Snout in the trough (all right – bucket): perhaps the Conservatives should rename themselves the Corruption Party?
Remember when Romford’s Tory MP Andrew Rosindell caused outrage by saying this on national television?
“I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20 but they don’t need it” says Tory MP Andrew Rosindell on £20 universal credit uplift ending this Sept!
Now, with all his Conservative Party hypocrisy on display for all to see, he has defended MPs who have second jobs:
Tory MP Andrew Rosindell on £20 uplift to UC: "I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20 but maybe they don’t need it."
Andrew Rosindell, on banning MPs from 2nd jobs: “We have to realise we have human beings who have families & responsibilities”#Newsnightpic.twitter.com/cm87ORGWwe
What is his rationale for these opposing viewpoints? That “people are different” and the poor don’t need money as much as his piggy friends with their snouts in the trough?
That would be nonsense. He is defending the indefensible. If Tory MPs don’t like being made to survive on £82,000 a year, they should be absolutely horrified that they are forcing people to live on less than one-tenth of that amount if they’re on Universal Credit.
But they aren’t because they simply don’t bother to think about the effect of their persecution policies on other people.
Remember, this is an MP who supported cuts to benefits for people with disabilities – then parked his campaign care in a disabled parking space:
The absolute, thundering hypocrisy of this position really bites through in satire:
This Christmas, consider #AdoptAnMP. Christmas is particularly hard for MPs as they struggle to get by on £81,932 plus the most generous expenses package anyone's ever imagined. Your help could mean heating for their stables, or an extra ski-ing trip. Please give what you can.
Your regular reminder that Jeremy Corbyn's second job is volunteering at a foodbank.
— Prof Gayle Letherby 💙 #PeaceAndJustice (@gletherby) November 17, 2021
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Owen Paterson with his (former?) boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. It seems that, after being forced out of Parliament, Paterson has also “stepped back” from his consultancy work. Wouldn’t he need that job more, now?
The BBC is reporting that Owen Paterson, whose refusal to accept a month’s suspension as an MP after being found to have been using Parliamentary space and equipment to carry out his second job sparked a scandal… no longer has his second job.
Apparently he has “stepped back from his consultancy work, for which he was earning £100,000 a year on top of his £81,932 MP’s salary”.
Really?
But his former colleagues – like Andrew Rosindell – have been arguing that MPs are, really, hard-up and need these second jobs to survive (poor dears!) so wouldn’t Paterson now need his consultancy work even more?
Perhaps he needed it more than his employers needed him, after his removal from the Green Benches. So I have to ask: did he step back or was he simply dropped?
It has been argued – persuasively – that MPs are only hired by firms to represent their interests to the government. We have seen a wealth of evidence to this effect in the awarding of Covid-19-related business contracts.
Owen Paterson is no longer an MP. And suddenly he no longer has his second job.
Doesn’t this simply confirm what was argued? And shouldn’t the likes of Laura Kuenssberg admit it, rather than shrouding it with obscure verbiage?
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We thought this window-writing was by a child in care. It seems it might have been by a carer instead.
Here‘s another crisis the Conservative government has created for itself:
Desperately needed social care staff are quitting their jobs to work in the tourism and hospitality sector because they are ‘burnt out’, the sector has warned.
Exhausted staff are leaving the key worker roles to fill shortages in other sectors, as pubs and restaurants struggle to find enough staff.
Urgent action is needed to stop a “tsunami of unmet need” rippling across essential services this winter, the care regulator has warned.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) says health and care staff are “exhausted and depleted” and working under intense levels of pressure.
The vacancy rate in care homes has steadily grown to reach 10.2% as of September – meaning in a year’s time one in 10 care home staff will not be in that job, the CQC said.
And what’s the Conservative government’s response? Make those who are left work harder.
It’s shocking – and ridiculous at the same time. Watch Peter Stefanovic’s video to grasp the full meaning of what Tory minister Gillian Keegan was backed into saying:
“If I understand this correctly faced with a care quality commission report talking about an exhausted and depleted workforce you’re saying work more hours”
That was just the start of the biggest car crash interview of the week. Watch in disbelief pic.twitter.com/R3UBXj2R1z
For fairness, here’s more of that interview, without interruptions:
“If I understand this correctly faced with a care quality commission report talking about an exhausted and depleted workforce you’re saying work more hours” pic.twitter.com/QapS7KecwH
I wouldn’t be surprised if every care worker who saw those clips – or the full interview when it was screened – quit their job at once.
