David____Osland

Somewhere on the left. My opinions and not those of any publications for which I write.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

On average, 50-80 private schools close every year because they can't attract enough pupils. Just because a private school has closed in the last year doesn't mean it was the handiwork of 'spiteful class warrior' and 'Gestapo officer' Bridget Phillipson.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

If Andy Burnham is serious about 'breaking with 40 years of neoliberalism', he needs to tell us exactly what he means by the soundbite. The implication is that a Labour government is about to restructure the UK economy on a scale not seen since 1945.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

I pay more council tax on a two-bedroom flat in Hackney than the royal family pays on Buckingham Palace. And I haven't even started on my taxpayer-funded £369m refurbishment project yet.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

The same businessmen who shut down British factories and subcontracted manufacturing jobs to China in the 1980s and 1990s are now telling us that China is a threat to the British economy. So how did that happen, guys?

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

The DUP propped up Theresa May's minority Tory government. The conviction of its former leader on 18 child sex abuse charges including rape deserves at least as much coverage as the Daily Mail gave to Peter Murrell's embezzlement of £400,000 from the SNP.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Of course rich parents should have to pay VAT on an Eton education. After all, the rest of us have to pay VAT on a Gregg's pastie.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

The world is drifting inexorably towards unstoppable climate change, increasing inequality, authoritarian governments, failed states and possibly nuclear war. Then they tell you 'socialists are crazy'.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

I'm staggered at how many rightwing pundits attack free breakfasts for poor kids but defend charitable status for Eton and Harrow

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

The number of independent schools in Britain has actually risen since Labour put VAT on private school fees. Not that you'll read that fact in the rightwing media.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Sadiq Khan would rather spend £120,000 on breakfasts for hungry kids than on boosting his mistress's tech start-up. That's common sense, not self harm.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

If you don't meet deadlines in your job, you can expect a severe bollocking at your next appraisal. But failure to deliver one letter in four on time somehow merits tripling the reward package for the chief exec of Royal Mail.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

So the royal family is too snotty to use its 240-bedroom palace in central London and around 240 people sleep rough in the surrounding borough every night. There's an obvious conclusion here, isn't there?

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

In 2015, Royal Mail was privatised. In 2017, it missed delivery targets and has never met them since. Yet again we see 'the superior efficiency of the private sector' in action.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

'Affordable' housing that nobody can afford, a 'national living wage' that nobody can live on and 'regulators' powerless to stop privatised companies doing whatever they damn well like. The English language isn't coming out of this very well.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

The policies argued for by James Purnell as work and pensions secretary under New Labour were described by the TUC as US-style workfare. Chris Grayling, his Conservative shadow, said they were identical to Tory plans. Those are not good portents.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Sorry, but a politician who has explicitly modelled her immigration policy on Trump's ICE shouldn't be in the business of branding her opponents as 'Gestapo officers'

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Michelle Mone has yet to pay a penny of the £122m she owes the government for ripping off the NHS. But she has somehow contrived to hang on to the private jet and the superyacht.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

My late uncle Albrecht - an antifascist in Czechoslovakia in 1938 - was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. For the leader of the Conservative Party to call a democratically elected Labour politician a 'Gestapo officer' is simultaneously silly and shameful.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

I apologise personally to Nigel Farage for having accused him of hypocrisy. I now realise that accepting a £5m bung and keeping quiet about it is entirely consistent with his ethical beliefs.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Nobody earning six figures a year from opinion journalism should be telling train drivers or nurse they earn too much. Ever.