and bonuses, so why?”- I got a feeling Brits believe more in foreigners manage their assets better than Brits – scary! Also goverment should buy of at least 50% of BP etc – resources are national, citizens should own them and benefit from them – not corporations and their accounts on tax heaven islands.