It is clear that they aren’t valued and will simply be worked until they drop – and then blamed for the holes in the care system they leave behind.
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Apologies for using the ‘foreigners own UK businesses’ line but it is important to make the point that Brexit hasn’t stopped people from foreign countries interfering in employment practices here.
On the contrary – foreign ownership of UK businesses and assets is higher than ever. Weetabix was taken over by a US corporation four years ago – after the decision to quit the European that was motivated partly by a (racist) desire to stop foreigners from taking our jobs.
How is it better for foreigners to dictate increasingly worse pay and working conditions for people in this country?
And why is the UK’s Tory government – that pushed through Brexit as a way to counter foreign interference – supporting the exploitation of our workers via fire-and-rehire?
It doesn’t make sense, does it?
Look:
Legendary Labour MP Barry Gardiner put forward a parliamentary motion to ban the despicable practice of "fire and rehire".
Is anyone remotely surprised that the Tories sided with exploitative bosses to vote it down?
Exploitative bosses? Our Angry Yorkshireman must mean the Americans who are now in charge of Weetabix:
Getting Back Sovereignty – Foreign based big corps given Tory government wave through to buy British trademarked products, change recipes, cut portion sizes, close down/move manufacturing elsewhere and employ draconian measures to demolish workers rights plus their earnings…Yay! pic.twitter.com/zKz034o2w7
Johnny Foreigner coming to the UK to do work that British people won’t touch is bad…
But Johnny Foreigner owning UK businesses and attacking employees’ pay and conditions is good? For whom? It certainly isn’t helping you.
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Laughing at us: Boris Johnson appointed his former Bullingdon Club colleague to Parliament’s sleaze watchdog, over 171 other applicants. It seems clear he did it to ensure that he would never be found guilty of the many corruption accusations made against him.
We all screamed “foul” when it was revealed that Boris Johnson’s government had appointed his Bullingdon Club chum Ewen Fergusson to Parliament’s sleaze watchdog.
Was he put in the Committee on Standards in Public Life to rubber-stamp Johnson’s offences as being within reasonable standards of behaviour, we asked (or at least, This Writer did).
Now we have more evidence, and it suggests that he was.
Why else would Johnson’s government have appointed his friend over 171 other applicants who were not directly and personally linked to him – in the face of objections that the connection should disqualify Fergusson altogether?
As The Independent puts it,
The longtime friend of the prime minister was appointed to scrutinise him.
By the way: final say on who got the job went to Boris Johnson. He chose his friend for the position.
If you wanted an honest verdict on your own actions, would you appoint a personal friend to provide it? I wouldn’t. My friends would tell me if they thought I was going wrong, but they’d never voluntarily say so to strangers.
And this was pointed out by the Labour Party (even though it shouldn’t have to be):
Labour said friends of the prime minister should be disqualified from the role on the Committee on Standards In Public Life, given the nature of its job scrutinising members of the government, including Mr Johnson.
“Being Boris Johnson’s chum from the Bullingdon Club does not qualify you to sit on the watchdog that is supposed to crack down on sleaze and cronyism in our politics. In fact, it should disqualify you,” deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner told The Independent.
“This appointment is an utter joke, and out of 173 applicants of course the Bullingdon Boy fits the job description of marking the prime minister’s homework.
It is a joke. And next time Johnson gets accused of corruption, and his Bullingdon chum green-lights it, he’ll be the one laughing at all of us.
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How can Keir Starmer seriously propose banning ‘fire and rehire’ policies by employers when he has brought that odious practice to the Labour Party?
This Site reported on July 21 that Starmer has almost bankrupted Labour, making it necessary for the party to axe 90 full-time jobs.
At the same time, Starmer was hiring 30-50 staff on short-term contracts. I stated:
That’s ‘fire and rehire’ because you know some of the axed staff will have been doing the same work that the new employees will be asked to do – and some of these jobs will be occupied by the same people.
The mainstream media has picked up on this, with The Independentreporting on it only a day or so ago.
How tone-deaf, then, for Starmer to send his deputy leader, Angela Rayner, out to promote a policy that condemns ‘fire and rehire’!
Consider this, from the BBC’s article on the new policy:
Labour also says it wants to outlaw “fire and rehire” practices whereby employers dismiss workers and then offer to hire them back under new, often poorer, terms and conditions.
