The statistics keep coming. 14 years of Tory rule leaves us with eight per cent of pensioners failing to eat regularly because of heating costs and other bills. Nine kids in any state school class of 30 are living in poverty (defined as family income below 60 percent of the national average). The Government has allocated money for 826 major repairs in state schools this year to make them “safe and in working order”: this stat is down by 60 per cent in a year because our Government can’t afford to make any other repairs. Meanwhile, buckets on desks to catch the rain are so common that they go unreported. Teachers state that in some classrooms hands are too cold to write.
70 per cent of families needing help with the cost of uniform and food have at least one parent in work, the food problem best illustrated by the kid flapping his sandwich box lid pretending to eat when in fact the box is completely empty. Meanwhile, the average cost of a year at a private school is now £35,300 p.a.
The wealthiest five families in the UK have more than £23bn each; the richest 10 per cent in our country have 43 per cent of “our” wealth and the poorest 50 per cent have a mere 9 per cent.
I.9 million on the waiting list for mental health treatment with 40,000 kids on that list untreated after more than 2 years. Antidepressant drugs now being given to kids below 10 years old.
Pothole numbers are calculated by the AA at 6 per mile, yet Sky News states that £21bn of Government spending has been lost since the start of Covid – some of it in those “VIP” deals for useless medical equipment given out to ministers’ friends. The same ministers say the sums must be written off (in order to hide Government inefficiency and corruption).
At present 66 Tory MPs (and many more to come) intend to quit their jobs at the next election, perhaps feeling that Government incompetence is such that they can no longer serve the party that prides itself on being the “Party of Opportunity”. Opportunity for whom? Obviously people like the bosses of the FTSE 100 top companies all of whom earn salaries of more than £500,000 p.a. (excluding “perks”).
And the volume of excrement pumped on purpose into the Thames since 2000 is the equivalent of 29,000 olympic swimming pools.
The Rwanda scheme intended to “solve” the “invasion” by desperate migrants (see the Sky News documentary ‘Europe’s Migration Tragedy 2017’….has anything changed?) will, if ever started, remove 300 people at a cost of £1.8m each (government figure).
And our leaders, irrespective of their age, show little honesty and moral strength. Ms. Badenoch states that the UK car industry is “world-leading” because an EV battery factory will be constructed in Somerset while the EU has over 30. Not so long ago Mr. Rees-Mogg famously said that food banks were a “good thing” and Mr. Farage, insisting that he is a good Christian, praises Mr Trump as “the bravest person he has ever met…with unbelievable resilience”. That’s the same Mr. Trump who has been arrested 4 times recently, is facing charges involving 91 crimes and is accused of encouraging an attack on the basic institutions of American democracy.
Do we have any pride in our country, the 6th richest in the world? Are we really content with newspapers that cannot deal with politics without stating that the politicians they favour have “slapped down, blasted , slammed or destroyed” their opponents.
This is, at present, a Tory nation with a government that refuses to accept that the statement by its most generous donor “you just want to hate all black women” is not racist or misogynist. And an ex Tory vice president who thinks the Tories are not abrasive enough, “destroys” any statement that our country includes and respects different religions as “virtue-signalling claptrap”.
The poo in the Thames typifies the result of Tory power, but voting for Reform would be to accept that the dominant feature of Britishness is now hatred of others. How on earth do we accept that Reform’s “leaders”, extremist right-wing critics of an increasingly right-wing Tory Government, are fit to decide our futures? Their immoral and infantile bile makes worse the divisions in our society that they have helped to create.
Can we not show that Britishness is more than disrespect for those differing in ethnicity and culture? We must not accept such self-appointed “influencers” who juggle their personal bitterness and monstrous conceit in order to ride rough-shod over our society which they claim to be improving. And the Tory Party, if allowed to stay in power, will provide us in the next five years with “an opportunity” to do what? Continue to put on the “back burner” the crying need for united inspirational action on the climate crisis?
If we give up, we load it all onto the shoulders of our grandchildren.
Jeremy Hall, Devon
