Ever get the feeling that this government starts each day wondering what it can get away with? It must seem easier than taking candy off a baby to dole up a heap of lies and cruelties and get us to swallow them and say we’d vote for more. I mean, what are those polls about? An increase in support for the Conservatives in spite of a catalogue of activities which would, in another era, have resulted in mass resignations and the collapse of the government?
Resign? Not this lot. Sunak packages up his goody bag of Covid measures to sound like Christmas every day, whilst still excluding hundreds of thousands of people who have been living on air for more than a year. He lies that the UK can only have freeports because of Brexit. He neglects to mention planned spending cuts for the NHS. He doesn’t mention the ‘A’ word, but sneaks in a load of austerity under cover. He tells us all just how much we, the people, want honesty, transparency and plain-speaking and then, in by now familiar style, delivers a whole heap of the opposite. And we lap it up.
Right now, we are being asked to applaud a miserly, measly, below inflation one precent pay rise for NHS workers and to completely overlook the stonking £37 BILLION (no longer the £22bn in my recent article) going to Hanock’s racing mate Dido Harding’s failing Test and Trace programme. The same Test and Trace which cannot find a person who got off a plane in Aberdeen with the Brazilian variant of Coronavirus. It’s not exactly like looking for a needle in a haystack, is it? 400 passengers, FGS.
As for this…whilst testing centres are being closed or scaled back (some having never actually opened) and staff laid off. Where is the money going? Why is there no scrutiny, no accountability? Can’t help thinking back to Johnson’s role model, Trump. If you don’t test, you don’t get cases…
This is weapons grade trolling and gaslighting . And all the while, run the NHS into the ground, force people down the private channels, funnel money to mates, get a job on the board once you retire or (finally) get booted out. Simples. That gravy train just gets better and better.
And what about Priti Patel and her charming, collegiate way with people? Does making a £340,000 out of court settlement to driven-out civil servant Sir Philip Rutnam and paying his legal costs sound to you like Patel was in the right? No? Me, neither. Our money pays that bill, by the way.
What about the latest extra funding for a selection of local authorities? Oh, Rishi, god of honesty and fairplay, Mr No-One-Left-Behind…and Robert middle name ‘Honest’ Jenrick…on what basis did you dispense our money to achieve the much-vaunted levelling up?
Wow! There’s a surprise. It went, in the main, to authorities with Conservative MPs, regardless of where they stood in the deprivation rankings. That’s how it will be, is it? You want money spent in your area, then vote Conservative in May. Only the faithful will be rewarded. Only the recent converts (red wall constituencies which turned blue) will have their misplaced vote cemented with taxpayers’ money.
Note that there are only 343 local authorities in England.
Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall continues:
“Done some more number crunching on the Levelling Up Fund. Of the 93 English councils included in the first tier, 55 are represented by Tory MPs only, 24 Lab MPs only, 14 represented by a mix. Compared to the make up of English seats that makes Tory seats a bit overrepresented.
Crucially though, the Labour only local authorities are on average significantly more deprived- with an average ranking of 38th, with the Conservative only LAs ranking on average 106th. That begs the question of what’s happened to the other Lab local authorities which on a deprivation reading should be on the list.
Of course Treasury will say that this isn’t just about deprivation, though as I’ve said, they still haven’t given us the actual formula so it’s all a mystery. Without that it isn’t surprising accusations of pork arise.”
Look, I know everyone is getting bored with all this and you may be tiring of my anger, but that is what this government want. They want us all to give up. To admit defeat. To cave. Turn off the news, cancel the paper, apply a blanket ban to anything that might raise our blood pressure.
When we do that, they’ve won and then they can do anything. Anything.
They’re already prepared to break the law and shrug it off. They are prepared to lie. Prepared to adopt ‘pork barrelling’ techniques to buy votes; to bung our money to mates; to facilitate thousands upon thousands of excess deaths from Covid-19 and act like it never happened. And then they fling out a couple of dead cats to soak up some outrage – Carrie Antoinette and her unfeasibly expensive decor, for example.
We need to keep the focus. We need to inform those who will not hear any of this from the mainstream media. As an example, the BBC today refused to allow a shadow health minister on BBC Breakfast to talk about NHS cuts and the £3.50 a week pay rise for nurses whilst letting a government minister say that “It’s all government can afford.” Now, that is trolling right there.
Meanwhile, there’s a T-shirt I’ll be wearing when the weather warms up. It says ‘MAKE 1984 FICTION AGAIN’. Please! It’s up to us to stop the rot and we start by telling it like it is and support efforts like the Good Law Project and Byline Times. And us! We can use the money to promote our articles. We’re all volunteers here at WCB, and reaching readers with the truth is all we care about.
Wait! I have not even mentioned the latest Brexit lies…! OK. Another time!