That is exactly what Starmer is doing.
The new policy has other holes that have led critics to claim that it is merely tinkering around the edges of employment law and not revolutionising it at all.
For example, the “real living wage” of £10 per hour has been attacked as not being enough to lift anybody out of dependence on state benefits or – in extreme cases – food banks.
This is simply not good enough.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour devised policies that would have changed the UK from a country that exploits its population for the benefit of a tiny minority – which is what it is now, and don’t you forget it – into a progressive, trailblazing nation that valued all of its citizens.
Our success as a nation would have been valued, not by the number of billionaires we had, but by the absence of poverty.
But Starmer isn’t interested in this.
His plan isn’t revolutionary. It is hypocritical and so is he.
And the truth of that is clear to everybody.
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Sajid Javid: look at that blank-eyed stare and ask yourself whether his appointment is good for the UK – or good for the banks who employed him?
Sajid Javid is going to have to try a lot harder if he wants us to think he can do the Health Secretary job better than Matt Hancock.
He has made a a ham-fist of it by trying to put down a vital question over conflict of interest between his new Cabinet role and his extra-Parliamentary jobs with JP Morgan bank and… who’s the other one with? – by failing to answer it.
In the Commons, Labour backbencher Richard Burgon asked – well, see for yourself, along with Javid’s ridiculous non-answer:
The new Health Secretary has been getting paid £1,500 an HOUR over the last year for his second job and for his third job too.
Today I told him that he has absolutely no right to deny NHS staff a proper pay rise.
Yes, the Daily Expressloved it, but that just shows the depths to which national journalistic standards have fallen.
It is perfectly reasonable to want to know whether a Cabinet minister is giving up jobs that might conflict with his duty to the nation.
I want to know if Javid is going to blab government secrets to JP Morgan and I want to know if he’s going to give away information – against the national interest – to his other employer.
That is, after all, the most likely reason they employed him.
He was warned by ACOBA – the Advisory Committee On Business Appointments – that there were “potential risks” that he could provide “privileged information” that would give his employer an unfair advantage over its competitors, in spring last year when he took the JP Morgan job.
ACOBA provided advice on how to avoid “potential risks” but it is easy to circumvent them. The only way to ensure that former ministers don’t blab is to forbid them from taking jobs until any information they had is out of date and useless.
Two years has been suggested as a reasonable period of delay but Javid took his jobs straight away and at the time of writing, the suggested period has still not expired.
It has been suggestted that Javid has already given up his outside jobs.
But if that’s true, where’s the evidence? We cannot rely on his say-so because he belongs to an organisation of liars, headed by a liar. We simply cannot trust him.
And that is the reason MPs – and commentators like This Site – are demanding full disclosure, as you can see from the following representative sample on Twitter:
Now that Sajid Javid has been "re-habilitated" and is now back in the "club" as Health Secretary ; will he forgo his little sideline with JP Morgan ?#AskingForTheWoodPidgeonPerchedOnMyPatioTable
Can Sajid Javid confirm he will resign from his extra-parliamentary role as an advisor to JP Morgan or that he intends to do so at the earliest opportunity to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest as he takes on the role as guardian of the NHS?
Sajid Javid gets paid £1,500 an hour for his whilst Jeremy Corbyn spends his time not on MP work helping out at a #Foodbank & campaigning for a better world for all (& often criticised for it).
Greed valued so much more than care 💔
— Prof Gayle Letherby 💙 #PeaceAndJustice (@gletherby) June 29, 2021
Javid must decide:
He can be a banker, or in charge of our NHS but he cannot do both.
Of course there are also serious questions to be answered about the decision to appoint Javid to the Health portfolio, considering his extremely shady history:
How on earth did a multi-millionaire ex-Deutsche bank Thatcherite landlord that voted against making rented homes fit for human habitation actually end up responsible for the health and social care of an entire nation?
My message to Sajid Javid today : Remember you are now the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care – not the minister for selling off our NHS or gifting contracts to your mates in banking and finance.
As far as his actual ability to do the Health Secretary job is concerned, Javid has already disgraced himself. But that’s another story…
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Useless: Tory money pit and expertise vacuum Dido Harding. She has applied to run NHS England and privatisation-loving Tories probably think she’s perfect for the job.
North American slang defines “dido” as “a mischievous trick or prank”; here in the UK, if you “kick up dido” then you are creating a fuss or a row.
How appropriate, then, is the given name of Ms Harding – the incompetent who has made disasters of Talk Talk* and the government’s Covid-19 test and trace system – now we know she has applied for the job running the NHS in England?
Dido Harding’s own ability to turn everything she touches into excrement is well-documented. Even the injection of £37 billion couldn’t make her test and trace system work.
She is also the wife of Conservative MP John Penrose, who actively campaigns for the National Health Service to be replaced by a privately-run insurance system.
This connection to a Tory MP should disqualify Harding’s application; there would be a conflict of interest and her appointment to a job that should be apolitical would be seen as politically-biased and corrupt…
But we know that complaints would fall on deaf ears because, remember Mr Penrose? The husband? Not only is he a Tory MP, but is also their anti-corruption tsar.
So if she gets the job, the Tories will merrily say there’s nothing dodgy about the appointment and Penrose will merrily agree, in the knowledge that having his wife in charge of the NHS brings him a huge step closer to destroying it forever.
And her application lives up to both definitions of her name.
All of this information is well-known:
The Tories want to put Dido Harding – who bodged a £37B Test & Trace app & whose husband CAMPAIGNS FOR THE NHS TO BE PRIVATISED – in charge of NHS England.
Let's be clear: this is exactly what a government which wants to sell the NHS would do & we should all be highly concerned.
If I wanted to destroy the NHS, I'd probably put it in the hands of someone whose husband actively campaigns for the NHS to be privatised. Someone like Dido Harding.
Dido Harding applies to run @NHSEngland because that’s what you do when you have spectacularly, publicly, unforgivably failed at the last big project you were responsible for. You don’t go away quietly and have a rethink. You put yourself forward to head up the NHS. WTAF?
I can't think of anyone better than Dido Harding to run the NHS into the ground in preparation for privatisation.
— Parody Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson_MP) June 17, 2021
Tory MP and husband of Dido Harding John Penrose has joined the advisory board of 1828, which calls for the NHS to be replaced by an insurance system and for Public Health England to be scrapped https://t.co/N8GZw9BN9t
— John Dalton – #NotEmbracingBrexit 💔🇨🇰🇪🇺 (@JohnDalton6011) June 17, 2021
With Harding in charge, the failure of NHS systems seems a foregone conclusion – and of course, such a failure would be used as an excuse to privatise the service:
Nobody in the UK who relies on the NHS should support privatisation.
It changes the service’s priority from improving UK citizens’ health to making a profit for healthcare firms’ shareholders.
*I should add that, post-Harding, Talk Talk has recovered very well (I’m familiar with at least one very happy customer).
So there is a glimmer of hope: even if Harding gets the job, she might be so bad at it that even the Tories have to admit she has to go (anything is possible).
And if she is ousted, then her replacement might actually provide an adequate service.
Hope springs eternal. So, even if this serial inadequate gets the job, she might still – possibly – help the NHS in the long run.
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This is home working: check out the complete lack of anything resembling a business suit, the face that hasn’t seen a razor in days, and the portrait of a CAT in a military uniform in the background. And at its height, This Site is read by 180,000 people in a day. No wonder I’ve got a manic grin all over my face.
On the face of it, this is an amazingly progressive move by one of the most regressive governments in UK history.
According to the Mail (and other news outlets), Boris Johnson is pushing forward with a 2019 Tory manifesto commitment to give people the right to work from home unless employers can demonstrate that office working is essential.
Consultation on the plan will take place over the summer, hopefully taking into account the experiences of firms whose employees have worked from home during the Covid-19 crisis.
A survey has shown that 71 per cent of firms found home working either made no difference to their productivity – or boosted it.
Labour has raised concerns over the plan.
In a comment, Angela Rayner said:
We cannot have one-sided flexibility that allows employers to dictate terms to their workers when it comes to flexible working arrangements.
The starting point must be a strengthening of workers’ rights on flexible working so that workers are not pressured or blackmailed back into unsafe workplaces.
From the Mail‘s article, that’s not what’s going on here. But I can’t advise anyone to trust the Tories to do the right thing, so we’ll have to stay sceptical until we can read the small print of the proposed legislation.
Personally, up until Covid, This Writer seemed to have a unique perspective on home working.
I quit the last newspaper to employ me as a staffer because I wasn’t allowed to work from home after the local office that was my base was moved from a barely-manageable 27 miles from home to a diabolical 41 miles away.
When the idea of moving the office’s location was mooted, I complained vehemently (although admittedly I wasn’t then the monster who writes for you today).
Because most of my stories were generated in the area where I lived, it meant I may spend a huge amount of working time on the road – time better-spent working on news stories.
I said the only way I would be able to carry on is if I worked from home four days a week (not five, because sometimes attending the office can be important).
It wasn’t until after the office move had taken place that I was told that this would not be permitted. The impression I had was that managers assumed I wouldn’t actually do any work without one of them looking over my shoulder.
So I quit. I leave it up to you to judge whether the collapse of the Mid Wales edition of that paper a few months later had anything to do with my departure and the reason for it.
Of course, all of the work I have done on Vox Political has been from home. It is now my main source of income and at one point last year I had nearly 180,000 hits in a day.
So, y’know, I’ve always been convinced that home working is not only possible, but profitable.
I’m glad Covid has demonstrated this more widely.
And I hope the Tory government recognises it in any legislation it brings forward.
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Manifesto commitment: the Conservatives made their plan to end democracy clear in their 2019 election manifesto. Every Conservative voter demanded an end to democracy and a slide into dictatorship.
Boris Johnson is getting back to business after the Covid crisis – and his business is stripping you of the liberties and freedoms your ancestors fought hard to win over the last several hundred years.
Be in no doubt: you will have lost most of your rights by the end of this Parliamentary term, and you can thank your Tory-voting neighbour for making it happen.
Included in the Queen’s Speech were announcements that all three main planks of the attack on democracy – listed on Page 48 of the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, so everybody who voted Tory absolutely supported them – are still going forward. They are:
Removing your right to protest so they can use the police and armed forces to put down any dissent.
"This law would threaten the public’s right to protest and undermine Britain’s reputation on the world stage. It is deeply illiberal and undemocratic and we will continue to campaign to stop it." @pimlicathttps://t.co/JeNRvYmxvp
Imposing dictatorship by ensuring that the courts cannot stop the Tories from breaking the law.
Government plans to *restore the balance of power between executive, legislature & the courts* are ominous threat to the ability of Parliament to hold ministers to account & the independence of our judiciary#QueensSpeech
The only one of these that has been given prominence by the mainstream media is the last – the planned repeal of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. This has been reported as meaning that Johnson would be able to call elections before his Parliament has served its full five-year term.
But it could also mean that he will allow himself to delay elections indefinitely.
The FTP Act repealed the previous electoral law that allowed prime ministers to call elections at any time during their five-year term, but demanded that they must call an election to be held after five years, no matter what.
So repealing the FTP Act means that unscrupulous prime ministers like Johnson would be able to call elections whenever they liked – or simply neglect to call them at all and remain in power indefinitely.
This is what will happen unless he specifically writes new limitations on Parliamentary terms into his new law. And why would a corrupt liar like Johnson do that when he has a majority of 80 seats in the Commons and can currently do whatever he likes without fear of punishment?
Worse still, the new legislative programme includes more attacks on democracy, the most important being the planned limitation of the right to vote to those who can afford to show the proper photographic identification.
This, Johnson claims, is to stop electoral fraud. You may assume that this is a rampant problem across the UK, but in fact it is practically nonexistent. His plan will strip the vote from around two million people:
There were 6 cases of voter fraud at the last election.
To solve this, the govt will introduce a law making that will prevent approx 2 million from voting.
This is #VoterSuppression, and Labour, Tory or anything in between, if you believe in democracy, you should oppose it.
The plan will strip votes from people who are poor and young – in other words, people who will not vote for the Conservatives at the next election. It is corrupt Tory gerrymandering to prevent the voice of the people from being heard at elections.
There were just SIX cases of voter fraud at last election. Yet these plans could disenfranchise voters who don’t have photo ID – overwhelmingly the young and the poor. Hard to escape the feeling this is an assault on democracy. https://t.co/VeOSFlSVsP
Typically of the current Tory government, its MPs tried to justify the planned law by lying to us about it. Gillian Keegan, whoever she is, claimed you need photo ID to pick up a parcel from the Post Office – and was put straight in no uncertain terms by fact-checking site Full Fact:
Gillian Keegan MP has said you need photo ID to collect a parcel from the Post Office in defence of plans to require photo ID to vote.
Many of us think valuable Parliamentary time would be better spent preventing the kind of corruption that allowed Tory cronies to gain multi-million pound contracts to provide vital supplies in the fight against Covid-19, that they were totally unable to fulfil. What happened to all that money?
— Parliament View #GetVaccinated (@parliamentview) May 11, 2021
It's a shame the Tories weren't checking IDs when Hancock gave two PPE deals worth more than £90 million to a faceless Chinese firm listed at a hotel room in Beijing.
Finally, shall we consider the misplaced priorities of these entitled Tories who have spent more than a decade manslaughtering benefit claimants without feeling any need to reform the system?
They brought in ID cards after 6 cases of voter fraud but did nothing when their policies killed 120000 disabled people.
'Six are too many' said Hancock about #VoterID but 120000 isn't apparently.#QueensSpeech
— Gay, Autistic, Disabled And Proud. ♿🏳️🌈 (@criptheirvote) May 11, 2021
Come to that, why isn’t the government introducing plans to end tax evasion? I mention this because the deaths of disabled benefit claimants are linked to the Tory clampdown on claims – the so-called “magic cures” that claimed hundreds of thousands of people were not disabled at all, despite volumes of medical evidence showing they were. These people were unceremoniously stripped of their benefits and many of them subsequently died. The figure of 120,000, quoted above, is a very low estimate.
The Tories spend huge amounts of money every year on their campaign to strip disabled people of their ability to survive. It is a campaign of persecution that has been more successful in eliminating the disabled than the infamous Nazi “Aktion T4” in 1930s and 1940s Germany. In comparison, they spend hardly anything on tracking the rich Tories – let’s not deny it – who have evaded their tax responsibilities in order to squirrel away trillions of pounds in tax havens abroad.
Absent from the new legislative programme are any plans to support the rights of workers with promised reforms to zero-hours contracts and the gig economy, and an end to the practice of “fire and rehire” – terminating workers’ contracts and then demanding they take new contracts with lower pay and fewer privileges:
— Prof Kailash Chand OBE FRCGP (@KailashChandOBE) May 11, 2021
“Fire and rehire” is a key element of Howard Beckett’s campaign to lead the UK’s largest union, Unite. He was in London to campaign about it while the Queen was delivering her speech:
Fire and rehire is ripping through UK workplaces – around one in ten workers face this despicable practise from unscrupulous bosses using the pandemic to destroy hard-won Ts and Cs. @BeckettUnite is in Parliament today to call an end to #FireAndRehirepic.twitter.com/wchTkUxaG4
He has also made the very obvious point that the currrent Labour leadership has no interest in looking after the interests of British workers – because Keir Starmer actually refused to oppose “fire and rehire”.
The current Labour Leader was asked to sign this and said no. It is a slap in the face to workers facing fire & rehire. He should add his name now and say sorry. He won’t. pic.twitter.com/RShGwZkI52
— NHSActivistRN 🏴 #NHSPAY15 #FBNHS (@NHSActivistRN) May 11, 2021
The oppression goes on and on:
No10 confirms it wants to remove the right of refugees to challenge immigration decisions in the High Court, in order to “increase the efficiency of the courts” and “provide clarity in the legal system”.
Long-awaited plans for reform of social care – promised by the Tories years ago – went undiscussed. There is no plan for such reforms in the current Parliamentary term.
Admittedly, Andy Burnham is right to say all parties are responsible for allowing social care to fall into the disrepair we have today; New Labour failed to do anything about it too.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham tells @cathynewman “all parties are culpable” on social care and he doesn’t “consider it radical to apply NHS principles to social care”.https://t.co/2ak1bO0VNH
He spent the whole of 2020 lying about the severity of Covid-19 and justifying his decisions to award government contracts worth billions of pounds to Tory cronies who couldn’t fulfil them. What are his words worth?
Oh, and before anyone suggests that plans to address the climate crisis show at least some hope for the Tories, they don’t:
Queen’s Speech climate measures ‘missed opportunity to show world leadership’ https://t.co/ZqJxaSpsDt
For a more detailed attack on the new legislative programme, take a look at Unite’s response (under current leader Len McCluskey). I’m sure other critiques are also available.
“This Queen's speech reveals the nasty, repressive side of this government” – @LenMcCluskey
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